ToC Thoughts from the Man Behind the Curtain

Before we get to the main event, how about some Major League Wrestling, eh? New league, run by Sanket Desai, proprietor of the defunct competitor in last year's Dupree Cup, War Zone Wrestling. Give it a shot if you have the chance, Sanket's good people, and he's a young'un too, so you know he's got enthusiasm :)

Now, the ToC...

I thought there was a marked difference between this year's ToC and last year's, and it had nothing to do with the change in venue. It probably had more to do with a change in the competitors. Only four people came back from last year (Nero, ProfT, Ravager, Kin Hiroshi). I also think more people knew what they were getting into this year than last year. Seeing that 2006 was the first time I ever did something like this, it's going to throw people into shock. Now, folks are getting wise to the format, and I think that's why the last two rounds were handled a bit better than before.

The first round though... I'm not going to say it was bad, because there were a lot of really good RPs in there. Last year's round 1, however, stuck out to me more. D!, Mr. Amazing! and Eddie Mayfield all really jumped out at me, and K-Wolf and Vangelus Olsig had really memorable RPs. That's not to say that this year's crop wasn't good or memorable. It's just no one really jumped out at me, which isn't a good or bad thing; it just meant that this round was a lot harder for me to judge this time around.

Round 2 and round 3 though... I thought the quality for both rounds was better, and the most telling thing to me about that was the lack of cringeworthy moments. Last year, and I'm not mentioning names, I had to cringe at the quality of some of the later round RP stuff. Here, there was really none of that. The writing quality went up, and there very few times when I had to cringe at how the writing was. It felt like Round 2 was solid RP after solid RP, even for the first timers.

I feel like whoever's coming out of this as the winner really earned it, much like Brunk did with the TiT. Two tournaments, two hellacious RP battles. Hopefully that bodes well for the Dupree Cup... which is right around the corner, ladies and gentlement ;)