The SWF Character Discussion... discussion. Thing.

[Ace309 0]

...Also, the few promos that I wrote for Tom and Thugg because both of them were busy and couldn't get it done. I honestly loved writing that sort of gang-warfare jazz between the Mag 7, the Carnies, CC, and Thugg.

Was this common knowledge, by the way? That Judge wrote 2-3 promos for me?

[Kaertos 0]

Answers for "Grand Slam" Mark Stevens

 

Why did you choose that name for your character?

 

Pretty easy actually. I created the character for the very first Smackdown game. I wanted his last name to be Marks just because... well, I thought it would be funny. You know... he marks out... right. Anyways, I came up with the first name Stephan, but Stephan Marks sounded very made up, so a fast switch made it Mark Stevens. The "Grand Slam" came because I always liked it when wrestler's names had something in quotes either at the beginning or in the middle. And "Grand Slam" Mark Stevens sounded better than Mark "Grand Slam" Stevens. So there you go.

 

Why do they look the way they do?

 

Not that hard to figure out really. Red hair, big guy, first name Mark, played baseball... basically, I thought Mark McGwire had a great look to be a pro wrestler. I just put him in pretty generic wrestling gear.

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

 

You might find this hard to believe, but Grand Slam was, as written for the JL, a Triple H style badass tech wrestling heel. And I enjoyed writing it. But after he joined the original (and still best version of) Anarchy, I had a hard time writing him as a badass heel while hanging around with far more badass-type hardcore whack-jobs like Bo and Suicide. So I started using him as the voice of reason in the mostly psychotic Anarchy, which I used to just barely start turning him face.

 

Then he gets bumped to the WF and I figure out real fast that Anarchy won't last too much longer, I decide that the best way to distance Mark from a heel stable would be by turning full-on face. A few months later, after picking up the ICTV Title, Grand Slam joined the Carnies and the rest, including my quick evolution to "goody-two shoes 100% uber-face" was complete.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

 

This is going to sound odd considering, but I want people to remember me for my ethics and how I treated the other guys and gals here in the Fed. I worked very hard on my matches and such, and I would love to have people talk about the final match as the months roll by (for that matter, I would loved to have had anyone read it, and be interested enough in King's follow-up promo to have given King the sendoff he deserved, but that's just old man bitterness, I guess). But overall, I hope people remember me as a good guy, a fun character and someone they liked having around.

[Toxxic 0]

I think the main thing that bugs me about King's final promo was that about two months later he was hired as heel commentator. Makes no sense to me, but hey, I'm not in charge of talent relations.

[TheBostonStrangler 0]

Why did you choose that name for your character?

 

I was screwing around in No Mercy on my N64 one day, just making up CAW's because I was bored. I needed a new name for a character. When I thought, I remembered seeing a news report the night before. It had been the 50th anniversary of the REAL Boston Strangler being caught. Being from Boston myself (and being quite proud of it), I thought it sounded liked a pretty badass name for a wrestler, so I used it. Eventually when I signed up for this place, I just used the name (and a lot of the moves) that the CAW had for the character.

 

Why do they look the way they do?

 

He's just a generic somewhat grizzled big man. Looks a bit like the Undertaker with a fuller beard. I remember that when I signed up, most characters were about 22-24, so I thought I'd go older, and Strangler was about 30 when he debuted. He had the scars from his long, thoroughly useless backstory. I added all of that just in case I needed a random storyline sometime. I was happy knowing that I had something in my back pocket just in case, so I had to add some physical reminders of that past, just in case. The scars and tattoos worked just fine. Overall, Strangler was a fairly generic-looking big man, but it worked just fine.

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

 

Originally, I had planned to use Strangler as a Kane-esque figure. He wouldn't cut promos, he'd just get mad and beat on people. I was not a really original thinker, and this was even more true at the beginning of my run. During the JL run, Strangler started to show a little bit of personality. He joined the Clan for a bit and had his first real angle where he turned on the overbearing leader of the stable, which worked. It was my first face run, and it was fairly forced. I was the badass, determined face who just wanted to whoop some heel ass instead of face ass for a change. It wasn't a great run, and I screwed it up even more by debuting in the WF as a heel and immediately re-joining the Clan, despite the fact that I had turned on it three months ago and destroyed it. On the plus side, I think I might be the only two-time member of the Clan, which is cool.

 

In the WF, Strangler was just a callous heel for a while, but the Erek Taylor feud made him into an actual person. He became desperate and starting breaking down mentally. He reacted to the person rather than simply being a heel who beat on people because he was mad. I liked the whole way I left the fed for a while. After beating Erek, Strangler got busted on steroid possession and got turned in by Chris Wilson, who was my stable leader and 'best friend'. It justified Strangler's paranoia and insanity, and set him up as a blank slate for the comeback I knew was coming.

 

The second run in the SWF was completely different. I had been a heel for 90% of the run I had in the fed up until that point, and I was identified with it. However, I just sucked at writing the heel part for my character. I wanted to be the guy who was getting the big cheers, who got the crowd behind him. It might not have fir the character all that well, but it fit my writing style better, so that won out. I came back a little early in a last-second fill-in as King's tag team partner against Neilsen and his girlfriend. I turned on King, costing him the match. After that, I went after Flesher, who was the leader of the M7. Strangler wanted closure on that betrayal, regardless of who he got it against, and Flesher was the closest thing there was to Wilson. I think we had a solid but completely unspectacular feud, and then I randomly ended up with the title when Thoth beat Flesher, and I got a title shot against him and won (via no-show, I think). I had a slow run with it, setting up the tourney (which ended up setting up a very good Flesher vs. Judge main event at Genesis IV), but I didn't make it to the ME, since Flesher JUST beat me in an "I Quit" match. I'm still pissed that Edwin didn't call that one in my favor. King, I'll never forgive you for taking a vacation that week of all weeks. Still, Strangler was established as a strong face, which was nice. He finally had a new finisher, the Boston Massacre, to replace the Last Breath, which was an incredibly stupid finisher for a giant. A reverse DDT drop is a cool movev, but if you can toss people around, it's a crap move.

 

The final feud with Erek was the feud I always wanted to do. We were originally gonna turn TBS heel again and have Erek be the face again, but it seemed like nothing had changed. So we did the opposite and decided to try and make TBS the face in the feud, despite the fact that he had absolutely no reason to be the face. He DID retire Erek Taylor, and I WAS the reason he retired. Still, we decided to make it work somehow. It was hard to build, since I was rapidly losing interest in the fed, but we did a pretty solid feud, if not quite the equal of our first feud. But in the end, Strangler went out as a crowd favorite. He was a face who controlled his emotions and fought back against adversity. He started as a cold, calculating heel. I never figured TBS would end up the way he did, but it was a lot of fun.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

 

There are three things I'd like to be remembered for, with #3 the biggest of them:

 

1) My feud with Erek. It was the way feuds should be done. We worked out a rough outline and then alternated promos. We never really knew what would arise from it, but the other person would respond to it and develop it a little more. It was unpredictable, it was unscripted, and it was fun. We both wrote for all the matches, and it really made it fun. Work with someone you trust, but not someone you know. Then you'll get some good results, and you'll see your character from someone else's perspective, not a regurgitation of your own.

 

2) Booking both feds at the same time. I was the head booker of the JL while booking and marking the WF. The WF thing scared me, since by my calculations, I was the first person in about three years who had the book in the WF without having been IGNWF/SWF Champion. Thankfully, King and Mark were there to help, and they were awesome. It was a ton of work doing all that marking, but it was fun. I wasn't a particularly great booker (I had a fetish for stupid gimmick matches that only IL seemed to like), but I paid attention and generally had sensical matches, if not stips.

 

3) Those two things were great, but the thing I'd really like to be remembered for is sticking with one character the entire time. No one seems to do that anymore, and it's a shame. I'm proud of the way that I wrote Strangler in different directions and made him into someone who was a complete opposite of the original. Too often you see people come up with a great character, use the material for a few months, then let it go instead of finding something new with it. It's a real shame when that happens. I honestly think it's the reason the fed has gone downhill. Edwin, King, Thugg, and Mark are generally regarded as four of the greatest in this fed, and they all stuck with their characters and made them evolve. Mark said as much in his piece that he evolved the character. Sure, sometimes it didn't work, but they took chances. Taking chances is what creates great writing, and it doesn't seem to happen too often anymore. So now that my soapbox is thoroughly worn out, I'd like to reiterate: Strangler debuted in June 2001 and didn't retire for good until December 2003 (with the occasional post-retirement gimmick match for good measure). In that time, he changed a lot, but it made the experience worth it. People need to do this more.

[Ced 0]

And I make an arbitrary appearance in the SWF folder....

 

Why did you choose that name for your character?

 

I just decided to use my real name after failing to come up with a wrestling pseudonym that pleased me.

 

Why do they look the way they do?

 

It's a jacked-up me, basically, two inches taller and about 15 more pounds of muscle mass. I was a fan of Yuji Nagata at the time, so I had blue tights, roundhouse kicks and the Nagata Lock reverse figure-four as a finisher.

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

 

I was a fairly generic face wrestler to start since I had absolutely no idea what kind of attitude I wanted to have. Then I revealed my love for Dance Dance Revolution and that interesting Bemani Cross Wizards era took place. Then I burned out, lost interest, and never fully recovered. Nowadays people use me as a referee in their matches and me living vicariously through other people's writing is something I can live with.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

 

People remembering me as a referee to use in matches is good enough for me, but if they want to remember me as a guy that made his name in the JL scene only to flame out upon reaching the WF, I guess that's acceptable, but shit....just remember the BCW days instead.

[JST 0]

Fun topic. I'll bite.

 

Why did you choose that name for your character?

Back in 99 or so I was fiddling around with creating a new character (the one who'd become TdK) and was trying out various phrases in german with an online translator. I wanted some sort of "mental anguish" gimmick so I went with "death of the child", which is "tod des kinde" in german. Just move that S to the end and voila, a name is born. Why german? Everything sounds cool in german.

 

Why do they look the way they do?

Like Strangler, the character took shape playing No Mercy. The look was basically a shirtless Matt Hardy, with the cargos and all. I later went with wrestling tights to give him a better image.

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

I was trying to go for a mix of Edge and Raven (as a face, mind you) and got less then good results. Got bored with it, tried a heel run as your standard Annoying Little Shit and got me a fairly fun feud with Annie.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

Like I said, the Annie feud and the retirement match with TNT. But to be fair, I was more than happy to leave. Long lost hours of sleep and virtually no reaction to the career match contributed a lot to my leaving. And why stay up till 4am to write wrestling matches when I get to live the real thing?

 

Oh yeah, I'm meeting Raven on March 12th.

[A Happy Medium 0]

Eh..what the hell.

 

Why did you choose that name for your character?

 

Well, I thought of the name way back in the day when I watched wrestling almost religiously, and I was thinking...damn, I love the name Jericho. So, I picked a random city from Europe, and it happened to be Munich. It was a name that I was going to change later, but it just stuck

 

Why do they look the way they do?

 

I have no clue. It just came out that way. Wanted him to look normal, I guess...only in shape and a bit ripped. Kinda looks like me,

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

 

I have no clue why my character was the way it was. I enviisioned him to be a tragic hero of sorts who was human and not some wrestling machine. But eh, he became a comedy face...then a jobber. Both of which I controlled entirely.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

 

The Bar-room Brawl I had in the good old JL. Fun times.

[Above Average 0]

Why did you choose that name for your character?

 

Well, I wanted to do something with the name, Steve Francis, the ball player now of Orlando fame and I couldn't think up a first name. Also, being from Philly, I've always been a Shane Douglas mark. So I took 'The Franchise' alias and I always liked Mack/Mackenzie. But just to differenciate myself, I dropped the 'c'.

 

Why do they look the way they do?

 

Originally, I pictured him as a Ron Killings-esque person, but I saw Shelton wrestle on Heat at one point early in in JL and decided it fit perfectly, with my "amateur wrestling" character idea.

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

 

I wanted to be Ric Flair. If it wasn't obvious enough, in my first major feud, I coined CIA's nick 'the Canadian Dream'. Though, I ended up being Flesher-lite in significant parts of my JL run. I didn't mean for it to happen that way, but it did, unfortunately or fortunely, depending on how you look at it. The sWo thing gave me some motivation because I turned into what Shane Douglas was in real life. A person who thinks that he's being held down, and while partially true in storyline terms, it was easy to see Mak was wrong and childish. I thought that was cool. Hell, I wanted to make the sWo into a SJL version of the Triple Threat, but then saw too many good writers and just kept on adding.

 

Tagging with Flesher and losing the ICTV title match gave me the most new ideas. To turn face, make Mak have a tapping complex, be all about respect and ally up with the Carnies. I though, hey, let me try this and if it works, it'll be cool. But what losing to Tom really did is help me get out of the whole Flesher-lite attitude and differenciate the two. I think Tom may have noticed, but I doubt many other people realized how much effort I put into not being Flesher-lite anymore. Danny Williams and I booked a feud on the fly that solidified all of those ideas for me, just because I beat him in a like 3500 word limit non-title match and he wrote a promo saying he didn't want to lose the belt to anyone. I Pmed him, said lets feud when we get the chance and we just responded to each others stuff.

 

In my opinion, audibles to plans are the best way to get something good done. Booking on the fly is so much more creative and fun. And it lead to all of my best ideas. But that's me...

 

The only thing I've planned and liked was stuff with Muzz. I think he just brings out the sadist in a person because everything I've done with him has been 'moody'. Can't complain since it's lead to my current character ideas.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

 

Mostly JL stuff. The feud with CIA in the JL when we could have been bumped, but weren't. I got real unmotivated, real quick, when I realized I wasn't going to work with Wilson and the M7. But Drew pushed me to write and then I really got into the feud. The sWo being the best stable. Getting Best Heel and tying for Best JL Champ. And beating CIA at Genesis 3 in the opening match and the conclusion to our feud.

 

Hopefully my involvement in the Ironman match with Danny and the last match with Muzz, if only for the finish, which was once again done on the fly.

 

And finally, my first person Clusterfuck match because nobody will ever be silly enough to try that again. It got me props from King in a losing effort and is the most creative writing I've ever done. Ever.

[Crowe 0]

Why did you choose that name for your character?

Main inspiration came from the movie The Crow... and since I thought calling my wrestler "The Crow" would be a blatant ripoff/homage, I dropped "The" from it. It stuck and has also become my regular real life/internet nickname, albeit with an E added to the end. Markus Cirillo is my actual name.

 

Why do they look the way they do?

Crow was basically my idealised version of my self, my id, so to speak. Two inches taller, much better proportioned body and muscles more defined and ripped. His clothing was pretty much what I used to wear all the time, the black button down shirt with black pants.

 

Why is their character the way it is, and is this different from how you originally envisaged them?

Not really. I never had a specific path I wanted to take with Crow, as long as I maintained that he's a tough little cunt, that he smokes, bongs and drinks but still kicked ass in the ring, I was content. Certain advice from people like Z and influence from guys like Muzz, I played heavily on Crow's past from a prior efed in this one and decided to make it quite dramatic by including death of best friend via heroin overdose - which was Crow's fault. A shamed past, ooo, sexy. My long standing feud with Janus had the most impact on the character development as this resulted in showing more caring and concerned sides of Crow plus his intensity and rage. Natasha was a great plot device in my beginnings to develop a "deeper" Crow, pointing out how one can be so strong physically, take such a beating and get back up but be absolutely destroyed by a simple female's adultery. He has emotions, kiddies. Jessica was at first only a plot device, but I eventually built her up and gave her some character... and by playing an angle with Janus, revealing that she is his sister, developed her AND Crow even more. Ah, some of those promos were truly class. Nearing the end of my SWF stint, IL and I were running an angle where Crow and Jessica were going through a rough patch... and IL was taking advantage of this. Great promos were written here and never actually finishing this angle is probably my biggest regret in my SWF time. Oh, and not actually winning a title after owning shit in the JL due to noshowobia.

 

If there was one thing you would want your character remembered for, what would it be?

Being the greatest SJL champ in history (FUCK YOU, THUGG ), holding the title for 52 days, beating Va'aiga in awesomely competitive matches over and over, the epic feud with Janus - the best of five match tourney, some great promos and generally being cool.

[Toxxic 0]

Crow should come back. That would kick arse.

[Crowe 0]

Damn right it would. And goddamn do I want to...

 

...but...

 

I have time constraints. With a very heavy training schedule, work and study I have little time to relax let alone write mass amounts of words.