Ace309

Wrong. You'd have to fight me in my comeback match. If I won, I would desecrate the belt the way I did the Cruiserweight one.

It happens. Landon will just have to learn to enjoy the paddlings.

YAY

The individual competition was considered, but the RPW guys decided that having regional teams would make the promotion more popular. Of course, making sure that the guys on the team had anything to do with the region would have been a good idea - there's no excuse for Lowney, for example, not to be on the Minnesota team. They also specifically want to avoid storylines. They feel it mucks up the focus on the wrestling. Good or bad, I don't really have an opinion except to say that arrogant wrestler storylines don't work without either having a guy who's proven himself already or worked matches. Taking a guy like Lowney, who's been on the world team several times, you could get an arrogant wrestler storyline, but a lot of the top guys tend to be strongly religious types for whatever reason and so that doesn't work out well. They don't want to be characters, which will hurt their marketability. I'm in total agreement about using more MMA-styled attire.

Fool. Hunter S. Thompson died for your sins.

Last year on my birthday, I took a day off from my summer internship so I could sleep in late, then loafed and went to one of the local old man bars with a couple of friends. Between the internship and getting ready to move across the state, I was pretty exhausted.

Okay, I'll cop to it. For a very long time, when I was much younger but still far too old for it to be acceptable, I believed that wrestling was entirely real. It was more fun that way, and while people told me it was fake, I wanted it to be real because it was much cooler that way. Even after I finally talked myself into accepting it when I was around 9, I bought the occasional locker room story from the Apter Mags... for example, when the Olympics started allowing professionals, they talked hypothetically about Bret Hart entering for Canada and I was just thrilled at how cool that would be. I also collected autographs and would write asking for signed photos all the time when I was 10 or 11, but only WCW guys ever responded. The notable exception was a handwritten letter, ostensibly from Gorilla Monsoon (the interim president at the time), apologizing for his wrestlers not answering me. It might still be in one of my boxes of stuff in my parents' attic. It was sloppily written in blue marker, which in retrospect was a fabulous way of selling it as being from Monsoon.

There's absolutely no requirement that it be cretin-writing... I mean, scriptstyle. I think they've accepted storystylers already.

If you get rejected, Toxxic, you've got feedback to work with and resubmit. He clearly likes your writing per se, which is a plus. If you keep the standard but write something more tailored to the audience, you've got a good chance.

I feel your pain. I had bad apnea as a child - contributed to my tonsillectomy, and shockingly, I stopped having dreams about being held underwater. An uncle and one of my neighbors both have CPAP machines, and they've had great success with them. Best of luck.

Mike's having a series of offbeat shows featuring "House Rules" matches. I think they're fun.

KORGATH IS IN! For those of you who don't know, Dominic Korgath wrote for us for a while and was unfortunately unable to keep up with our schedule despite being a very talented writer. He recently made a brief comeback and tagged with Max King. I'm really pleased to see this. Korgath, if you're reading, congratulations!

So go in as Justice William Hearford III.

Yeah. I'll even assist in helping you write like you aren't a cretin.

Support. Everyone knows that the one thing that irritates me is when I get a card booked without any input and then people complain. As such, I've overreacted recently to card thread things that weren't directed at me, and I'm sorry about that... but I want you guys to be happy with your bookings. I try to match people evenly and give them storyline hooks, but if you have your heart set on something in particular, please ask for it. I can't promise you'll always get it - for example, I couldn't give Martial Law a tag shot at W&D on the last show before the PPV, because that would have screwed everything all to hell on the big show. I will, however, do my best to get it on the card. (And really, guys, I'm not trying to be a hardass here. I do want you to enjoy your time here. If there's anything I'm not doing, please bring it to my attention.)

Johnny: Not that I want to turn this thread into the OAO XNet Icon thread (and if anyone has other questions, it might be best to start one in CommGen), but I'm of the opinion that only cretins write scriptstyle. (Note: Does not apply to any cretins posting here. Your cretinous writing will be evaluated as though it is not, in fact, cretinous.) There are a few directions you could take with the character. If you'd like to discuss them with me, please feel free to IM or PM me and we can chat on it. That goes for anyone else, by the way, and I'd be happy to proof RPs for anyone who's planning to enter. I'd really like to see you guys take this.

The American folkstyle is the style that they wrestle in high school and college. It's characterized by a focus on controlling the opponent on the mat, with the bottom man having to work for an escape (whereas in freestyle and Greco, the bottom man's job is not to get turned - he can reverse, and until recently could escape, if he wants, but he won't get penalized for not attempting to like he would in folkstyle). The scoring is totally different - back points are awarded differently, stalling is penalized differently, etc. The 'bonus' is a rule that RPW added. It's a penalty for one wrestler wrestling passively, where the aggressive wrestler gets an advantageous position and a 20-second period where only he can score. If the passive wrestler hits a move that would score, the 'bonus' period ends. It's a stupid rule. Passivity is, of course, the rule pertaining to wrestling without attempting to score. Traditionally, it's a judgment made by the officials, and of course there's a lot of grousing about it. RPW is adding an "action meter judge" who will man an allegedly objective "action meter" that measures... yup, how passively each guy is wrestling. They're crowing about how it's taking passivity out of the referees' hands, when it's leaving it right there but adding a set of knobs in between.

I'm really hoping this succeeds, but some of the developmental rules (I've sort of watched it as it developed on the forums at TheMat.com) are sort of tailored to people who understand amateur wrestling already - not the audience they need to be attracting. The 'bonus' and attempt at making passivity objective are ridiculous. They also really don't want to say that everything defaults to 'normal' freestyle and Greco rules, thanks to the shakeup that's thrown them more towards judo - RPW is sticking with last year's rules, which is going to make an even bigger problem. Their idea was to make freestyle and Greco, rather than American folkstyle (which is wrestled in high school and college varsity competition), palatable and familiar to the masses. Now, instead of having a nice bridge point, they've basically created an entirely new style. Blah. I'm ALL for amateur wrestling getting popular. This isn't going to do it.

Judge... 21... oh, shit, this isn't going to be good.

Whew, good thing I didn't pencil Jay Dawg in for one night only. Looks like he's in bad shape.

The doctor's so chatty, it's hilarious.

And damn you for beating me to it

Yeah, I skimmed the DCW show that beat us out in the *-** rankings and was quite disappointed. Unfortunately, I think a big part of what goes into the rankings may be hampered by the length of our matches. Such is life, guys. We know what goes into them.

In that case, my apologies for reacting harshly.

You know what would help? IF YOU'D TOLD ME ABOUT IT.