e-wrestling?

[Lagoth]

Does anyone remember e-wrestling? E-mail based fantasy wrestling leagues? My questions aren't sarcastic. I just don't see it any more. Back in the 90s, during e-wrestling's glory years, there were more e-feds than grains of sand on the beach... and that's not exaggerating much. About 5 years ago I quit it because I was really burned out of it. Turns out I wasn't the only one.

Now, in August 2006, I get this wild notion and try to do a search of the internet for it. I find one e-fed's website and I'm not sure it's even still operating. I feel like a prodigal son who finally returned to find everything gone.

Before, you could simply do a search on Yahoo or some search engine for 'e-wrestling'... or even a e-w character's name and you'd find something. Umbrella or 'union' leagues flourished. Now.... nothing? The old 'what is e-wrestling' web page (you know the one with Ric Flair's pic) is only maintained for sentimental value?!

All the great e-feds I was in... I mean I "e-wrestled" in feds from Canada, Europe and North America.... All the people I knew. Maybe e-wrestling tended to be riddled with politics, but it certainly had it's high points. I sure had some good times and met some fun folks. Now, it's either gone or so far underground it might as well be. Or is it?

Someone give me a shoulder to cry on . Okay, maybe just tell me what happened?

[Chris Ingersoll]

There are still feds out there if you know where to look. That site is home to most of the old RSPWF feds, and there are others lurking about as well.

[Lagoth]

Thanks. Ever since I posted this, I've looked around. While it's nowhere near the phenomenon it used to be, there's still some things out there.

What got me, though, was that even when I looked around I didn't find anything from anyone I used to know. Even a search on rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy from Google didn't turn up anything recent, just old stuff. Best I could tell, it looked like half the e-w population just quit in a span of a year or two. I used to know guys who were in 20+ or 30+ feds. I even knew someone who said he was once in 100 feds all at once and with the same character! Don't scoff. Back then, it was easily believable. You certainly won't see things like that anymore. Not unless there's more 'hidden' e-feds than I'm guessing.

I've found a few feds. Nobody seems interested in advertising their fed except in certain places. Gives everything a 'gone underground' feel. Wish I knew where my old pal Spence was. He'd love to hear the 'underground' part, heh.

[hawk]

Kinda funny that E-wrestling comes up...I used to be heavily into e-feds with my guy James Goodwin, but I haven't done a real e-fed in over a year.

Nowadays, I run an e-fed in the loose verison of the style. I run PROMO * JAPAN, a promo-style based fed in Japan. Promo style is an RP style originated in Burning Spirit Pro-Wrestling several years ago, and emulates the media style of real promotions.

www.jimsardonic.com/projpn/index.htm

We've lost the ability to update the site, but everything's run off the boards. The style's pretty kickass in that it doesn't take a whole lot of time at all to do, provided you get what you're doing, or have some idea.

Thanks for that link Chris, I'm seeing a few names I haven't seen in years on the board, such as Bram Black...Perhaps some shilling might get us some new members with previous knowlege of the style. Mucho gracias.

[Chris Ingersoll]

lagoth said:

Even a search on rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy from Google didn't turn up anything recent, just old stuff. Best I could tell, it looked like half the e-w population just quit in a span of a year or two.

Actually, I think all the RSPWF guys moved to that forum I linked, where spammers are easier to deal with and things are more organized.

[Knapik]

I miss it too...

[Mad Dog]

I ran one from 99-01. It was mostly studio style squash matches though. You typically had one big match a month that you cut promos for and such. I liked this approach because it didn't burn the guys out and such.

In my fed it was well known that when you joined you wouldn't have much your first month storyline wise. You were just there to build up wins over jobbers and then the next month you typically faced off with me as I was the Tito Santana of my fed. I prefered this approach because it let the newcomer get a feel for things, get some wins and then got tested in a winnable feud.

The following events lead to me fed folding and me eventually retiring.

So in the fall of 2000 I got a storyline idea. I would introduce this stable of smarks as a group. So I carefully scouted out some guys who were pretty good, told them the idea and they all agreed. So things were set to go but then one of them decided he didn't want to be in the stable. Now he was pretty much a rookie at the time and so this is where it all went downhill. So I told him ok but that he was losing out on storyline ideas.

So he debuts and I think he just won his second match when he throws out a challenge to the United States Champion. Now the current champ had just won the belt and I had spent the better part of the last six months building to him as champion. I even had like a 5 month run with the belt for the express purpose of putting this guy over huge. So I tell that to this guy and tell him flat out that he doesn't have a chance of winning. So he jobs like I told him he would and he IMs me that night chewing me out about losing. I tell him again that I wasn't going to hotshot the title like that after all the build up and that this guy was getting at least 3-4 months with the belt. So he gets on the boards and challenges the guy to some huge gimmick match that night and off we go to the rematch where he loses again. The same deal.

So this is the theme with this guy. Everytime he loses he'd IM complaining. Then in December I was out of school for Christmas break and working full time. So while in school I'd either do the show right before class at like 10 in the morning or after class on my light days at like 3. When I was working I was getting home at about 6 and had been working 8 hours and just had a 30 minute drive home. The last thing I wanted to deal with was writing a show until after I had dinner. This guy was still in high school and had no concept of a 40 hour work week. So every night I'd log on and sometimes my list wouldn't even be loaded and he'd be IMing me asking where the show was.

So the stable he was supposed to be apart of won the Six Man Tag Titles and one won the Lightweight belt and this started another round of complaining from him. Again I pointed out that had he been apart of the stable he'd probably have a belt and be involved in the storyline. So this lead to a lot of complaining which lead me to him getting jobbed in a match he was supposed to win. At this point I had had enough. I don't even remember why the guy left. I either kicked him out of the promotion or I just stopped having him win matches.

I know this is getting really wordy but please bare with me as I continue on with the other reason why I got burned out.

So around the same time all of this was going on I was in another fed that my cousin was in. I was in this kind of Four Horsemanish group and I convinced the other guys to invade my fed.

This was huge for my fed as all of the main eventers immediately formed a group and went right after the invaders. There were some great promos going on and people were really enjoying themselves. And then the owner of the other fed got burned out and closed his fed down. I made the decision to let all of the guys from that fed join mine. So just imagine having 20 guys with most of them being main event calibur joining at the same time.

I had to add a third weekly show just to get people time. I think the PPVs were up to something like 12-15 matches a show just to give everyone a spot. I was just totally burned out and shortly after I just closed it all down.

I made a few comebacks usually to kick start a stagnant fed and I even had a booking stint with another fed but I never hung around for more than a few months at a time. My last stint was with a fed that went on hiatus when 9-11 happened and I was busy with school when it came back so that was the end of my e-fed days.

[Knapik]

aw Mad Dog

I'll be part of an invasion angle with you any time! haha

[Mad Dog]

I blame it on the whiner more than anything else. He was just a constant headache.

[Knapik]

Yeah that's lame. People don't seem to understand they should enjoy the journey and a great angle playing out... winning is fun, but it's far from being more important than having a good time.

[Lagoth]

Mad Dog, I'll say this... looking at Chris' link and your story reminds me of the main reason I got burned out on e-wrestling. The politics and the flame wars. However, I always thought the #1 burn-out reason was the match writing.

How can you have _any_ kind of real life, spend almost all your free time writing those loooong matches that you wonder if anyone's going to really read, or maybe just scan through? Then come the complaints.

Even today, I still chalk up my favorite e-fed as one where every match, except the main event, was a paragraph long and that was it. That may not sound impressive. But, it worked very well. Unbelievably well, in fact. It was called NEW-A and was run by a chap I've lost track of named Ray Poirier. It was supposed to be a regional, house show based fed. But, a lot of people joined and it soon had as much or more ewrestlers in it than any 'big three' styled e-fed.

[Mad Dog]

Yeah, that's how I did mine. The PPV had long matches and then otherwise you were doing studio squash matches that were a couple of sentences long and you really only had to write promos for your big PPV match.

[Knapik]

I love the style of doing paragraphs for the matches for everything but the PPV. I also love everything (promos, rps) to be on the card itself. Makes for less work all around. Some people may not have matches, but they'll have an angle develop on the card

[Mad Dog]

I do get the itch from time to time. This thread has actually caused one. But I'm so far out of the loop as far as e-feds that I wouldn't know where to start. Plus I've always been more of a booker and wouldn't know where to start getting new guys.

[cakejedi]

I totally missed out on the whole e-wrestling thing. This is the first I have heard of it. But after reading a very good description on Wikipedia, it does sound like something I would have tried had I know about it.

[Mad Dog]

I also forgot to mention that Biker Undertaker messed up my main character in 2000. I had to completely revamp the character as the Undertaker was a carbon copy of what I was doing at the time. Quite annoying.

WCW also stole the Jung Dragons from me as I had a jobber tag team with that name.

[Chris Ingersoll]

maddog1981 said:

I do get the itch from time to time. This thread has actually caused one. But I'm so far out of the loop as far as e-feds that I wouldn't know where to start. Plus I've always been more of a booker and wouldn't know where to start getting new guys.

In contrast, e-w's losing it's shine for me and I'm weaning myself off it.

With the time that freed up, I might be able to start a CotG fed again.

[Chewey]

ah, e-wrestling. Back when I first discovered the internet, it was fun to use an imaginary character to trash-talk other imaginary characters, and then get all riled up with OOC posts whenever you jobbed to a guy who you thought you should have beaten...

The problem was, people kept trying to out do each other. One paragraph flashes became full pages, along with color tags, graphics, and even mp3s and video frames. And they often spanned three to four pages as well. These weren't exactly three to four pages of well written material most of the time either, as e-wrestling also appeals to the lesser-educated masses as well, who think they can roleplay better than you just by writing a longer roleplay...

Yeah, e-wrestling sort of lost its charm with me. It did lead to a ton of great characters though, many of which I've turned into COTG bootlegs...

[Chris Ingersoll]

aaron168 said:

It did lead to a ton of great characters though, many of which I've turned into COTG bootlegs...

Heh. Ask Frank2 about Sabbat Justice sometime. All of those characters were born in e-w.

[canadianpittbull]

Yes I ran a e-fed back in the 90's -00 and it was going well, I ran it based on WWF/WCW at the time and players played actual wrestlers having to give great promos and posts to determine if they would win their matches. It was tough I will tell ya! Playing and running the site especially when you were running a couple shows a week and then a big PPV event at the end. But I had a lot of folks playing and some of the best storylines and great moments of dialogue came from that.

But now that I have LOW there is no need to return to it. Plus I don't think I would have the patience to do all the website work again!