Inky The Squid Boy

He's certainly over enough, 71 Pop in the US and 66 in Canada though he was cut loose by TCW in late 2022. he had been enjoying a good push there so it's a little surprising. He had a run with the TV Title in 2021 and in 2022 he racked up 35 wins to just 12 losses so he was being booked strongly, basically acting as a gatekeeper while losing to the real big stars like Wolf Hawkins and Jay Chord. He was then working the indies until L-Ring picked him up in 2024 and he is their number 1 wrestler now (at least according to the Tour Company section) holding the Triple Crown Championship and the National Championship once each. They're okay. Still at Small size they have 54 Pop across the US and $12mill in the bank but the roster leaves a lot to be desired. Ash Campbell, Sayeed Ali & Stuntman have all stuck with them and they're all Stars/Major Stars. After the departure of Nelson Callum and The Steel Circle PSW largely used ageing cast-offs from the big leagues to carry the shows. Kurt Laramee, Jack Marlowe and Eddie Peak all traded the PSW Championship for years after Nelson Callum vacated the championship. In 2025 Ash Campbell and Stuntman (his second reign) captured the title, ushering in a welcome changing of the guard as younger, home grown guys are seemingly now coming to the fore. The belt is currently held by Xavier Reckless. Ali, Reckless, Stuntman and Campbell appear to be their main event crew now, with the Peak Brothers still hanging around and even the ancient Dead Bolt (now 49 years old) still working the occasional match. The rest of the roster is largely made up of TCW developmental talents who have come through their School. Two of the TCW youngsters even hold the PSW Tag Team Championships at present. In addition to losing talent to the "national" promotions GSW have declared war on PSW and have aggressively raided them numerous times. In the last year alone they stole Trix Triumph, Dominic DeGraff & Copperhead, all of whom had been champions in PSW and were becoming stars for them. The other thing of note is that PSW have joined COTT which has helped to offset their threadbare roster. Sayeed Ali currently holds the COTT World Championship and they have just seen their best match rating ever at New Year Revolution 2026 as Stuntman defeated the On Loan Sterling Whitlock in an 85 rated First Blood Match. It is telling though that not one other match in their top 25 took place after 2022 and almost every match in their top 30 involves either Ernest Youngman or Nelson Callum. Ditto, only 1 of their top 20 shows took place after 2022. They're stable and they're still growing slowly but they've never replaced that initial crop of talent who were poached.

It also sounds like something from Warhammer which I see as a positive. Its a contender

Yeah not bad. Got that Brawling Brutes / Bash Brothers quality to it

Any ideas for a duo of Andrew Harper and Lug Phelan? I'm essentially giving them the Sheamus/Cesaro or Sheamus/McIntyre team up where they have several matches beating each other up and then find that they just love fighting together so decide to team up. Both very much have characters of being wild chaotic brawlers. Pittsburgh Steel Wrestling if that helps the vibe. I've toyed the with the idea of just giving them a name similar to the Hardcore Chair Swinging Freaks - you know more of a sentence describing them rather than any fancy name - but wondered if you guys had anything snappier

FCW (as always) as well as CWW in the UK and most recently ACPW. None of the other companies who exist at game start seem to be in any danger and most have millions in the bank by now.

I'm glad you asked cos he's always one of my faves but I hadn't actually checked in on him. He had been doing well but with the demise of QPW and ACPW in the last 2 years he has found himself suddenly in the wilderness. He had a good run, in 2024 he held both the QPW World title and the ACPW Jr Heavyweight title simultaneously and has seen his popularity in Quebec soar to 71. With Pop like that (and decent numbers elsewhere in Canada) and good charisma it's not out of the question that CWA will take a chance on him, he is only 36 after all but I think that's his only chance at the big time. His name value in the US is respectable (between 27 and 31 Pop) but I think his opportunities there will be limited.

TCW are number 4 worldwide at Big size but are number 3 in the US. CZCW are ahead of them worldwide as they're solidly in the 40s for Pop in every region of the world outside of the US whereas TCW only have a real presence in the US and Canada. QAW are a star factory. They've developed and turned out some of the biggest stars in the USA now, all poached by CZCW, CAW and USPW. Despite constant raids they're right on the brink of Medium size and are still growing and developing new talent. 5SSW are doing even better. Behind only PGHW and BHOTWG (and it's only a matter of time before they overtake PGHW) they're in the ascendency. They've essentially ridden the Birds Of Prey to ever greater heights, both of whom are becoming big stars in Japan and Fuyuko Higa is one of the best workers in the world. At 35 the Birds are in their prime and should guarantee many more years of success for the company.

Who fancies a 2025 digest? Mainstream Hernandez makes it 2 in a row winning his second Wrestler of The Year Award. CWA continue their success winning Show Of The Year & Company Of The Year, Brooke Tyler continuing to carry the banner for the promotion with another year of 99 rated matches (She's got to crack 100 one of these days!). The world of Puro was in mourning as BCG owner and all around legend Yoshifusa Maeda passed away. BCG remain in good hands as the legendary Yoshimi Musashibo became owner of the company, giving the pencil to Dark Eagle. The loss of their legendary founder hasn't put them off their stride or shaken things up too much as they continue producing great matches and great shows with their crop of top class workers. Bunrakuken Torii finally broke the hegemony that Funakoshi and Razan Okamoto held over the BCW World Title. Checking the guys out in detail though its becoming clear that carrying the company with hard hitting bouts year in and year out is taking its toll on their four pillars. The condition of Torii and Funakoshi both has deteriorated to the 50s for every part of their body. This seemingly hasn't affected their match ratings. Yet. Yoshinaka Taku continues to steadily build popularity and saw his win rate dramatically increase in 2025. Noazone Goto has developed into a really super solid worker with fantastic psychology and is on the cusp of stardom. The 28 year old Hisanobu Sakiyurai enters 2026 as the Challenger Series Champion. Graduating from the Roaring Lion Dojo in 2021 he already boasts very impressive Puro and Technical skills and had a real breakout year in 2025. It might be that BCG need to pull the trigger on one of these younger men sooner rather than later. Elsewhere in Japan PGHW continue their seemingly irreversible slide into mediocrity. Seiji Jimbo recaptured the Glory Crown and the main event scene remains all about he, Ugaki, Kawashima and Kobe. Checking the average match quality for each man shows a steady downward trend year on year and it's evidenced as PGHW failed to produce a single bout rated 85 or better in 2025, for the first time since game start. The King's Road is no longer the gold standard in puro match quality and while they continue their strategy of steadily building young home grown talent (Hikichi, Masatochi Kamimura, Daigo Goya and a host of Dojo graduates now make up the bulk of the roster and are developing quite nicely) it does feel like something drastic needs to change to give the company some upward trajectory. 5SSW and BCG are now nipping at their heels in terms of Pop across Japan. One company that we haven't taken a look at in this thread yet, who do refuse to stand still, is BHOTWG. Their roster is an embarrassment of riches with every major Japanese star on their books. Neverthless when World Champion Munemitsu Senmatsu was forced to vacate his championship through injury they took the opportunity to make a new top line star, slapping the belt on Tatsuya Toshitara. His reign got off to a slow start with the quality of title matches noticeably dropping off but he ended the year on a high entering a 95 rated title defence against Taro Shionoya. BHOTWG did lose one big player though as KC Glenn made the curious career move of going from perennial BOSJ contender and Jr Heavyweight champ to jobbing to 41 year old Oliver Kobb in CWA. USPW and SWF still sit firmly atop the tree worldwide and CZCW are shockingly still ranked third, though their show quality and match quality have dipped ever so slightly over the past year and it shows as their popularity is beginning to shrink across the USA. Charity Sweet is currently the Coastal Zone champ and is one of the biggest stars in all of the USA with popularity 80 almost nationwide. Checking in with some of the talents we looked at earlier: Fro Sure fulfilled the prophecy and signed with USPW. Riley McManus had another good year in TCW, steadily rising in popularity as a solid midcarder. Nelson Callum's star continues to rise, his Pop now in the high 70s after recapturing the TCW Tag Team Championships with Nick Booth. Roderick Remus did indeed re-sign with TCW and has been rewarded with the first singles title of his career, claiming the Television Championship in November. Zippy Deverell found gainful employment, first with the upstart Kanzen and then with NYCW. Companies out of business: KCCW, ACPW New Companies: Rocky Mountain Wrestling, Kanzen

Emergent gameplay and my favourite TEW save I've ever done or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love ZomBoy I got TEW 2020 upon release and wanted to start a save with a smaller company to get to grips with both the changes to the game world and new mechanics. I've still got the save going now and I've been going back to it off and on since day one. I haven't simmed that far through it yet because of periods where I'm playing other saves and even longer periods where I just burn out on TEW altogether. I chose to play as PSW because I hadn't really booked them before and I wanted a company that didn't run lots of angles so I could just sim through stuff. As I hadn't played PSW before I didn't really know many of the guys on their roster - and a few I wasn't sure if they had even been in older versions of the game because they weren't familiar to me. Among these new faces were The Legion of Blood. I liked the Legion Of Blood right away. I liked their names. I liked their gimmick. I especially liked their willingness to destroy their bodies for me for not very much money in front of crowds of no more than 250 people. I always like an occult gimmick and I find them very useful for booking second tier bad guys. I just find it's easy to insert them into random feuds because who can really know Wicked Lester's motives or how his mind works, right? And that was exactly the role I had them down for. Always intended to keep them around as good second level gatekeeper mini-boss types, always handy for a bit of the old ultraviolence. In the back of my mind I earmarked Lester and ZomBoy for potential pushes down the line. They're young, I thought to myself, if they surprise me and get really good then who knows. So I carried on with the game. All my younger stars of course got poached. Brandon James came in and took the company to new heights. Angry Gilmore came in and helped do the same. Vendetta and Acid stuck around and got pushes - these were my big hopes for creating home grown stars. In the background the Legion Of Blood were always there. Being relied on to challenge for the National championship or act as a stepping stone/road block for whatever babyface was getting a push. They were getting better too. Lester had become really quite solid in the ring. ZomBoy had improved his fundamentals a good bit too and he was really developing his flashiness. He was getting over. I had a vague idea that ZomBoy would probably outgrow the Legion eventually and I could have a good rivalry going with he and Lester. Plenty of bloody matches there. That's where Grandmaster Phunk enters the picture. Phunk had come in to pop some ratings and fill the gaping chasm left at the top of the card when TCW and USPW gutted my roster. But now his main event run had wrapped up and I was looking to cycle him down the card and build some younger guys. Phunk clearly had the same idea because he surprised me by offering to put ZomBoy over - twice. I hadn't planned for this but I was happy to roll with it and move some things around storyline wise. ZomBoy's split with the Legion had just been expedited. So the feud went thus. Grandmaster Phunk teamed up with Jebediah & Andrew Harper to take on the Legion who had been terrorising all three men. Big six man match in which ZomBoy shocks everyone by scoring the pin fall for his team on the future PSW Hall Of Famer. You would think that Wicked Lester would be happy but on the contrary, he's jealous that it was his subordinate who got the win. The plan now is to sow the seeds of division with Lester becoming jealous of ZomBoy who will enjoy repeated successes while Lester repeatedly fails in his own endeavours. Meanwhile I was to have Grandmaster Phunk gain respect for ZomBoy. He would reach out to ZomBoy and encourage him to leave the Legion of Blood, eventually forming a team with him to battle Lester and Deathwish. Grandmaster Phunk and ZomBoy is not a pairing I ever thought was in the cards but I liked the idea. Bit of an odd couple. Emergent gameplay. At the next show Lester has a shot at Acid's National Championship (even though he didn't get the win at the last show. ZomBoy did). ZomBoy meanwhile is going one on one with Grandmaster Phunk who is eager for revenge. ZomBoy does it again. He gets the win all by himself, 1 on 1. Wicked Lester fails to defeat Acid. Worse Wicked Lester absolutely destroys his knee during the match and is out for over a year. This thing was just about to get rolling and we had a TV show on an actual TV station starting that week, none of this WrestleWorld nonsense. Plans change. Emergent gameplay. Without Lester to carry the feud I had to pivot. Now Deathwish and ZomBoy are lost. Lester has disappeared. They start losing tag matches. Every week. Our first three TV shows they lose tag matches, all the while lamenting Lester's absence, unable to function without his guidance. After a few weeks Phunk approaches ZomBoy and tells him he doesn't need Lester. ZomBoy didn't need Lester when he beat Phunk 1 on 1 and he doesn't need him now. ZomBoy is conflicted and his brother Deathwish chastises him. He warns him not to listen to Phunk and to remain loyal. Eventually of course they split, ZomBoy teams up with Phunk who now acts as an on-screen mentor for him (God knows ZomBoy can't do his own promos) and ZomBoy wins the feud with Deathwish. I had the idea to turn him face and have him as my Darby Allin. The weird little underdog guy who does insane stunts and hangs out with his cool uncle. When I turned him face he needed a gimmick change. Well his new Undead Underdog gimmick has a legendary rating. This is all going swimmingly. So again the save file goes on, ZomBoy and Phunk are over and they're a useful part of the shows but they're not major players. Acid, Vendetta and Hammer Hadley keep getting pushes. Ernest Youngman comes home. My big plans were to unify the National Championship and PSW Championship and name a PSW WORLD Champion. I'd been pushing Hammer Hadley as my version of Taz, just totally unstoppable, holding the National Championship for over a year. Acid is the PSW Champion and I had to keep him warm while I worked towards the unification bout at Steel City StarFest. I had the idea to trade the belt with Angry Gilmore. Acid would drop the belt at Endgame and then at the January show would win it back in a Mask vs Title match. Then one defence in February and on to Hammer Hadley. Endgame comes and goes, Gilmore wins the belt and it's on to New Year Revolution. Emergent gameplay. Plans change. First TV after winning the title Gilmore comes to me and offers to put ZomBoy over. The promise is only good for one month so it's now or never. Could ZomBoy really win the PSW Championship? From wrestling machine Angry Gilmore? He's been a great presence in the locker room, he's never missed a show, he's taken a ton of crazy bumps for me. He was over enough. He has good star quality. I thought why the hell not, he's earned it! And that's what went down in my game most recently. At New Year Revolution ZomBoy beat Gilmore for the PSW Championship. I never planned for him to turn face when he did. I never planned to push him as strongly as I have. I certainly never intended to put the belt on him. The game thrust all of these things upon me. It's been the best journey I've ever had with one of my guys in any version of TEW. I love the save and I love ZomBoy. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Dreadnought's stats are only so-so. His fundamentals have improved some but they leave a lot to be desired. Yuta hasn't had a run anywhere but he's getting himself over on the indies anyway, more or less doubling his popularity across Japan since game start. He's even had a couple matches rated better than 50 over the years. WLW, Exodus or even the struggling PGHW could do worse than picking him up. I'm sure it's just a matter of time til he finds a home. Fro Sure jumped from GSW to IPW in 2021 and has become one of their star attractions, holding the IPW Championship 3 times. He's really starting to make a name for himself now with his popularity rising to the 50s across the USA during the last 12 months (62 in his home region in the South West). He's been with Lethal Ring since day one too and accounts for 4 out of their top 10 matches, including the highest rated match the company has ever produced. He's not locked into a deal so I would expect him to graduate to one of the national companies before too much longer. Riley McManus is another L-Ring alum spending a year there from 2023 to November when he was signed by TCW. He clearly made quite the impression in NYCW where he became a triple crown champion - he held the Empire title from October 2020 all the way to January 2022. He's enjoying a decent little push in TCW too. They've given him a gimmick a very marketable babyface gimmick and he's racking up plenty of wins on TV and he even had a 90 rated banger with Jay Chord in the first round of the King Of Kings tournament. He's done very well for himself. Though not as well as Nelson Callum. Nelson traded the PSW Championship back and forth with Ernest Youngman until both men were signed by TCW in late 2021. Nelson spent the first 2 years with the company mainly doing jobs or working the pre-shows and the B shows. After a while he was placed in the villainous stable The Cure with Monty Trescarde and Nick Booth (Dusty Ducont was a member of the group but has since been put out to pasture by TCW). Clearly acting as a group of upstart younger workers looking to claim their moment in the spotlight, all three men got pushed pretty solidly from around mid-2023 onwards and Nelson captured the tag team championships with Nick Booth in 2024 holding them from April to December (he also seemed to work almost exclusively PPV matches in 2024). He's now up to 71 Pop across the US. I'll be interested to see if he plateaus now or if he can keep the momentum going and ascend to Ernest Youngman's level (Ernest won the King Of Kings in 2024 and is firmly established as one of TCW's top acts) Alas yes, both are still toiling in obscurity

No huge shockers. I think Petr Novak is probably the most noteworthy, dying of a drug related incident at 42. He'd been cut loose by USPW by then and was just working the indies. The Cold Warriors were inducted into the USPW Hall Of Fame after his death. Alex Braun was working as Booker for L-Ring when he passed at 61. Other than those two the only real names are a handful of legends. Micky Starr, Rip Chord, Marcus McKing, El Patron. In total 22 characters have died since game start. The Rock City Stars have surprisingly done absolutely nothing at all in the whole game. No runs anywhere, just working the indies and touring their music. Roddy is faring better. Being used essentially as a jobber to the stars he's a solid midcard presence for TCW (the highlight a 99 rated match tagging with Frankie-Boy Fernandes opposite Greg Gauge & Aaron Andrews) but he's seen his popularity steadily rise over the previous 12 months and is now sitting at 70-72 across the USA. His contract is up in 4 months and his stock has never been higher so it'll be interesting to see if he gets big money to stay in TCW or if he moves on to try and become a main eventer elsewhere On the contrary they're thriving. Rising to Big size in 2021 and staying there ever since. They could be better financially - their £5,000,000 bank balance is lower than a lot of much smaller companies but with Brooke Tyler and Aaron Knight on top, constantly churning out 99 rated bouts, they've got no worries.

One little note, as of January 2025 Swoop McCarthy (RAW) and Landon Mallory (VWA) are the only active figureheads in the game world.

Not quite but it's a matter of time. My beloved PGHW are really in a mess. They're firmly still medium sized and have no worries with cash flow but their roster is beyond threadbare. Only Kozue Kawashima & Masaru Ugaki are Major Stars and they're not getting any younger. Beyond that only Seiji Jimbo is regarded as a star. Their main events consist almost entirely of pairings of those three men and Magnum Kobe. They've lost almost all of their viable younger talents like Kobayashi, Ring Generals & Yano and Kikuchi to BHOTWG raids but even worse, after Shuji Inukai stepped down as booker in November 2021 the new man with the pencil, Bairei Yasujiro, saw fit to shockingly release true born stars Akinori Kwakami, Tetsunori Yasuda and KitoGuchi. Ryoma Muruyama also retired around this time meaning that their roster has been more or less gutted. They've done well building young guys like Daigo Goya, Nobuyo Hikichi and Hirobumi Takimoto but they're no substitute for world class workers like KitoGuchi. BCG meanwhile are doing what they always do, riding the super workers Funakoshi, Furusawa, Okamoto and Bunrakuken Torii to ever greater heights. Currently Medium size with a boat load of cash and popularity steadily rising still they're well on their way. Okamoto and Funakoshi have traded the big belt between them since game start, Okamoto dominating their Top 10 matches, even entering some bouts in the high 80s and low 90s. Bunrakuken Torii and Furusawa have had to settle for being perennial challengers for the main title as well as some Sole Survivor wins. Torii has won the Maeda Grand Prix 3 times since game start. They've got a really strong cast of "second tier" guys too like Big Bruiser Findlay, Blast Ikoma and Yoshinaka Taku who are all Challenger Series winners and can be relied on as strong challengers for the world championship. I think the fact that the Sole Survivor Championship is now rated more highly than the PGHW Glory Crown is an indicator of which way the wind is blowing and what the match quality looks like in the respective companies. For the record BCG are actually number 4 in Japan as 5SSW have risen to third and aren't slowing down any time soon. You can't argue with Fuyuko Higa. Not for long.

Damn. I love it. Pure SWF soap opera nonsense at its finest and yeah as James The Animator says, such appreciation for the CVerse lore.

NYCW are steady, as always, with 6 mill in the bank, their usual deals with WrestleWorld for both weekly TV and events. Vessey and Flash are still running the show though they've updated the product somewhat from the Golden Age to Classic Sports Entertainment. They produce consistent shows in the high 60s but they seem to be struggling to expand, only briefly flirting with Medium size in January 2024 before falling back to small again. They've been the victims of frequent raids over the years and interestingly it's usually been their contemporary regional companies such as GSW, IPW and CZCW signing their talents away to exclusive deals rather than the "big league" promotions. They've lost a lot of their stalwarts like LA Star 1, Andrew Harper, Buck Winchester, Hawkeye Calhoun, Jebediah and most recently (and most damaging) Tennessee William who had of course been their main attraction and frequent Empire Champion. At one point they were even forced to vacate the Empire championship when Acid II moved north to CWA. It's left them with an ageing and creaking main event scene of former big league guys in Kurt Laramee, current Empire champion Flying Jimmy Foxx & John Greed who seems to be largely carrying the promotion in terms of delivering highly rated main event matches and winning back to back King Of New York titles. Ash Campbell is their only major star under 40 though he is a great asset and is himself a former Empire Champion. They do have some younger talents at Star level with Masked stranger and Ash Barnaby really coming on strong - Stranger in particular has seen his popularity rising due to his added exposure working for CZCW. Further down the card they do still have some of their staple acts. The Boys From The Yukon are still there plugging away, now 7 time tag team champions and likely headed for the hall of fame, constantly churning out reliably high ratings. The DiMeo Family are still around but they're in relative obscurity. Denny King is a reliable midcard workhorse and has enjoyed 3 good reigns as Tri-State Champion though he's now into his 40s. I'm somewhat surprised Geoff Borne hasn't ascended higher up the card, I guess held back by his lack of star quality. Brutus Milano has fallen oddly out of favour, cycling down the card from being Empire Champion and some time challenger for the COTT Championship in 2020 to a glorified jobber. In 2024 he picked up just two victories to 27 losses. They're not going anywhere and they're still just a couple of points away from reaching Medium size again. if they can hang on to a few of their more over, younger, acts and keep build some momentum they definitely have the financial power to start locking guys into deals and seriously building up but for now they seem to be stymied.