November's Wrestler of the Month

Just so you guys know, you'll probably get posting from me in spurts from here on in. Lots of stuff going on in real life, so I'll post like a few entries over three or four days and probably go a week without posting. I know that sucks, but thems be the breaks.

Aanyway, time to honor our Wrestler of the Month for November, and this month, we honor Sonny Silver. Silver won his first World Championship since dropping the tSC Strap by defeating Lindsay Troy for the PRIME's Great American Nightmare. Congratulations abound for Seth, who made good on my prediction for him all the way back in January ;)

This month's runner-up is Clinton Sage, who has continued his dominance in FUSE and added the PTC Unified Championship to his resume this month. Sage has made a strong case for Wrestler of the Year. Congrats!

Honorable Mentions
Tony Gamble (PRIME), Danny Ferguson (PRIME, TEAM Events), Beast (A1E, EPW, TEAM Events), Dan Ryan (NAPW, A1E, TEAM Events), David Danny Morrison (PTC Events)

Previous Winners
January: Dan Ryan (A1E, NFW)
February: Clinton Sage (FUSE, PTC Events)
March: Nova (NFW, PRIME)
April: Dan Ryan (2) (A1E, NEW, TEAM Events)
May: Big Dog (A1E)
June: Lindsay Troy (PRIME, EPW, NFW, TEAM Events)
July: Nova (2) (PRIME, TEAM Events, NFW)
August: Lindsay Troy (2) (PRIME, EPW, TEAM Events)
September: The Illustrious Face-Eater (PTC Events, PRIME)
October: Dan Ryan (3) (CSWA, A1E)

Apologies and the state of eW from my eyes

No folks, I'm not dead. I'm really not. Just between work and everything else, I've kinda neglected the blog. I don't like doing that, but sometimes, that's how it goes I suppose. I am working on a review for WrestleSTOCK, night 2, and hopefully, I can get that done before NEW and EPW get their next PPVs posted. I do want to say though that both feds should be proud of how the joint card went down. Edmunds, Brunk, Steve, Strawsma and everyone who RPed, wrote matches or had anything to do with the card should be damn proud of it. I really feel it was a rousing success and something that will be remembered in the FW community for a long time.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say a few things, address the communities and such.

First thing's first, I want to make a few apologies. One, I'd like to apologize to Katz, ChrisNova, Jeff, McNic and really everyone in NFW. I've been slacking on the v. 3.0 stuff, and I know people have been counting on me to contribute. It's not for lack of desire to work on NFW stuff, it's just I've budgeted my time really poorly, and I haven't adapted to the new schedule and degrees of freedom Katz has been affording the handlers since the new format has started. Plus, I've totally welched on the WrestleBowl Night 2 review, and really, that's a huge injustice to everyone who contributed to it, especially the UT finalists.

I'd like to extend apologies to Matt Ward, Fergus and the crew at PRIME. I know I left you guys, especially Fergus, in a lurch when I left. It's funny that I always seem to pump up feds that have timely schedules, yet when it comes to competing in a fed that has the excellent combination of punctuality and quality, I came up far short of what I should have been producing as a roster member. I let people down, and I hate doing that. So I'd like to say I'm sorry for that. You guys are running a fine show, and I'm sure that will continue in the future, with or without me.

Finally, I'd like to apologize to all the feds out there that I seem to have given the short shrift on coverage, mainly feds like FUSE and A1E. Please don't think my lack of coverage for your events is an indicator of how your feds are doing.

And now, to part two of the post.

There has been a lot of bemoaning about the state of the hobby lately. I know I've been guilty of perpetuating that with the blog from time to time, but really, with all the doomsaying and such, I really like where eW is at right now. It may not be the "golden age" but if you only want something in its golden age, you're really not interested in that thing all that much anyway, are you? I really do feel like the people involved right now are really involved, and they're making this thing work with very high levels of quality. The feds that are around are producing great results, be they at the punctual rates of feds like A1E and PRIME, or feds going at their own rates, like EPW and NEW.

You can pretty much go to any active fed that's listed in my sidebar here and find good to great writing. In the end, isn't that all you need to ask of any fed you want to participate in or follow? People are interested, people are gung-ho for the projects they are in. There are folks who are dedicated to the feds they're in. There are folks who are spreading across borders and breaking down barriers, challenging themselves in circles where they're not familiar.

I mean, you have guys like ChrisNova who are generally on fire. Craig Maloof is blazing trails both in his PTC home and in FW. Lindz, what else needs to be said about her that hasn't been already? NFW, NEW and EPW are all hot right now. Josh Ray is back pushing the up-and-coming talent in his MWCW. MBE is gaining momentum. Jarret, Phil, Andy and everyone involved in A1E is putting out quality stuff. NAPW and REBEL are still churning out great shows on their indie schedules. Hell, even folks that I've been at odds with in the past, guys like Arrows and William Morgan, are trying out TEAM along with the standbys that I've been able to count on over the past 18 months.

Sure, the new blood is only trickling in, but I'd take what we have right now over floods of new people who come in and flake. We need to stop worrying about the new blood or where all the angle feds have gone or all the doomsaying and concentrate on the positive. We need to concentrate on taking the trickle of new blood and cultivating them into valuable members of our communities. We need to stay positive and keep writing what we're writing. Otherwise, we perpetuate self-fulfilling prophecies of doom, longing for the days of the fWo and CSWA being titans instead of making our own feds that are active now into the feds that we talk about in years future.

I really do think that eW is flourishing right now. I commend everyone who is making that possible, and I think that if we keep up the way we're going right now, this hobby will always be in good shape, no matter what happens with the sport we emulate in real life.

May's Wrestler of the Month

This month was a really, really hard choice. A lot of deserving folks, and I really couldn't give this one out without giving a lot of pause. Still, this month's winner is very deserving. He knocked off a guy who won two of these awards this year to win the A1E World Championship, a title that Dan Ryan was projected to hold for a good long time. He's also a Tag Team Champion, and he's proving that old dogs can learn new tricks. Just in case you haven't discerned yet, May's Wrestler of the Month is none other than Big Dog. Congrats Phil, you deserved this.

This month, we have three runners-up, if only because I can't just give this to one person from the fed I'm going to honor here. Jacob McKail, John Covel and Clinton Sage share runner-up honors this month for trading the FUSE Universal Championship in a very hot three way feud. Congrats, guys.

Honorable Mentions
Dan Ryan (A1E, NEW, WFW, EUWC, TEAM Events), Ulysis Solian (LoC, TEAM Events), Ravager (NAPW, TEAM Events), Rocko Daymon (A1E, NEW, EUWC), Nova (PRIME, TEAM Events), Jason Snow (PRIME, PTC Events), Killean Sirrajin (PRIME), Beast (A1E, EPW, TEAM Events), Harley Douglas (TEAM Events), Jason Payne (NEW, TEAM Events)

Previous Wrestlers of the Month
January: Dan Ryan (A1E, NFW)
February: CLinton Sage (FUSE, PTC Events)
March: Nova (NFW, PRIME)
April: Dan Ryan (2) (A1E, NEW)

Paranoia runs deep

Yeah, I haven't been too active in the last couple of weeks, but that's because I've been a mite busy lately. That also means that I'm probably not going to catch up back fed happenings enough to actually sit down and write reviews for shows, even if they're quickie reviews. It just wouldn't be timely for me to write a Cold Snap or Revolution or even a Culture Shock review in the middle to end of April. I still plan on reading everything, but just to make things clear, so that when you don't see your fed's show reviewed here, don't take it personally.

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, ze post!

By our own admissions, most of our main characters are extensions of ourselves. So many times I've heard in IMs or seen in profiles that so-and-so is an extension of the handler or is that handler's real-life personality "turned up to eleven." (Just one of Spinal Tap's many gifts to our fair society!) Because of that, it can sometimes be very, very hard to keep our OOC feelings from spilling over into promos. As natural as that is for characters who are extensions of ourselves, we should also keep in mind that there is a fine line between spillage and shootage. We don't want to get too chippy, or else things aren't fun anymore.

However, there are people out there who feel that the line isn't as fine as it really is. As much as you can have people who freely cross the line and shoot on folks as part of their promo style (put the gun down, Gerlach, I'm not ripping you :p), the opposite perspective is true, i.e., there are those out there who think that the slightest comment that could be taken as a shoot is a shoot. I'm talking about the paranoid, the hypersensitive, those who could literally take the teenage-FW "i r better than u lol" style in today's game and think that the kid is shooting on them.

Let's take the most recent example of this, which is in truth the impetus for this entry. On the latest FUSE card, Ryan and Craig thought it would be a larf to promote their PTC Global/Extreme Title Unification Match. In doing so, Craig's character Dusk, a member of PRIME, came onto the show and cut an in-ring promo. In that promo, he put down several members of FUSE, including the World Champion. To many people, to most sane people, this would be a non-issue. However, there was a vocal contingient on the FUSE roster who screamed bloody murder at the fact an outsider came onto the show and buried their Universal Champion. They complained that it made their fed look bushleague and said that things like this wouldn't happen between the WWE and TNA. Let me take this apart one by one.

First off, the whole basis of at least 75% of wrestling promos is to badmouth someone. A past opponent, present opponent, future opponent, someone who isn't you, I mean, watch any wrestling program in the last 20 years and you will see big, sweaty guys talking smack about people they're not supposed to like in character. It's a huge part of the game. So what if Dusk came in and ran down John Covel? He's a member of another promotion, trying to build heat for an upcoming match with a member of that promotion. What do you expect him to do, come in and give Covel an verbal blowjob, just so people's feelings won't get hurt? Christ, where have these people been for the last forever? Since when has a wrestling promo been the measure for OOC or off-camera respect? When Shawn Michaels feuded with Diesel and Razor Ramon, I can bet you any amount of money that at the end of the day, Michael Hickenbottom was going to be hanging out, probably throwing back brews or just relaxing with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, no matter what kind of words were being thrown around on-camera, and do you know why? Because they understood that everything on-camera was SCRIPTED!

Diverging off-track for a moment here, it's interesting to note that this happened on the PTC side of things, where some people admittedly don't RP about wrestling related things. I've never read a FUSE RP, and to be fair, I really don't read RPs in general, not for PRIME, the PTC interfed, even in FW feds most of the time unless it's TEAM. I can't tell you from firsthand experience whether this is true for FUSE or not, but the fact that people have admitted that they don't RP about wrestling and the fact that people who do read RPs complain about this points to a problem that could have lead to this blowup. People may have become so out of touch with how wrestling works (since there are many in this hobby who don't watch the real thing anymore... I was one of those people until WrestleMania and Raw the night after sucked me back in) that they don't know what a wrestling promo is anymore. They're more concerned with getting their writing out for feedback that anything negative is construed as an attack, even if the giver of that negativity clearly doesn't mean in out-of-character. (And isn't it funny that one guy who is the most blatant about not including wrestling in his RPs has the best grasp of this idea?)

Back on track now, for whatever reason, people couldn't grasp that. Their reasoning was "hey, it never happens in real life!" Well, it actually does. ROH, indie feds and puro feds often have talent going back and forth among each other. Of course, those are on a level here below consciousness (i.e., the national major promotions), so I have to agree, it doesn't happen up there. But let me ask you this question... where at in America can you find a construct such as PTC? Major, national promotions in cooperation with each other... that's unheard of, it's something we have unique to us, so who's to say we have to apply artificial rules that correspond to the real world for us? The facts are these; FUSE and PRIME are in a loose relationship where there are Championships and tournaments involved. To me, they'd be silly not to cooperate if it meant that both companies could benefit from this. I believe they'd benefit from it financially if they were both real companies, and there's no question that they're benefitting now. I mean, when you get activity like this, you get people who wouldn't normally read FUSE checking in to find out the latest dealings with the interfed or checking on one of their own from PRIME. Then you may have someone who reads the whole show and likes it. Then, people who were for, against or even unaware that something like that was going down benefitting from it because more people are paying attention to their writing. How is that a bad situation?

The answer is that it's only as bad as people let themselves make it out to be. This whole ordeal could have been avoided had the people crying about everything took a few steps back and realized that everything was in character. No one was shooting, and Criag has said on many occasions after that he's had nothing but respect for FUSE. Still, people want to be up in arms about it. Well, it's their loss for taking everything so damn seriously. If you keep a light air about you and you keep everything in perspective, then you'll do fine in this game. However, the moment you start thinking that everyone's out to get you, even if they're just playing the game themselves, you're going to cause a lot of problems for you and for everyone else.

February's Wrestler of the Month!

This month's recipient is a first-timer, and he's also the first representative from his fed to win the award in fourteen tries. He won the PTC Global Championship in a match featuring two former GTT winners and the current Champion and made it look damn easy. He was victorious in a blood-feud match at his fed's most recent PPV, avenging the man who took him out in GTT6. He's also been bugging me to give him this award for the last two months now :p The difference now? He actually deserves it this time around.

I'm talking about FUSE's own Clinton Sage!

Runner-up: This month's runner-up award goes to Ravager of NAPW. He won the NAPW World Championship at their PPV event Cold Snap, won his first round TEAM Invntational Tournament match, plus his match against Ulysis Solian at SSII and placed second in the inaugural FREE FOR ALL~! Championship match. Let's give him a round of applause too.

Honorable Mentions: Rob Franklin (UCW, MCW, TEAM Events), Sun Tzu (PRIME), Lindsay Troy (EPW, PRIME), Ice Tre (!) (EPW), IrishRed (A1E, UCW, EPW), Beast (A1E, EPW, UCW), Nova (PRIME), Angelo Deville (PRIME, PTC Events), Dusk (PRIME, PTC Events), John Covel (FUSE), The Canadian Loonie (TEAM Events)

Previous 2007 Wrestlers of the Month
January: "The Ego Buster" Dan Ryan (A1E, NFW)

A Mish-Mash of Hodge-Podge

- It doesn't seem like a lot's happened since the last PPV, but EPW's WrestleVerse II is upon us. Despite the sort of minimalist feeling surrounding the PPV, there's a lot going down, specifically with the two main events. Firstly, we've got the ladder match between Lindsay Troy and Troy Windham(-Troy :p) to settle their feud once and for all, and a match between IrishRed and Dan Ryan with six months ownership of EPW on the line. Both come off the heels of hot angles, and I'm sure that EPW will do them justice. If the Home Fed on FWC has one strength above all else, it's execution of its angles from start to blowoff, and that usually means they nail the matches as well.

Some of the undercard may seem like it's a little thrown together (although the Tag Title match, Scott/Dahaka, Foxx/Ninja K and XXX/Bloodhunt have build behind them), but that doesn't mean the matches won't deliver. This card is stacked, and I feel it could be a late contender for show of the year this year, or early one for next year.

- In the wake of AWC's closing, much of the roster has dispersed amongst the feds of PTC. The two feds that have reaped the best windfall from the shutdown are PRIME and FUSE. FUSE was the first to debut a former Clubber when Mike Wade showed up on their most recent edition of KillZone. Wadey should be a fantastic addition to the roster, although it might have been nice to see him reunite with his former tag partner the Illustrious Face-Eater in PRIME. Still, PRIME can't snap up all the talent, and FUSE is a more than worthy home for Wade. Also going to FUSE are Andy Murray, Aimz and the last Transatlantic Champion ever, Darcy Crisis.

Of course, if you add all those names to the recent signings of Clinton Sage, Steve Watson, Johnny Lexicon (who made the jump before AWC closed) and some of these new guys who aren't "names," FUSE, with its already strong roster before the signings, suddenly becomes a major contender to PRIME.

And speaking of PRIME, going to PTC's Big Fish will be Jack Murphy, Garbage Bag Johnny, Pierce Lavelle, Chainz and of course, little old me with Captain Suleimon. PRIME's roster has also ballooned to about 35-40 right now. Usually, I'm a bit leery of feds with huge rosters, but I feel that the way Pete's running the ship right now, it's doable. It might be a bit unweildly, but it's definitely doable. Plus, you have to figure some people on the roster right now aren't going to stick around forever. It's eW folks; there's always going to be an equilibrium reached sooner or later.

- Finally, a little self-promotion. The 2nd Annual TEAM Invitational Tournament will be starting up sometime in January. I'm accepting entries into it as soon as right now. You can sign up here or on the FW Central forums in the TEAM forums. I'll create one specifically for signup later, but for now, check out this thread.

Shelf Life, e-fed vs. real wrestling, plus shows, shows and more shows

Before I get to the meat of my blog today, some pimpage.

First in the queue, FUSE's latest show, KillZone 3 is up for your perusal. FUSE has become a fed to watch over at PTC. Jason's got a good thing going here, and hopefully, with the influx of some new guys, they'll climb up and join AWC and PRIME as the cream of the PTC crop.

Speaking of AWC... Divide and Conquer! Once again, AWC turns in a fine PPV effort, punctuated by a brief Unfuckable reunion, new Alliance and Frontier Champions, some big returns and a nice set of backstage brawling segments featuring Chainz and Aimz. Congrats to Mike Wade for making the AWC Legends Roll and farewell for now... please come back soon!

NEW finally came out with their anniversary RAUCOUS. A very solid show, and hopefully it marks a return to regularity for NEW, a fed that when it's running on all cylinders is one of the best around.

And now, the entry for today.

I was talking to Joe Schmidt (handler of Adam Dick) the other day and he told me he was leaving AWC. I was pretty taken aback by it, especially since AWC was losing Wade too. I asked him why, and he said he had done everything there was to do in AWC. That's a good enough reason to leave, I suppose.

But if you look at real wrestlers, guys like Hulk Hogan or Shawn Michaels or Steve Austin, they achieved it all in the real business, but they kept sticking around. In fact, it's the nature of professional wrestlers to keep holding onto their limelight, taking jobs in indie feds just so they can keep wrestling, hoping that people will plunk down money to see them.

In e-fedding, there are a lot of things we take from the real thing, but for the most part, this desperation to hold onto our spots isn't one of them. There have been several people who've walked away or tried to walk away, from just one fed or from the hobby itself. Some were successful, others weren't. However, unless you're The Rock or Brock Lesnar, it's almost unheard of in the real thing.

Why is that? Well, the obvious reason is they get paid, we often juggled this with doing things for which we get paid. Easy enough.

But there's still exploration into why some people can put such short shelf-lives on their characters. Why isn't there a desire to become multiple time Champions? Why don't people try to "do it all" again, using a different route? Perhaps there's life in AWC for Dick as a face, who knows.

Honestly, I think that people have an easier time walking away because most of us aren't ego-driven to the point of needing to prove things over and over again. Once again, we don't get paid for it. We're not slaves to ratings. Theoretically, we do this for fun. So proving that we can do things once is enough, at least with one character.

I think another huge reason is the timetables at which things happen. Normally, wrestler X enters the business and his first World Championship doesn't come for years after the fact. In e-feds, that timetable is shrunk considerably. If it took five years for people to become World Championship contenders in e-feds, then there probably wouldn't be as extensive an e-fed network as there is.

The point is, though, that people walk away. Do I think that guys may come back later in different feds or with different characters? Sure, it happens all the time.

However, one way that our world will never relate to the real wrestling world is that our characters do not have nearly the shelf-life as the real guys do for the most part.

There are exceptions to this though. A1E is the most like a real life fed in this regard. Beast, Big Dog, Fly and even to an extent my own JA have been around forever, through World Titles and without them.