How I Found FW (Or how I pissed my way in)

I posted this in a recent NFW thread, but felt it might be more appropriate for this blog. Basically, this is the hilarious (I hope) story of how I discovered the wonderful, inspiring, cock-block of a hobby we call fantasy wrestling. By the way, I googled "fantasy wrestling" yesterday for the hell of it, and all I got back were homosexual jackoff websites featuring male's grappling in their underwear. Shit, guess we better euphemize the term "fantasy wrestling," or else the next time I actually admit to someone I do this as a hobby they might think I'm some sort of sex freak. I'm pretty sure that was not what Chad and Steve were snail mailing each other back in the '80's. Like I said, I'm pretty sure.

Ok, enough bullshitting around. Without further ado, the magically epic story of how I stumbled into this make believe sport.

Prodigy? What the fuck is Prodigy?
Like most everyone on the forums, I was a HUGE pro wrestling fan in the '90's. Starting from around 1995, I'd say that pro wrestling was one of the first entertainment/sports industries to really take full advantage of the internet's rising popularity. There were so many websites and forums that fully exposed the industry from the inside, letting us in on all the real life locker room drama, spoiling angles a full three months before they finished, etc. I would say that the Prodigy internet service was the main hub for this sort of thing, or at least where the "smartest of the smart fans" dwelled, whatever that means. Prodigy was also the ghetto version of AOL, but it definitely had it's charms. My family was too cheap to buy AOL so around 1995-1996 we signed up for Prodigy. Instead of getting a cool username like StoneColdSteveAustinRullzzzFagggzzz or BretHart4LifeNWO696969 or STFUSuckitBitchTit69ers, like AOL would let you have, Prodigy assigned you some stupid ass gibberish username (mine was LQJT86C, which I also use as my current forum username). I would spend hours in the Prodigy wrestling chats, completely ruining the aura of the industry for myself along with everyone else.

Hey Assfags, Let ME Play!
In July of 1997 (two months prior to my 14th birthday), I saw a user created private chatroom named "RWL PPV" (fairly certain it had an event name). It was also password protected. After minutes of bugging the crap out of people in the general wrestling chat, somebody finally gave me the password. Once I accessed the room, it was apparent that two guys were typing out the transcript of a wrestling event. Every now and again, some other dude would do a mic spot. RWL was the Real Wrestling League, and they ran LIVE chatroom cards. Instead of developing an original character, you had to pick an actual wrestler, like Bret Hart or Yokozuna, and RP them. The results, including angles, mic spots, etc. would be done in a live chat with everybody present. Imagine NFW or CSWA trying some shit like that? This was my first ever experience with fantasy wrestling, and I had no clue how it worked. I thought it was all spontaneous, and that if you wanted to get noticed you had to show them what you were made of! So I interrupted the chat with my Bret Hart roleplays, challenging other dudes while the owner was seriously trying to finish this card. Right away, the entire chat erupts, people start yelling at me to get the F out, stop ruining their event, etc. I guess this sort of stunt was completely taboo. I had Bret Hart call them all fags right before somebody banned me from the room. So yeah, my first night attempting to play the game of FW and I was banned.

Kiss My Ass, I'm Starting My Own Shit!
THAT NIGHT I started my own fed. That's right, before I ever really RPed, I started a league, like a total freaking dumbass. I even IMed the guys from that RWL chat and told them "F your league, join my league, it's gonna be better!" So I started the NTWA (National Talented Wrestling Association). I went around for the next month recruiting eeeeverybody from the chats. Unfortunately, only the worst of the worst joined my league. It was awesome though, cause we had some hilariously stupid characters join! We were a chatroom league too, and ran live cards. I had no clue the P* bulleting boards existed at this point. For a good two months, NTWA was this band of complete and utter FW rejects who RPed live in chatrooms while I typed up the action. The fed actually had two legit members: Rob Leland and Jen Byron (who turned out to really be a dude named Ross). Rob RPed Great White Void in NTWA, but was known on the P* BB's for RPing Wink Manson/Martendale (he changed the last name to avoid conflict with Michael Manson). JenRoss RPed Se7en, who was pretty f'ing over in a few good leagues too. Anyway, Rob introduced me to the P* BB's and showed me how to actually run a league for real. I was a pretty quick study when it came to creative writing, plus I loved wrestling, so the whole FW thing came to me naturally.

Months after joining the boards, we started recruiting much better talent, and even helped develop some pretty good RPers at the time. I literally IMed everybody from the boards with even an ounce of talent bugging the sh*t out of them to join NTWA. I wanted to have all the best RPers, so I would IM guys like Jamar, Schmid, Stanton, Katz, Gethard, Whitefield, incessantly asking them to join my crap-ass league! Bastards, none of them joined (well, right before we closed Gregg and I think Katz joined; NTWA I think was the first league Gregg ever wrote an RP for August De La Rossi in). We eventually had a good roster: Void, Se7en, Ares, Jared Wells, JT Tyler, Sean Edmunds, Jean Rabesque, Madonna Wayne Grossard, Hellion, Maelstrom, and some others I'm forgetting. One big problem: I had to disband the league a couple times, because my mom would ban me from the computer for DLing porno! Absolutely true story. That's the problem when you're 15, sharing a comp with your family, and trying to run an FW league/whack off at the same time!

Finding My Way By Losing My Mind
As an RPer I eventually found my niche in UWA with Problem Child, who Jamar and Gregg helped me to develop and get over. Those two and Rob Leland are really the guys who I can credit with helping to shape me as an RPer early on (Katz later helped me out when the NFW era started).

Fun fact about Problem Child: almost every opponent he's ever faced has accused him of ripping off his gimmick from the 1990's John Ritter movie, and they are absolutely correct! Ernie Garrett needed a lackey for Alex Wylde in the ACW, and at the time of our IM convo about it the movie 'Problem Child' was on USA network. I said, "OK, we'll call him Problem Child, he'll be a scumbag from NYC who likes to pull stupid pranks like setting bags of dog shit on fire and being an all around degenerate, and I'll RP him." The RPs weren't even serious, it was just me goofing off. Later on Jamar e-mailed me saying he liked it, and wanted me to bring the character to UWA. Figures: of all the failed gimmicks I've come up with, it's always the completely stupid zany ones that took me five seconds to create that wind up getting over. Also see: Castor Strife, the bisexual porno director, and J1D who could pass for Jeff Spicolli from Fast Times' twin brother.

In fact, when I sent J1D's bio to Stanton, I half expected him to laugh and say "Uhhh, no, come back to me when you have something that's not 120% asinine." But in retrospect, he probably said, "You know, at least his bio doesn't claim the murders of innocent civilians. This guy can STAY!" Layne Winters has got to be my only serious character, so Brunk, no pressure or anything, but I'd like to be Godbooked over everybody at some point. Just promise me, Dave, that you won't say to me "Ya know, I'm not really feeling the whole Layne Winters thing, but EPW would love to have Terence!" Terence is exclusive to TWW, where he fully intends on lording over the entire league with a World Title reign of Castle Greyskull proportions.

Couple of my favorite moments from RPing in my early days:

-Getting to do Frat 2.0 with Troy Windham and Alex Wylde with PC. That was some golden material right there!

-RPing against some unbelievable writers. The best match I ever had in terms of a one on one RP "war" against anyone was in the old WWWA against Jon Katz. I don't know if he remembers, but it was his character "Amorican" Marc Robinson (Black Crowes anyone? ) facing my first original character, an ATROCIOUS gimmick named "Trickmaster" Randy Rebelso, who I later reformed into Castor Strife. We were literally going back and forth with RPs everyday for over a week. He kicked my ass, but I learned so much from the experience that I think I came away a much better writer. That was when I realized that no matter how cool you think your character or gimmick is, you still have to RP like a motherfucker and get some quality work in. It was cool of him to go note for note against me like that, because realistically he could have called it quits after two replies and still have won; dude, my guy sucked! So there you have it, that's how my FW experience began. One night in a chatroom gone terribly wrong, and 12 years later I'm 25 and still doing this shit!
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That's it for today, but check out tomorrow's update. I'll go into what happens when you admit your FW addiction to women, how to explain it, how I did it, and how one of my FW friends had me tell his girlfriend for him!