Highlights: Tales Untold

[Blake Trask]

7th December 2010, SOTBPW Agujero Del Infierno

 

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http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z453/EddStoneNOTBPW/Watching/ChampagneLover.jpghttp://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z453/EddStoneNOTBPW/Events/vs7.jpghttp://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z453/EddStoneNOTBPW/Watching/ElDemonio_alt1.jpg

 

“La Alianza Del Terror holds the Campeón de Menor, El Demonio himself is one third of the Campeónes de Tríos with Los Enfermos. Eduardo, just think what could happen if Demonio can force Champagne Lover to tap out here!”

 

 

“Mateo I don’t know if I even want to think about that… Come on Antonio! You can do it!”

 

 

Almost as if roused by the semi kayfabe-breaking call of his name, the larger of the two men in the ring stirs for the first time in almost thirty seconds, beginning to struggle against the tight gogoplata known as the Eternal Agony. Underneath the mask of his opponent can be seen an utterly feral snarl, the challenger wrenching Champagne Lover this way and that, trying to force the tap out.

 

 

The crowd watch with bated breath, starting to believe – truly believe for the first time in a reign that has lasted a little over a year that the Lover could actually lose this title. This match has a whole different complexion to the defence made against this very same opponent in late October. Since then, Antonio has been forced to face Tijuana Vampire, Pirata Malvado (newly minted Campeón de Menor), Enrique Merino – a match lost after interference from every member of the La Alianza. He even recorded a victory against the legendary Phoenix and former friend El Fuerza, with an assist from Pablo Rodriguez.

 

 

The difference, this time, is that Champagne Lover has been worn down relentlessly, week after week and match after match. His hand wavers as he tries to wrangle his way out of the chokehold, approaching a minute locked in now, the Demon clenches it in as tightly as he can… Antonio’s hand drops…

 

 

And grips Demonio by the trunks! His trapped arm scrabbles around, finds purchase… CHAMPAGNE LOVER PLANTS DEMONIO WITH A HUGE POWERBOMB! The crowd explode as the dazed demonic luchador releases his hold, with Antonio wearily collapsing on top for the pin…

 

 

1! 2! 3NO! El Demonio shows great guts in managing to kick out! There is a long pause as Champagne Lover rolls off of his opponent and stares up at the ceiling, as if asking what more he can do. Demonio is practically out of it, showing his getting the shoulder up was more instinct than anything else. Referee Ramirez hits a count of eight before either man regains their footing, with Lover hauling himself unsteadily up with help from the ropes, clutching at his throat.

 

 

El Demonio is levering himself up too, lifting himself up onto his hands and knees. Too exhausted to go back on the offence, the Lover just watches, waiting for his moment… and gets it as Demonio gets one foot under himself, then the other, then finally swings around…

 

 

To find a Lover Stunner waiting-no! Blocked! Demonio drives Lover back a step, launches into the shining wizard known as the Terror Rising- Antonio catches Demonio’s knee in midair, transitions into a leg sweep, and emerges with Demonio caught in the step-over toehold portion of the Champagne Breakfast! He reaches forward to apply the STF fully… but Demonio propels himself up off the mat with both hands, rolling through and sending Champagne Lover bouncing into the ropes! Demonio scrambles up as the Lover comes back – Lover Stunn- No! Demonio HURLS Champagne away, scrambles after him to tuck the dazed champion’s head between his legs. The crowd start BAYING for Demonio’s blood as it becomes clear he’s aiming for a martinete piledriver!

 

 

As Referee Ramirez remonstrates with El Demonio, the challenger tries once, twice – struggling to lift up his larger opponent into position for the move. Demonio takes a deep breath, clenches his hands together more tightly, looks to go for the third and final lift to spike Champagne Lover directly onto his head… and Antonio manages to power out with a back body drop to a HUGE pop! Falling briefly to one knee in exhaustion, Lover looks right, looks left, sees no sign of any unwelcome guests, then climbs the turnbuckle, slowly ascending to the top rope. He pauses there for a moment, balances himself… and launches off for the absolutely beautiful Champagne Sunrise moonsault!

 

 

Which El Demonio isn’t there for.

 

 

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Unseen by Antonio, the referee, and seemingly half the audience, the Lover’s former, well… lover, Jennifer Heat, had crawled out from under the ring to tug Demonio out of the way! Even as Champagne Lover crashes and burns, Heat is already rolling out of the ring under the bottom rope, smiling innocently at the official as if she’s been at ringside all along.

 

 

Demonio crawls over, drapes an arm over Antonio for the cover, Ramirez reluctantly dropping to make the count.

 

 

1!

 

 

“Dear god… not this way, not like this.”

 

 

2!

 

 

“Not ANY way. Not El Demonio…”

 

 

3- NO! Lover kicks out to a massive ovation! El Demonio slowly pushes himself to his knees, then clutches at his mask, his normally psychotic eyes wide with disbelief.

 

 

Then narrow with evil intentions.

 

 

Demonio grabs hold of the Lover again, and his exhausted opponent is unable to fight off the application of a second Eternal Agony! It’s locked in tight – even tighter than the first – and Antonio doesn’t have enough left for a powerbomb, Demonio making extra sure that this isn’t a possibility by rolling the hold sideways.

 

 

But there it is! That little adjustment brought Lover JUST close enough to the edge of the ring that he can struggle, contort himself… and get a shining white boot onto the bottom rope! The angle of Champagne’s body makes this lifeline look almost as painful as what he’s saving himself from, but the ropebreak is there! The crowd call to Referee Ramirez, plead for him to notice…

 

 

And as the official turns to look, Jennifer Heat, blocked from sight by the bodies of the competitors, has given the ring rope a healthy tug, removing it from the reach of Antonio.

 

 

El Demonio immediately rolls himself twice, flipping the Eternal Agony over onto the opposite side, but more importantly, into the centre of the ring.

 

 

Champagne Lover’s eyes roll back in his head.

 

 

Referee Ramirez grips a limp hand.

 

 

It falls once.

 

 

Twice.

 

 

Thrice.

 

 

And the bell rings for a new Campeón du Mundo, with the crowd duelling between wanting to hate Demonio’s guts and wanting to praise the incredible match they just watched.

 

 

El Demonio def. Champagne Lover for the Campeón du Mundo SOTBPW

Grade: A*

 

 

~*~

 

 

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And with that, we cut to a small office packed with paperwork, post-it notes and memorabilia. The famous red and black Demonio mask is hung on a wall, along with a replica of the Campeón du Mundo SOTBPW and a small trophy. Seated in front of the camera with a trademark smirk is the man beneath the mask of El Demonio, revealed to the world years ago as his ‘true identity’, Juan Felipe Chávez. Post-retirement, the SOTBPW legend is still closely associated with the promotion that gave him his biggest breaks, and more than a few current SOTBPW roster members picked up a few tricks at Juan’s gym.

 

 

“Ah yes… my fourth reign,” the smile becomes more one of fond reminiscence than outright arrogance. “My favourite, really. But how could you not like something that went so exceptionally well? Antonio and I had feuded for much of the year already, La Alianza Del Terror storyline combining with Antonio’s differences with El Fuerza…”

 

 

“And towards the end of 2010, everything just seemed to come together. It all clicked. Antonio and I had a match in September that was – no questions asked – a match of the year candidate, and it really made people sit up and take notice. They contrasted that match with Antonio’s title defence at El Día Nacional De Lucha against the youngster Velocidad and obviously somebody got to thinking ‘Wow, see what heights Champagne Lover can carry El Demonio to!’ “

 

 

Demonio lets out a cackle, another call back to his days as Lucha Libre’s own demon. “Antonio was on fire at that point. He was wrestling tours in Japan all year for every company that would take him – Burning Hammer, Warrior Engine, Japan Pro – it didn’t matter to him how small. I suppose looking back it’s little surprise that he made Japan his full time commitment back in… was it 2014?”

 

 

“2013, when he signed exclusively for WLW,” says the unseen interviewer. Chávez nods.

 

 

“Ah yes, that’s correct. The man was working like-“ Juan smirks. “A demon. Wrestling on TV for us, flying out to Japan to work a match or two, then coming back home to do the whole thing all over again. I remember just before our second title match, whilst we were doing the angle that I was throwing everything I could at Antonio to wear him down, he had another fantastic match - that one was with Enrique Merino, and generally speaking the title match just had this great buzz about it. And then when we had the match itself... the contest that we actually pulled off was nothing short of incredible.”

 

 

The smirk fades again, this time into something that’s almost abashed. “I was so ecstatic after the match that if Enrique and Jose – ah, that’s Tijuana Vampire, sorry – that if those two hadn’t been holding my arms in the air I think I’d have given Antonio a hug.”

[Blake Trask]

DIARY CONCEPT/EXPLANATION

 

 

Okay, let me think on this one...

 

I would call this a Watcher diary, except really, it's not. In that this 'universe' is not one that I've just been passively observing The save that I'm recounting here is one that I play frequently - probably more than my NOTBPW diary save, since it's easier to book without writing up results. The game in question is a standard CVerse 0/0/0/0 which I've been working on for six years and change, but since I'm such a fan of seeing how the game world develops over time, I frequently check up on how other promotions and workers are doing out of pure curiosity, and because I'm a writer with an active imagination, my brain started to make up stories based around all of these companies and people. Tales Untold means exactly what it sounds like; stories from a private game that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day, because I wasn't writing them. Refined to its simplest form... this is the "What strange things is the AI up to?" portion of the What's going on in your game? thread made into a narrative. Well, several, actually. There's a number of characters I'd like to follow (for practicality's sake I'll probably not track whole promotions except in brief, otherwise it would run the risk of turning into a full diary of companies I didn't even book) and considering the pace I'm playing this save at and the backlog of material I have, I doubt I'll have a shortage of ideas.

 

My company, ASCW (Regional in 2016) might crop up once or twice, but mostly in passing mention if I can help it. I don't want to treat the promotion as if it doesn't exist, but it sort've goes against the point to focus too much on ASCW or its workers.

 

I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to run through characters in a linear fashion or go back and forth between them. I suspect the latter, mostly because unlike Demonio, a fair proportion of the guys in mind don't have a distinct ending point for their 'stories' (or at the very least, the narrative covers a lot more than the year or so stretch that the Demonio tale will detail). As well as, if I focus on them one at a time, it puts some characters a LONG way to the back of the queue, and I don't really want that.

 

Finally, I can't deny that the style in the second part of the above segment owes a lot to Phantom Stranger (who is undoubtedly the biggest influence in my diary writing overall), specifically his Philly Power Pro Wrestling Diary back on TEW 08, where the 'behind the scenes' sections were presented in a similar kind of retrospective fashion. So I'd just like to say a thank you to PS, as well as all the stellar work of the re-renderers and belt makers whose work will undoubtedly be seen at one point or another over the course of the diary.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

* If you haven't read said PPPW diary, then you ought to be ashamed. It's awesome. It can be found here.

** The unmasked identity of El Demonio (Juan Felipe Chávez) was pretty much made up out of the whole cloth. The render you see there is Carlos Arroyo, either a CV77 or 97 worker, whose picture I am unfortunately unsure who to credit for.

*** The Jennifer Heat you see also wasn't designed for her specifically, I just assigned it to her because I like it. Another case of not being quite certain, although I believe the render itself is J Silver's work.

[Boltinho]

reading this sir.

 

I love things like this.

 

But then again Im the kind of guy who writes bios for random gens that Im not ever going to hire

[Spud1305]

Love the concept of this.

The first segment was very well written, could imagine the SOTBPW crowd going crazy over that match. Can't wait to see what other stories you have planned.

[Blake Trask]

reading this sir.

 

I love things like this.

 

But then again Im the kind of guy who writes bios for random gens that Im not ever going to hire

 

*Ma'am

 

Going to regret my username for some time. xD.

 

Thanks for your interest, I do pretty much the exact same thing, lol.

 

 

Love the concept of this.

The first segment was very well written, could imagine the SOTBPW crowd going crazy over that match. Can't wait to see what other stories you have planned.

 

Thanks very much! It's very appreciated. For some reason writing a match with a story perspective in mind is a lot easier than for my more conventional diary, hahaha.

[Blake Trask]

http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z453/EddStoneNOTBPW/Watching/CarlosArroyo.jpg

 

 

Chávez leans back in his seat, an introspective look on his face. In the moment of silence, muffled calls and shouts can be heard through the office door. Training is in session.

 

 

"I think that the only feeling more incredible than winning the title of a company you care so much about... is winning the title in a match that you knew tore the house down. And knowing that every person in that arena is loathing you for it."

 

 

The man who was once El Demonio smiles the smile of a person who has spent much of their life being hated and has loved every second of it.

 

 

"Sometimes they say that a match like that, a true A*, that it's the equivalent of a lightning strike - a flash of brilliance and then it vanishes. So many different factors aligning, and not just correctly, but perfectly. Antonio and I had higher stock than ever - he thanks to his pure ability and myself thanks to La Alianza, the fans were well invested. The skill was there, though I do not believe that I can compare at all to Champagne Lover. And we had..." Demonio smiles fondly. "An understanding."

 

 

~*~

 

 

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Enrique Merino, former member of Los Enfermos, former Campeón de Mundo, sprawls laconically on a sofa of white leather, set to a backdrop of a high-rise apartment. The decor screams of a man of means, and the confidence to flaunt those means. This interview has clearly already begun, as Merino gives a nod and a wry smile.

 

 

"Yeah... Demonio and the Lover, they had a connection. If you'd ever wrestled, then you'd know that some guys, you just share a link with. Me and Jose had that when we teamed together, not so much when we wrestled," Merino snorts, rolling his eyes. "And what kind've dumbass idea was it to split up the most legendary tag team in Lucha Libre history, anyway?"

 

 

Merino pauses just long enough to seem as if he wants an answer, and the offscreen interviewer begins.

 

 

"From what I hea-"

 

 

"-A terrible idea. But that's off the topic, right? Right. Well... what Demonio and Champagne had was an... instinctive grasp of each other. They just clicked, you know? They knew how to play off all their big spots, they knew how to move in sync, to make the moves flow. And it worked. Each and every time."

 

 

Pulling himself up a little, Merino's expression turns more than a little smug. "'Course, the couple of times I got to work Champagne, you'd hardly call them curtain-jerkers. The best of workers don't need those kinds of boosts to put on great matches, 'cause they can carry the excitement on their own. Y'know... the year of Merino might've come along if Champagne hadn't headed to Japan... Merino vs. Lover would have blown the roof off."

 

 

~*~

 

 

http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z453/EddStoneNOTBPW/Watching/ChampagneLover.jpg

 

 

Antonio Maxi Marquez, better known as Champagne Lover to the Mexican fans, has a surprisingly simple home. It's quiet, secluded and traditionally Japanese - sliding doors of wood and paper cutting the house into sections, panelled floors, complete with rush mats and sets of cushions, one of which Marquez sits upon cross legged.

 

 

He gives the camera a quiet little smile. "Wrestling Juan was like meeting an old friend. You know one another's ways and habits, and in the ring... you move as one."

 

 

~*~

 

 

http://i1190.photobucket.com/albums/z453/EddStoneNOTBPW/Watching/CarlosArroyo.jpg

 

 

Chávez's expression is thoughtful.

 

 

"Make no mistake; were it not for that stroke of fortune, we would not be speaking to one another now. Without the chemistry between Antonio and I, there would have been no 'Daemonic Reign', there would have been no 'Year of Terror'," He chuckles. "You probably would not have even seen that fourth title victory, and certainly not over the mighty Champagne Lover," that last is added with no trace of mockery.

 

 

Juan Felipe picks up a pen from his desk and toys with it for a couple of seconds. "That was the feud that put SOTBPW truly onto the map, you understand? Imagine our excitement that December, imagine our excitement when the storyline had not run its course... but was only beginning."

 

 

"It was..." Chávez exhales and grins. "Marvellous."

[Phantom Stranger]

Looks like I should jump aboard here.

[Hashasheen]

Looks like I should jump aboard here.

 

Same. This is looking awesome.

 

Sidenote: I had a similiar idea a while back of a round-robin for people in the community to do like this, explaining away incredible moments in their save-games. But then I realized half the thread would probably be Eidenhoak doing Big Smack Scott impressions and wisely filed that away.

[Eidenhoek]

Same. This is looking awesome.

 

Sidenote: I had a similiar idea a while back of a round-robin for people in the community to do like this, explaining away incredible moments in their save-games. But then I realized half the thread would probably be Eidenhoak doing Big Smack Scott impressions and wisely filed that away.

 

Who the **** is Eidenhoak?