Isamu League: A Little More My Speed

I've pimped FMLL on here before when it was active, and really, I think it's a great concept. That being said, lucha libre really isn't my thing, so while I had interest in joining it for awhile, I really didn't think I'd do too well or fit in and help give it its own voice. I was always more a puroresu guy myself. Well, someone at FWC is finally trying something that's a little more up my alley.

Enter Isamu League. Headed up by relative FWC newcomers, it's a fed that best tries to recreate a puroresu atmosphere, which admittedly can be very hard. Japanese wrestling is more about the sporting aspect and about what happens in the ring. Angles and feuds are based around matches and rivalries, about respect and that sort of thing rather than outrageous storylines and out-of-ring stuff. Sure, there are more than one flavor of puroresu fed out there, but most of them stress in-ring stuff. Characters and fed atmosphere, though, can range from the most straitlaced of straitlaced (think AJPW in the '90s with Misawa, Kobashi and Kawada) to goofy as all hell (HUSTLE and such characters as Daneshoku Dino, Razor Ramon Hard Gay and Survival Tobita).

Judging from the mission statement, IL will be a sort of hybrid between the traditional Japanese workrate fed and the kind of garbage fed like FMW and Big Japan were/are. In terms of fed mechanics though, they've put forth a very lax RPing schedule, which they basically require one RP every two weeks. This seemingly leisurely pace seems like it's a great fit for the more mature FWC audience.

Where I think they might run into some problems is their RP set-up, where they explicitly say that you won't have to get into promo battles and can write RPs that don't have anything to do with wrestling at all. This might throw some people off, as FWC has always been a more "traditional" community, NFW's presence notwithstanding. Still, I think this mission statement is a positive; the philosophy will allow people to get acclimated and perhaps try something new. Yeah, NFW is another place with a freestyle attitude, but it's harder to work something different in an established fed, or let's put it this way, it might seem harder to the handler. I know Katz, and I know that he, like every other FWC fedhead, pushes on a merit basis. If you write well, you're going to get pushed.

That being said, in a fledgling fed, you might have less pressure to perform right away, and thus might be more prone to try something different. IL could provide the best sort of portal to the PTC/narrative out-of-arena RP style on FWC.

Either way, I'm very high on IL, and I hope people give it a fair shake. I've got something I'm going to try out there, and hopefully you all will like it. In the interim, I'd love some feedback for my character profile :p

Masaharu Keichigawa