Astil

Total Championship Wrestling - On the Edge of Change I still recall my first meeting with Dave. Despite being chosen to replace me his confidence had not yet come into its own in early January. He had ideas, good ones, but wanted to keep pushing with my plans. Keep the Malice main Taylor v Ace, keep attention away from Wolf wanting the belt, etc. I told him in that meeting that he was in charge now, and he needed to push his vision. After he laid out how he wanted things to go I was excited. Not because I thought they were all world changing ideas, I'm not that blinded, but because they were TCW booking ideas that weren't mine. For the first time in a half decade I could watch and enjoy. TCW presents Total Wrestling Benny & the Foxx vs. Greg Gauge and Matt Hocking Dazzling Dave Diamond vs. Killer Shark Maverick vs. Tana the Mighty Danny Fonzarelli & Devine Fortune vs. The Syndicate (Wolf Hawkins, Eddie Chandler and Nate Johnson) Doc Hammond vs. Edd Stone Aaron Andrews, One Man Army and Sammy Bach vs. Freddy Huggins, Jay Chord and Joshua Taylor

Thanks! It's a pretty stock standard TCW run so I needed to spice it up somehow. Hey that just means you can learn the roster here, right? Thanks for checking in and predicting! My favorite is USPW because they are just so evil. Still TCW is such an interesting start its hard to pass up. This seems to be the most common guess, with Elite and Benson winning. I don't think it is off base, especially with Benson being in a program with Gauge, but I have some plans. Oh, Remus over Edd is bold. I love it, wish I was that brave. Ohhh, 100%! Nicely done. Welcome! I honestly did not expect this much in terms of predictions I've run out of things to say oh no... Thanks for predicting! I will say everyone had Chord winning. No love for Taylor? And Scottie makes 11! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH. In character post likely coming tomorrow. MiykaelP 7 7 100% Irish Wolf 6 7 86% Wrestling Machine 6 7 86% Jaysin 6 7 86% John Lions 6 7 86% Sisma 5 7 71% CR2020 5 7 71% The Blonde Bomber 5 7 71% flaviooooo 5 7 71% Scottie 5 7 71% 2Sweet 4 7 57%

Author Note: This will not be the format going forward, just wanted to get the episode up. The style will be the same, but not a series of images. Was hoping the new forum would allow direct copy paste from Word but alas. Thank you to all the likes and predictions! I'll have to think of a little prize for the prediction champ(s).

TCW Presents Total Wrestling Monday, Week 1, January 2020 .

Total Championship Wrestling - On the Edge of Change January Part 1 - I Was Livid My father always jokes that it is a good thing social media didn't exist when he was a wrestler, but I don't think the old man could even have figured out how to use it. The guy barely understood ancient tech like a VCR and he thinks he would have been some 70s influencer? What a joke. Still it was that saying that led to me shutting off my phone when the news came down. Internally we were told the Monday before the first show he booked. I was livid. I wanted to log on and basically quit, them giving the keys to someone who had not even really driven before. He hadn't even been with the company as long as I had, mine as well some of the old guard like Ox (Robert Oxford), Joel (Bryan) or (Floyd) Goldworthy. It felt like a slap in the face to those guys and to all of us who broke our backs trying to push TCW up this mountain. If I hadn't turned off that phone I promise those posts would be legendary today, and not in the good way. I learned later Robert didn't even apply and Joel, well Joel can tell his side if he wants, but Floyd took things the same way I did. Luckily for TCW, Dave (Diamond) and honestly Floyd he stayed chill about it. We all kind of did, what choice did we have. We may not have liked the new boss, but we did not have any time to argue. There was a show on Thursday, and plans were already being made for Malice. - excerpt from "TCW 2020: The Year of Change" written by Jay Chord - TCW presents Total Wrestling Devine Fortune vs The Elite Doc Hammond vs Flying Jimmy Foxx Benny Benson vs Matt Hocking Mighty Mo vs Nick Booth Edd Stone vs Roderick Remus T-Bone Bright vs Wolf Hawkins Freddy Huggins vs Jay Chord vs Joshua Taylor vs One Man Army

Reserved for table of contents

Total Championship Wrestling - On the Edge of Change To say we're in a bad spot would be an understatement. Heck, if it weren't for BriCo then we'd have shuttered in 2015. You would think we had though at times, with Rocky gone, our HQ moved to Texas and the fast paced wrestling giving way to more slugfests it almost seemed like we were a completely different place. It's not like BriCo knew how to run a wrestling company, so they let (Kyle) Rhodes and Brent (Hill) run things. As long as BriCo got larger than life characters to turn into action figures they did not care. Big men, electric personalities, that sort of thing. In order to not simply rehash USPW / SWF Rhodes leaned more into the AAFW or TWL style of wrestling. Sadly this change of pace served only to keep TCW where they had been for over a decade, far behind the major US players, far ahead of the indies. After five years of adequate booking, Brent Hill stepped down. He had enough of the role, and honestly the fans had kind of had enough of him. Rehashing the Syndicate, destroying the tag team division and somehow not pulling the trigger on Chord despite him being ready for the entire five years Hill ran the ship would likely be the legacy of Brent Hill. However what most will forget is him making Mighty Mo a star and doing the best he could with the losses TCW endured. He was a good booker at a time when TCW needed a great booker. Supposedly, Rhodes interviewed ten outsiders and a few people inside the company. Rumors came flying around that last week of 2019 and it became hard to focus. Big, big names were reported with certainty. Ariza, RDJ, Peter Michaels, Liberty and even ol' Tommy Cornell were reported as having accepted the job (although none of those guys actually interviewed). It was a wild time for the fans, for the boys and yeah even for me. Little did I know my definition of 'wild times' was about to be tossed on its head. - excerpt from "TCW 2020: The Year of Change" written by new TCW head booker Dazzling Dave Diamond, TCW Booker

Very glad to see you are okay, your logos make my gam experience better. Continued health going forward.

Brent Hill walked into his office and turned on the light. The florescent bulbs flickered for a moment, then flooded the darkness. His desk still had notes and empty cups from last Friday’s brainstorming session. He took a sip of his coffee and looked around. The red eye he took had left him exhausted, but such is the responsibility of head booker. Or as BriCo called him ‘Lead Creative Liaison’. Hill hated that meaningless title, but without BriCo there would be no TCW anymore, or a head booker. Thoughts like that make you deal with the corporate nonsense. There wasn’t any last minute booking so the meeting last week was mostly talent discovery. The white board behind his desk had nine names scrawled on it. Jake Idol Jackpot Jordan Marv Statler Dean Waldorf Babau Moroi Marvel Malloy Storm Spillane Al Coleman Hill had left the list to think about over the weekend, but with the Pay Per View he hadn’t had time to do any more research. He logged into his PC and opened the DVD rip folder for CZCW. Coleman and Speed had some real chemistry back in the day. He sat and watched Hardcore Halloween 10’s tag match between Rich and Famous and Shoot Club. Jake Idol was far skinnier back then, having more of a superstar look now-a-days. Coleman and Speed reminded Hill of himself and Anderson. All three were yes. Statler and Waldorf were based in Japan, and honestly were unknowns to TCW’s audience. Malloy and Spillane were fantastic wrestlers, he had caught a few of the COTT tag defenses the duo had put together and he was impressed. They would be a hard sell to BriCo though, as the company thought Brent had already hired enough ‘unmarketable talents’. Night Terrors on the other hand. Maybe paired with Peak? That was an easy sell. He sent out the emails with BriCo approved contract offers to Coleman, Idol, Jordan, Babau and Moroi. Afterward he picked up his cell and dialed Cliff Anderson. After the pleasantries, he broke the news. “We’re going to be offering to Al,” “Yeah, no problem, I get it,” “Alright just wanted to let you know.” “Yeah, no problem, thanks.” .:. Cliff Anderson stared at the screen for a solid minute before dialing Fox Mask. “Mark? Yeah we have a problem,” .:. CZCW Revolution Coastal Zone Title Match = Al Coleman vs Frankie Perez © Coastal Zone Triple Down Match = American Flash vs Masked Cougar vs Matt Sparrow COTT World and Coastal Zone Xtreme Hardcore Title Match = Hugh de Aske © vs Pablo Rodriguez © Coastal Zone Tag Team Title Match = Notorious © vs The Beach Boys COTT World Tag Team Title Match = The American Cobras © vs The Wild Cats Coastal Contenders Series Match = California Love Machine vs Skye Hermosa

TCW went from my absolute favorite of the big 3 to my least favorite to play. I think it’s 100% down to not understanding how to book the product. Wrestling is treated as ‘real’ but with larger than life characters is so vague, and it says it’s southern style. I guess I just didn’t watch much leads into those Terry Funk brawls so I don’t really understand how it works. Enough complaining though, here is the product. I think the only real way I will be able to book TCW close to the source and not pull my hair out is to treat them like a brawl based AEW. Which makes gimmicks like the King of Kings even more confusing. It starts a big push in DECEMBER for a match in MAY…despite having a legendary event in January the month after. I hate it. TCW also has three gimmick PPVs. Along with the King of Kings tournament there are these two. I don’t hate gimmick PPVs but they don’t seem Southern Wrasslin they seem more 90s WWF. All that said, we are Brent Hill and he doesn’t seem the type to change up a company. Indeed he probably is not even empowered to do so by BriCo. TCW may want to be a southern wrasslin company but I suspect BriCo wants more of a Rock and Wrestling / New Generation WWF thing. Either way that is more long term than I care to think at the moment. Ohhhhhhhh my gooooodness yes. A company that is well situated in terms of storylines. What a relief. The top storyline is Andrews/Wolf, and despite Wolf winning the tournament it shouldn’t ‘come to a head’ until May. I hate it. I’ll be booking Wolf vs Andrews at Malice in Wonderland. This next story is presented as a vehicle for Chord to get to the top, but I think it has potential to be way more. This may be a bit of a tangent but I think a bit of the disconnect I have with Jay Chord in TCW as it’s currently constructed is the top of the roster is clearly built for a workrate company, but they are owned by a toy company. They should be led by larger than life highly marketable workers… The Ace. Alpha Wolf. Rock God. Jay Chord doesn’t really have that marketable character. Kids don’t buy boring looking guys toys. Chord needs a character, something that will sell action figures (even if only so kids can have Andrews or He-Man or Goku beat him up). Long story short, this is not just a push Chord vehicle, it’s a chance for me to give Jay Chord an actual character besides ‘my dad wrestled good before you were born’. Sinner Society? Mighty Meaty? Now we’re talking! I can already see those figures flying off shelves. This will also regularly fill the wild brawl requirement at PPVs. A TV only feud, Greg Gauge falls into the same issue as Chord, but much more severe. Luckily he’s not near the top of the card so we have time to figure out who he is in the grand scheme of things. Benny Benson is a stoner in a company run by a toy maker. He’s losing. All the stories are hot! Let’s go! As for this actual story, Devine Fortune and Elite both need to prove something to me to factor into our tag division moving forward. Speaking of our tag division…it could use some help: So this will be the first time I put out a decision and end mid-post. Next time I’ll wrap up TCW’s setup and set up CZCW too. Who should TCW hire to join the tag division?

I have ideas, but she needs her overness built to start. It makes sense, and thank you!

First a confession. I’ve been sucked into OOTP 23. Don’t send help. I won’t be out for a while lol. Doesn’t mean I wont be continuing this though, let’s jump into SWF! First, lets look at our User Character and owner Jerry Eisen: Combine that with Eric Eisen’s booking and you get an interesting combination (turns out Emma Chase has 0 booking skill and no bias so I guess it’s just the Eisens in charge). Neither have any real ‘friends’ in or out of the locker home so no reason to push certain people over others. Sports Entertainment product is… interesting. No deathmatches, dangerous set ups, etc etc and a strong emphasis on storylines. All scripted is interesting given Eric’s bias to ring generals. I may remove that. Whereas USPW only needed 3 hot storylines SWF requires 5. Sam requirement of 2 storylines a show. That’s fairly difficult in my opinion but I left that on to push myself to book more like sports entertainment. Let’s see how many hot storylines SWF has to start. Three. That’s… not good. Also the write ups on SWF’s storylines leave a bit to be desired. Rocky vs Scythe is going to be right up my alley with spooky stuff and lights out attacks and all my favorite toys. Rogue playing both sides in a Valiant/Remo feud is interesting to a degree, but I’ve honestly not got much love for Val or Rogue as top level guys. Finally you got Lau in a squash feud over the aging James. Davids vs Brown is the only conceivable storyline that could get hot in one show, and even that is unlikely. I do like both talents though so expect me to try like heck to get this over. To round it out you have the tag team feud and another young vs old feud. That’s rough to start. We need two, maybe three hot storylines added to this list to ensure we don’t get penalized. Available are Randy Unleashed and The Crippler for stars and for Well Known there are Angry Gilmore, Atom Smasher, Bear Bekowski, Hollywood Brett Starr, Huey Cannonball, Jefferson Stardust, Joey Morgan, John Greed, Mainstream Hernandez, Marshall Dillon, Primus Allen, Ranger and ZWB. A lot of fun characters there, hopefully enough talent to create some hot stories. First let’s set up a storyline for Atom Smasher. I want to set up The Crippler as a mastermind behind a lot of the heels in SWF, and having him start with being the reason Smasher turned is a good spark. Cowboys being the tag team to stop them should make for some fun brawls too. Another storyline that could be fun, I want to start pushing Bear up the card if possible. No better place to start a push than against super solid hand Joey Morgan. Lastly, a Starr vs Gilmore storyline. Lazy vs high strung. Young second gen vs grizzled vet. I can get mileage out of this for sure, much more than the two default ‘old vs young’ stories. Oh what’s this? Yeah lets fix that red. Our PPV is in two weeks, so a bit of imagining needs to take place as the builds would have surely already started. Here is my current pre-booking. As for the weekly show, I only pre booked 3, but that should be enough, no? And that’s SWF for now. Going to need a lot of interlocking storylines as I go, so any thoughts on that please let me know. Next time is TCW!

Thanks! I hope my brain doesn't melt. It is but also a tremendous amount of fun!

So, USPW. The antagonist of the CornellVerse US scene. We are booking as Rich Money, who favors big bodied workers and booking one of the most simplistic products in the game. No complex angles. No controversial angles, gimmicks, etc. Shorter matches. Really just wrestling for dummies. Usually when starting a game I look to the starting storylines and roster as a guide and try to figure out where the booking was going. We start off failing the Strict Storyline requirements, which is a rough start. The hottest storyline going is Hawkeye vs The Destroyer which has our figurehead going against a hated heel. This is not the world title feud however, as that is the only other feud over the threshold. The creatively named Money vs Wolf is a feud I have never been able to make interesting. Running Wolf is just not on Money’s level The next two hottest storylines are The Triumvirate Takeover and Bulldozer vs Shaffer. The Takeover storyline is easy enough to heat up, with three extremely talented women in the storyline and plenty of ways to proceed as it’s really just a feud focused on Alicia Strong’s stable. Dozer and Shaffer is the feud I have the most fun booking, but I struggle to get it above the 70 heat level. Rounding out the starting storylines you have a women’s feud with two newcomers, a feud between a stable and the National title holder and an old tag team vs young tag team feud. None of these have a potential to develop over the 70 heat threshold in my opinion. That leaves Enygma, Joss Thompson, Casey Valentine, D.C. Rayne, Eddie Howard, Tag Champions Jett and Moor, Women’s champion Jamie Quinn, James Justice, Rick Law, The Force and Tiffany Jade without a storyline. I know I want to have a storyline for at least Joss, the Tag Champs and Quinn. I would love to give a quick storyline to Missy Masterson, but I think I’ll have her run a ‘try-out’ match first. As for the tag champs…our tag division is garbage and I really don’t think USPW or Rich Money care about the division. Probably will give a shot to Atlas and Jumbo without a storyline. Which just leaves Joss. Joss is a worker I love to push in USPW. He has higher level Psychology and Brawling, and an astounding 92 Star Quality. To me he is the modern Rip Chord in term of workers, who I always figured to be a Jake Roberts-ish derivative. I want Joss at or near the top going forward, and his first feud should not only help with that but also be our third 70 plus heat storyline. Enygma is the only other ‘star’ without a storyline, and … well … Enygma sucks. Old, mid-level talent and not even a big boy. No I am going to go with an actual Rip Chord trainee Casey Valentine. With storylines and rosters reviewed I need to plan out my first PPV and TV show. Usually I will do these ‘in character’ as Money and the booking team, but for now I am going to remain in LP mode. For the TV show the cut off match is Nicky Champion and Bulldozer Brandon Smith vs Steve Frehley and Trent Shaffer. On that subject is Shah-fir like Marina or Shae-fur like Peter. I always say Shae-fur but I’m not smart with pronunciation so feel free to correct. As for matches I think 3 planned is a pretty decent jump off point. For the PPV a lot is in flux. No National title match, no tag, no womens. I want to see how some people perform. As for the World Title…yes I am a coward. I want to insure that main event does well, and adding Nicky will do just that. That’s all for now. Next USPW write up will be the show in screenshots. Before that we move on to SWF though.

Thanks! Feel free to ask about anything that is muddy. Welcome aboard. I say it should be tamer, but without Swarley to reel me in who knows.