SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 This Diary Belongs To Don Loomis MONDAY 01/03/1920 Hello Son The fact that you are reading this means one of two things. Either you found my secret stash in the sock drawer, (in which case don't point the rifle at anything that don't deserve it,) or I've passed on. I hope I lived long enough to see you grow into a man and that me and you shared a beer or two. Im writing this as your mother hums to herself in front of the fire. She looks as beautiful as the day I met her, and she has that glow that pregnant women get. She says I'm crazy telling everybody that you are going to be a boy but I just know it. Loomis men have always produced strong healthy boys as their first born. Your Grandaddy, god rest him, used to say that it's because we drink straight out of the Mississippi river! Your mother and I aint got much in the way of material goods but I'm sure you will come to find that this is a house filled with love. I don't know what the future holds for the Loomis family but theres a chance I might not be around too much. I hope that when all's said and done you can read this diary and see that everything I did was for you and your mother and that I loved you both from the bottom of my Mississippi heart. The circus cannot pay what it used to and I'm getting too long in the tooth to be hustling for a living. That's why I've decided to start my own business.It seems like people around here aint impressed by freakshows and exotic animals any more. I figure you seen one Kangaroo you seen them all. In fact, the only thing still drawing a crowd is the strong men and the fighters. My best friend in the whole world Frank Norris takes this German kid by the name of Friedrich Herzog from town to town. Frank wagers there aint a man alive who can take his German in a wrestling match and so far he's been right. Thing is, they've been a little too successful, now nobody wants to put up the money to fight him! So, one day, me and Frank had a plan. What if I challenged Herzog and beat him clean? I'm just a regular looking fella, and If I could do it, surely they could to. Me and Frank went down to Biloxi with the German and I strangled the life out of that son of a bitch until he was spark out. Sure enough, the marks in the crowd ate it up, and Frank was inundated with challengers. The thing is, son, it was all an act. There's no way I could have done what I did to a man twice my size, yet the crowd believed in me every step of the way. From the look on Franks face as we counted out the money that night I could tell he was thinking what I was thinking. There was money to be made from staged fighting and we wanted to be the ones making it! Over the next few weeks we hit Columbus, Greenville, Jackson and Gulfport, and every night we would run the same angle. I'd choke out the German then wait in the hotel until Frank and Friedrich returned with a whole sack of money. By the time we returned home we had close to a thousand dollars which is a hell of a lot of money. It was enough for us to buy a battered old boxing ring full of blood stains and god knows what else. It wasn't much but it was a start. Your grandma and grandaddy on your mothers side thought we had lost our minds expecting good honest folks to pay to see a fixed fight. I tried to tell them that the crowd wouldn't know but in their eyes that only made matters worse. They said that with a new bride, a house to look after and a baby on the way I should be saving my money instead of throwing it away on fake wrestling. I said that the wrestling would be professional, not fake, and that only the outcomes would be known in advance. Hell, last month a dog track in California opened up and they use a fake rabbit, and it don't seem to bother the dogs much! Here I go rambling on and on! Your mother says that's my worst habit but as a promoter it's always been my best asset! So as I said, we had a ring, we booked a couple of small venues in and around the South East whilst your mother made up some posters saying we were gonna be running the first professional wrestling shows in the whole wide world! Southern Pro Wrestling was born. Now all we need is to find people dumb enough to come work for us! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 tuesday 02/03/1920 With my circus connections and Franks hospitality we met some very strange individuals right off the bat! Of course we had the big German Friedrich Herzog and we promised him he'd win more than he lost since it was off his back that all this was possible. Herzog jumped at the chance to earn a steady income as he wanted to bring his girlfriend over to the USA. I suggested our next port of call should be the circus. A Jap named Saita Kuroki had started working there a few months back as a human cannoball. Basically, the ringmaster would fire a cannon right into the poor guys chest night after night and he wouldnt budge an inch! He told me, in his broken English, that in Japan he had been a great and undefeated Sumo Wrestler, but the money was terrible, so he came to America seeking fame and fortune. Unfortunately there aint much call for sumo wrestlers in Mississippi, so unable to afford a ticket home, Kuroki began working in the circus. Like Herzog he was thrilled to be involved. After leaving Kuroki with a handshake and a bow, I took Frank to meet Levi Andrews. Levi was an Australian actor who played the famous Wallaby Wally in the silent films. Levi looked like the toughest son of a bitch you ever did meet but he talked like a gentleman. Thats why, now that talkies are becoming all the rage, he can't get the work he once did. So he brought his act to the big top, flying a boomerang all the way around the tent and back to his hands. I'd got to know him quite a bit and knew he was miserable doing the same boring trick night after night so told him he could have free range to do whatever he liked on our shows. Next stop was an old Gym in town where Frank first met the German. The place was full of boxers all hoping to be noticed. Me and Frank sat back pretending to be boxing promoters and watched them spar. We heard Joe Boone before we ever saw him, such was his loud booming voice and way with words. He got in the ring, still flapping his gums, and was knocked on his ass in twenty seconds flat. He wasn't much of a boxer, but with that physique and attitude, he could be just what we were looking for. Frank told Joe who we were and Joe decided that at 25 he was unlikely to ever make it big as a boxer so gave us a try. With four workers under our belt we went back to the Loomis house to toast our fledgling business. We figured three or four more guys and we would be ready for our first show but our contacts were starting to lead to dead ends. There was one place we hadn't tried but we didn't have the nerve to go. Surely they would laugh in our faces at the thought of working pre-determined bouts. Your mother, who had shown us nothing but support from the very beginning, said we should give it a go anyway. What did we have to lose? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 WEDNESDAY 03/03/1920 After your mother talked us into it, me and Frank found ourselves with front row seats to the amateur wrestling championships. If we hadn't felt out of our depth before we sure did now! We watched match after match featuring atheletic young men performing holds and manouvres the likes of which we had never seen. We nervously smiled at each other at the thought of our rag-tag bunch of rougues trying to compete with this! It was with more than a little trepidation that we approached the wrestlers between bouts. As we quite rightly estimated, most of them laughed in our faces. They had trained long and hard and they weren't going to throw it all away on some "fake bull****," as they called it. It was almost by accident that we noticed another group of wrestlers on our way out. Feeling out of place we tried to sneak out the back door and found ourself in a cramped side room. It was there that we saw the Mexicans, the Canadians and even a couple of Brits. The wrestlers that the promoter didn't think people would pay to see but who had a legitimate reason to be on the card. Some of these guys were really talented. To us they seemed a lot more exciting and technically sound than a lot of what we had seen in the main hall. We tried our pitch one more time with crossed fingers and crossed toes. To our surprise we made three more signings right there on the spot! I think they were sold on the fact that we had men from all over the world competing in the same ring in front of the same fans. And so our motley crew was expanded by a Mexican by the name of Emilio Suarez, a French Canadian called Daniel Loiselle and the English fella Anthony Henry. I gave them all my address and told them to call by at six in the evening the following day. It would be the first ever meeting of all the members of Southern Pro Wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 THURSDAY 04/03/1920 I don't know how but everybody fit under our tiny roof. Your mother made a huge pot of stew and our humble table groaned under the weight of so many mouths to feed. I told the guys that our first show was going to be in eight days at the rainbo bar and grill. Me and Frank figured friday night was a good night for fighting. We agreed on a system not unlike amatuer wrestling whereby a man had to win by pinning his opponents shoulders to the canvas or by making them submit. All we needed to do now was work out the winners. Friedrich and Joe Boone was going to be our first main event. The great war was still fresh in a lot of peoples minds and a local boy going up against an unstoppable German tank seemed like a match people would be willing to pay to see. Of course we wanted Joe to go over but Friedrich had other idea's. It seems that the human ego wont let a man loose even a staged contest without a fight! Friedrich stated that if he beat Boone then the people would rally behind their boy and twice as many would come to see the rematch. I had to agree he had a point. Below them, in the middle of the card, we planned a match between Anthony Henry and Daniel Loiselle, two amatuer wrestlers who had fought each other countless times in the past. Henry told us that his parents back in England were part of the aristocracy, so I asked him to act all snooty like on his way to the ring. We needed to give the crowd a reason to like or dislike these guys. Henry agreed and said he would lose the match to the Canadian because he knew Loiselle would make him look strong in defeat. We were going to bill our next match as a real life David vs Goliath, the four hundred pound Kuroki against the Mexican lightweight Emilio Suarez. Although Suarez was an excellent amatuer wrestler he had also been an acrobat in Mexico. Kuroki could throw Suarez around the ring whilst the leaping Mexican tried his best to take the giant off his feet. Kuroki would of course win the contest. Finally, without an opponent, we asked Levi if he had any ideas. Without missing a beat he simply said he wanted to fight a boxing Kangaroo. A boxing Kangaroo, can you believe it? Levi said he knew a man up in Tennessee, that he met whilst filming Wallaby Wally goes to town, who owned such a thing! And so we agreed that as long as Levi could get it down here in time he could fight the Kangaroo! The one thing we were missing was a referee. Somebody who could control all the carnage and pass on infomation to our grapplers. Frank said he knew a few people in the atheletics committee and was confident he could find somebody to officiate. In the meantime, we had a wrestling show to promote, and we only had eight days to do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingo Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Great idea i'll be reading this for sure can't wait for the first show ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 FRIDAY 05/03/1920 Over the next week or so our band of misfits travelled all over town to drum up business. Frank and Friedrich continued to challenge members of the public to try and take down the German and this time they made him look like a monster! Every day Joe Boone would barge through the gathered crowd with his boxing gloves on and challenge Herzog to a match!. Frank would hesitate before saying that, if Joe wanted a match, he would have to come down to The Rainbow Bar and Grill next friday. Kuroki continued his human cannonball routine but had begun to challenge a member of the audience to try and push him out of a circle he would draw on the floor. When a young Mexican stepped up to accept, the crowd were none the wiser. When he actually managed to barge Saita out of the circle, with the help of a well placed elbow below the belt, they were aghast. "Meet me at The Rainbow Bar and Grill next friday if you want a real fight!" screamed Emilio Suarez, making sure everybody in earshot could hear. Levi Andrews and I drove to Tennessee to bag ourselves a boxing Kangaroo and we stopped off everywhere we could to drum up interest in our fledgling show. Levi may have been dismissed by the movie folk but his good natured storytelling suited me just fine. He talked his way into many a free meal on our journey and convinced more than few sceptics to be at The Rainbow Bar and Grill next friday in the process. "Sir" Anthony Henry began walking around town with a bowler hat and a cane whilst his broad Wigan accent dissappeared to be replaced with a London twang. Everything was going well as our first show drew nearer and nearer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 Great idea i'll be reading this for sure can't wait for the first show ... Thankyou very much Jingo! It's great to know I have a reader! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 SATURDAY 06/03/1920 Frank was having a hard time convincing anybody from the atheletics committee to referee our matches. Time and time again they laughed in his face when he told them that the matches were not legitimate. As he left the headquarters he was approached by a young blonde woman named Wilma Slater. She told Frank how she had hoped to become a boxing ref but the committee wouldn't even talk to her because she was a woman. Every day she sat on the steps hoping to catch somebodies attention. Frank later told me he was taken by her straight away. He told her all about our situation as she listened on intently. We were in no position to worry about hiring a woman given that our show was only a week ago. Five minutes later we had our first referee, and Frank had a new target of his affecions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 SUNDAY 07/03/1920 Everybody came to The Loomis house on Sunday for a huge potroast and a progress update. Frank introduced everyone to Wilma and made sure to get a seat next to her. Anthony was the only one of our crew not to show up, but he had told Daniel that he was meeting some old friends in town, so we all just presumed he was running late. About an hour into our meeting there was a knock at the door and your mother answered. It was a police officer. He asked if we knew a man called Anthony Henry and I answered yes. He sat down at the table and told us all that the friends Anthony had met were cocaine dealers. It seems that the young Englishman had taken a particularly large amount before running under the hooves and wheels of a stage carriage. The officer said he was in a stable condition and we could visit him in the hospital. Frank, Daniel and I made the short journey to see Anthony. I should have been fuming with the boy for doing something so stupid so close to our first show. Instead I hoped and prayed he would be OK all the way there. When we saw him he looked a mess. He had two black eyes and a huge bump on his forehead. We dare not look at the rest of him. Anthony wasn't very coherent but I like to think he knew we were all there for him that night. All he said over and over again was sorry but we wouldn't hear any of it. I promised Anthony we would get him all the help he needed and vowed he would one day return to Southern Pro Wrestling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 FRIDAY 12/03/1920 Despite our problems the show had to go on. "Sir" Anthony Henry was removed from all our posters and we promoted the fact that the match between Boone and Herzog would be to crown a Mississippi State Champion. All our hard work had lead to this, our first show, and the excitement was unbearable. I milled around backstage with the wrestlers, going over the finishes to their matches again, whilst your mother took payment at the turnstile. As the opening bell drew near Helen, your mother, came backstage with a grim look on her face. I asked her how many tickets we had sold. After everything we had done to promote the show, we had managed to sell seventeen tickets. To say we were disappointed was an understatement. At two dollars a ticket we had made $34 from tickets. If you factor in the cost of hiring the Rainbow Bar, paying the wrestlers and Wilma the ref as well as paying for the ring itself, we had lost over $2,500 in one night! The show itself, whilst not a total disaster, fell short of our intentions. Saito Kuroki beat Emilio Suarez in little over twelve minutes despite the little Mexican's constant cheating. Kuroki's huge frame came crashing down on Suarez who stood little chance of getting his shoulders off the canvas. It was a promising start. The few fans we had were really behind Kuroki by the finish. I'll never forget the look on his face as he made his way back behind the small black curtain we had erected on the far side of the bar. His face was dripping with sweat, he could hardly breathe, but he was happy. Next up was Levi Andrews against the famous Boxing Kangaroo! Both competitors wore oversized boxing gloves and circled each other in the ring. Levi threw a few jabs but Skippy gave as much as he got! After three short rounds, Wilma declared Levi the winner as the crowd booed. It was clear that they were not interested in watching stunts such as these. After the match, Levi grabbed a microphone, and in his Aussie drawl challenged anybody backstage to come out and face him in a real match. He even went one further and said that he could pin anybodies shoulders to the mat for a count of three! Daniel Loiselle answered the call and the two men put on a decent display for the paying customers at ringside. As the close drew near Levi spun around the ring and floored Daniel with a huge right hand punch to the head! The Boomerang Punch was born and Levi did indeed pin his opponents shoulders for a count of three. Finally, Friedrich Herzog and Joe Boone made their way to the rickety old ring. I told the fans that this would decide the first ever Mississippi State Champion. I had to tell them because we couldn't afford a belt! Herzog and Boone certainly put on a show and had the crowd convinced that they were fighting for a real honour. Their match went on and on, perhaps a little too long for Herzog. The huge German was used to fighting short matches so had to constantly take long breaks as the crowd booed him. Everybody thought that Boone was actually going to do it! He sent Friedrich reeling into the ropes with a flurry of jabs and a vicious uppercut! Boone went for one more knockout punch but Herzog blocked it at the last moment and squashed Joe in the corner! He picked up the former boxer and slammed him into the canvas as the Wilma called the pin! Backstage, everybody was exhausted, but happy with how the show had gone. It had been a huge learning experience for everybody. There was a real feeling that there would be a lot more fans at our next show as those historic seventeen told their friends. With the money we lost that night Frank and I were unsure whether there would even be a second show to attend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 SATURDAY 13/03/1920 After the low turnout to our first show, me, Frank and your mother had to think long and hard about what to do next. We figured there was still money to be made in the wrestling business but that maybe it was more of a long term investment than we had first thought. With you only six months away we had to be careful. Ever the promoter, Frank went to every store, bar and local business he could think of with our vision of the future of professional wrestling. I don't know how he did it but he convinced enough people to sponsor our show to make a profit, as long as we kept our overheads down. With that, we decided to ride out this professional wrestling business and see where it took us. Southern Pro Wrestling was here to stay, and we had a fancy logo to prove it! http://i250.photobucket.com/albums/gg267/Chrisox/SPW/SPW.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 WEDNESDAY 17/03/1920 One thing was clear after our first show. We couldn't expect guys like Kuroki and Herzog to work for twenty minutes plus. We needed some new blood. One thing we were all worried about was exposing what we were doing. That is to say we didnt want the crowd to know we fixed the fights. We started a policy that wrestlers who were facing each other shouldn't be seen together in public. We wanted the fans to think that these guys really wanted to rip each others heads off, and we couldnt acheive that if they were shaking hands on the street! There's an old carnie word, "Kayfabe", which means protecting the business that we all started using as a cover whenever we were in public. This also meant that we were very careful when approaching potential new talent. Daniel had suggested to us one of his friends on the amateur circuit and I agreed to meet him at The Rainbow Bar. He was a simular build to Daniel, perhaps a little more muscular, and he had a good look about him. Daniel had helped break Tim Hernandez into wrestling in their native Canada where they had both wrestled for the national team. I asked him if he had heard about us and he said he had followed our first show with interest. I asked him to come to The Loomis house that evening and we would put him through his paces. That night, Herzog and Levi Andrews took turns beating the holy hell out of the poor guy! Tim didn't know what hit him! After two hours of torture they let him off the floor and he limped home. Even if we never saw the kid again at least he could warn anybody else who thought we were a bunch of fakes. SUNDAY 14/03/1920 As we sat down to eat our now traditional Sunday potroast, there was another knock at the door. After what had happened last week with Anthony I opened it with trepidation. I needn't have worried. It was Tim Hernandez, back for another night of pain! The kid saw everyone sat around the table enjoying each others company then looked back at me. I couldn't help but laugh at the look on his face! From that day on, Tim was one of us, one of the family. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astil Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Very nice. I always wanted to do a dynasty such as this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 Very nice. I always wanted to do a dynasty such as this. Thanks Astil. It's very liberating to start things from scratch and make up the characters as you go along! I feel attached to the guys already! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astil Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Quick question... do you give them pics in game or use Cpt. Wireframe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SpaceNinja3030 Posted October 14, 2009 Author Share Posted October 14, 2009 Quick question... do you give them pics in game or use Cpt. Wireframe? Im sorry I'm not sure what cpt. wireframe is. Any help with regards to pics would be much appreciated though as I would like to add a little colour to the diary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astil Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 Im sorry I'm not sure what cpt. wireframe is. Any help with regards to pics would be much appreciated though as I would like to add a little colour to the diary Shoot me a PM with any questions you have, alright? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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