Wrestling Timelines: 1986

[jhd1]

On 1/26/2023 at 4:20 AM, rocketman151 said:

Glad to hear about this one. To my knowledge there has never been a 1986 mod in any TEW game

I think you are correct, or at least I'm not aware of one and I did look. It's a fantastic year - the WWF are fully established following WrestleMania I and are starting to build their roster of "megapowers", but the remaining territories have enough stars to be of interest to players. As with the ThunderVerse, all promotions are designed to be fun and to be playable, so although somewhere like Central States or Florida will be financially tough, if you can balance the books and hold on to some of your more established names then you really have something to build from.

Over the past few days I've finished off the regional popularities (i.e. unless absolutely necessary, workers have different pops in different regions) of all workers except for Mexico which will happen over the next week or so. I've also been bulking out the British free agent pool which has proven a fun rabbit hole to go down, but one that requires a lot of guess work and using my experience mod balancing rather than any really detailed information about those workers. Watcher testing is going well too; other than the women's divisions getting too much time on cards the AI is behaving pretty well (Hulk Hogan vs King Kong Bundy is a regular main event for WrestleMania II which is good because he's far from the #2 worker on the roster in January). There are some finances to sort out; CSP (Puerto Rico) tends to go bust which I need to address but I'm not too concerned about that.

My plan is to "showcase" the WWF over the weekend and then I'll alternate through the companies so that we have one big then one small etc. That should hopefully cover people's interests in a reasonably fair way.

[Dalton]

1 hour ago, jhd1 said:

Watcher testing is going well too; other than the women's divisions getting too much time on cards the AI is behaving pretty well...

I know the newest patch was meant to fix this, have you seen a noticeable difference?

[jhd1]

On 1/27/2023 at 10:11 PM, Dalton said:

I know the newest patch was meant to fix this, have you seen a noticeable difference?

I actually missed that in the patch notes. Looking at a watcher from last night (the first I'd run after updating to 1.43) it does look like the number of matches has reduced. Whereas I had 5 women's matches at WrestleMania in a previous watcher, I've now got one on the main card and one on the pre-show. The two SNMEs (January and March) had two women's matches on, but as they're lesser events that's not massively surprising. The AWA's Battlestar event had three women's matches, but they were pretty well booked actually. StarCage in March only had the one (plus one in the pre-show). CWF only had one at Battle of the Belts II so I think it's doing the trick.

Speaking of women's wrestling, I've been adding some names to AJW to stop them from going on a hiring spree. I'm discovering that it was very common for joshi wrestlers to only work two or three years and retire which might complicate things a little but I'm pretty sure there will be a way to add relevant wrestlers in without overloading the database with workers unnecessarily. Are there any 1980s joshi fans about? I've found that results for the promotion in 1986 are a bit thin on the ground (at least in English) so I'm not entirely sure how their schedule was set up etc. If you think you can help just drop me a PM

[jhd1]

Company Preview

World Wrestling Federation

Company Tour

Championships

The one title that is rarely treated as in real life is the WWF Women's Tag Team titles (though given that the Glamour Girls held it in real life until 1988 and it wasn't seen very often that's not surprising). Players can always retire it if they aren't happy with the AI's booking. That said, I do need to mess around with the defence frequencies as they're currently all set to default so that might help.

For those historically minded players, the mod also contains full histories for the International Heavyweight, International Tag Team, Junior Heavyweight, North American Heavyweight, US Heavyweight and US Tag Team titles.

AI Event Booking

Interestingly, this isn't the first AI-booked WrestleMania II I've seen to be held in Jacksonville. No idea why that's a favourite of Vince's! As you can see the AI treats SNME as a lesser event pretty well, although the Hulkster rarely appears. The women's division booking is a bit hit and miss, although setting the Women's title to be defended on bigger shows will probably see Dawn Marie and Linda Gonzales returned back to their position of forgotten to time in exchange for Moolah against someone else.

Closing comments

The World Wrestling Federation has come together really well within the mod so far. The company has a great roster, as you would expect for 1986, but a whole heap of talent hat it could potentially steal from its rivals. The WWF's deal with NBC allows Saturday Night's Main Event to run pretty well, particularly with a player booking, whilst the "Grandest Stage of Them All" is treated appropriately by the AI and often sees it book Hulk Hogan vs King Kong Bundy as the main event as in real life. The company begins with talent trade agreements with Lutte Internationale and Stampede Wrestling to attempt to go some way to replicating the unusual relationship it had with those promotions. As you would expect, in-game the AI always ends these relationships early on because of their relative size differences, but I've left it in for now for the player's benefit. In longer term watchers. the AI continues to behave itself although runs into its usual problem of not always pushing its bright young talents (Bret Hart for example), quickly enough. Tully Blanchard vs Hulk Hogan as the main event of WrestleMania IV was a nice surprise though! Financially they make money hand over fist so it'll be the usual case of trying to find something to spend it all on rather than worrying about running out!

The WWF is also the company where bio work and employment histories has begun - I'll release a beta before they are finished or you'll never get your hands on it, but its a good place to see how the finished version will look.

[jhd1]

The format of these is very much up to the reader so if anyone wants to see different things going forward just say. Happy to answer any questions as these are posted as well.

[Dalton]

Those look great! Do you plan on having stable graphics as well?

[jhd1]

30 minutes ago, Dalton said:

Those look great! Do you plan on having stable graphics as well?

Thanks Dalton! Yes, I've already done some of them but the plan is to have most of the stables at the beginning of the game with one. Some, particularly those in Mexico, might not if there's nothing at all to work from.

For what it is worth, all of the logos have been created from scratch (albeit some, such as the WWF design above, are based on some done by @gazwefc83). It just gives a bit more consistency when I'm working from a single template file.

[LordofGustav]

It seems good so far, i'm already thinking on some alternate versions of the gimmicks we know and love! Not saying which ones.

Can't wait for it.

[alvarasus]

So what does Jim Crockett Promotions and UWF look like? It looks very promising to say the least. 

[jhd1]

Company Preview

Jim Crockett Promotions

Company Tour

Note - I need to update the JCP logo with the new font to match the others, so ignore that for now!

Championships

I originally placed the NWA World's Heavyweight Championship as an alliance title, but it didn't behave very well and until 1992 it was basically a JCP title anyway. I'm open to a discussion about this however, and happy to play around a bit more. For the time being the only NWA alliance titles are the World Women's and World Women's Tag Team belts. As with the WWF titles above I need to do some tweaking of prestige and defence frequency but on the whole things look fairly realistic. It's not uncommon for Flair to drop the title to Race; no idea why the AI likes that but it does. As with Hogan's WWF title, because only a handful of JCP shows are classed as "Normal Events" at the start of the game, the NWA World's title doesn't appear in events very often which is frustrating. I could try switching their in-between events to tour shows to see if that helps.

AI Event Booking

The above is just three random events from the first four months of a JCP watcher (primarily so I could get their first "proper" event, the Crockett Cup, in there). As you can see there's definitely an old-school NWA flavour to the AI's booking which is great to see (and very different from the WWF booking). The AI keeps the Four Horsemen together as well which is always a relief as it does have a tendency to scrap stables (not in this mod per se, just generally) without any rhyme or reason!

The Viewer's Choice deal was signed by the AI - I do need to finish off broadcasters as they're being added in as they are needed. For now I might just limit the companies to 1 and add in a Closed Circuit option for JCP to use (set to only Normal Events).

Closing comments

Jim Crockett Promotions is a fun promotion to play and a great alternative for those who prefer wrestling to sports entertainment. The AI treats them well; financially and they make a lot of money even without a PPV deal. JCP have a strong roster and whilst the AI sticks to the east coast in order to try and grow to big (as per the size criteria) the player can also look towards the likes of Texas and Chicago if they want to follow Dusty's path. Whilst he is usually beaten to the punch by Vince McMahon, Jim Crockett Jr will also look to take over rival promotions and real life can be mimicked if the player can get to Kansas and Florida before the WWF.

Although as mentioned above the first release will only contain histories and bios for workers of the WWF, JCP is pretty much complete at this point and only really needs its broadcasting deals and titles finishing up.

[jhd1]

Thanks for the request @alvarasus! I'll cover UWF in the next couple of days and then if no other requests come in I'll return to the regularly scheduled alternation with Polynesian Pro Wrestling.

[alvarasus]

Isn't Ole and Arn Anderson the National Tag Team Champions to start 1986?

[jhd1]

1 hour ago, alvarasus said:

Isn't Ole and Arn Anderson the National Tag Team Champions to start 1986?

The National Tag Team titles were retired on 1 January 1986; I've not actually added those lineages yet (because they were almost entirely in Georgia and I haven't gotten around to adding their titles). The NWA Mid-Atlantic World Tag Team titles (which would eventually become the WCW World Tag titles) were won by the Rock 'n' Roll Express at Starrcade 1985 (from the Koloffs).

I'm not 100% sure what to do with the US Tag Team titles (which replaced the National Tag titles in September) because you can't add yet to debut titles; given they did get used regularly until 1992 and were first won in 1986 I will probably add them.

[LordofGustav]

JCP looks promising! I can't wait for the others to appear.

I have decided to stop my mod plans for now to play yours once it's released, because i'm looking to learn from you.

[Dalton]

3 hours ago, jhd1 said:

The National Tag Team titles were retired on 1 January 1986; I've not actually added those lineages yet (because they were almost entirely in Georgia and I haven't gotten around to adding their titles). The NWA Mid-Atlantic World Tag Team titles (which would eventually become the WCW World Tag titles) were won by the Rock 'n' Roll Express at Starrcade 1985 (from the Koloffs).

I'm not 100% sure what to do with the US Tag Team titles (which replaced the National Tag titles in September) because you can't add yet to debut titles; given they did get used regularly until 1992 and were first won in 1986 I will probably add them.

Not a perfect suggestion by any means, but maybe adding the US Tag Team titles as retired titles, so the user can simply flip them to active? I think the AI has the capability to do the same? BigPapa did this with some titles in the 2013 mod.

[jhd1]

1 hour ago, Dalton said:

Not a perfect suggestion by any means, but maybe adding the US Tag Team titles as retired titles, so the user can simply flip them to active? I think the AI has the capability to do the same? BigPapa did this with some titles in the 2013 mod.

Yeah, that had crossed my mind. Not sure how the AI will deal with it but there are more than enough titles for JCP that one more being ignored by the AI isn't going to make much difference. I've added that now, as well as the NWA Mid-Atlantic Tag Team titles which were retired in 1985 (and "merged" with the National Tag titles @alvarasus mentioned to become the US Tag titles).

I'm now at a position where everyone is statted and popped again (having added a load of British free agents and filled out the AJW roster). If anyone is interested in doing some testing, please get in touch

[Jugg]

Hey, this is quite an interesting mod you've got there.

I was going to talk about the NWA World Heavyweight Championship not being in an alliance, but it seems like you kept it in JCP for a valid reason, so I respect your decision.
But what about the other NWA championships that were going around at the time? Are they in an alliance or are they in a specific promotion as well?

I'm also a big Joshi Wrestling fan, so would it be possible to give us a preview of AJW when you're done? 
Also, are you planning to make the mod playable until modern times (~2020-2022)?

[jhd1]

On 2/6/2023 at 9:39 AM, Jugg said:

Hey, this is quite an interesting mod you've got there.

I was going to talk about the NWA World Heavyweight Championship not being in an alliance, but it seems like you kept it in JCP for a valid reason, so I respect your decision.
But what about the other NWA championships that were going around at the time? Are they in an alliance or are they in a specific promotion as well?

I'm also a big Joshi Wrestling fan, so would it be possible to give us a preview of AJW when you're done? 
Also, are you planning to make the mod playable until modern times (~2020-2022)?

As I mentioned above, the only alliance titles currently are the NWA Women's and NWA Women's Tag titles. By this point the major titles in the NWA were all controlled by Crockett (having taken the ones left by Georgia's closing). I might make the NWA National Heavyweight Championship an alliance title because in real life it was pretty quickly merged with the US Heavyweight title and could offer something a bit different for an alternate history. I will add the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship as an alliance belt because that one did move around a bit more.

In terms of AJW, absolutely, I'll do that one after the UWF.

Regarding making the mod being playable until modern times, if I can continue working on the mod long enough then that is the hope. For the first (several) release(s) future workers will only be until the mid-90s probably which will cover the majority of people's playtime. The number of future workers will then increase over time along with any bug fixes.

[jhd1]

Apologies for going quiet on this everyone, I was quite unwell over the past week and it completely wiped me out. I'm starting to pick up a bit so expect the UWF and AJJ updates over the course of the week.

[Mattywood]

Hope you're feeling better, jhd1. Looking forward to seeing a mod that covers 1986. Just make sure Jim Crockett doesn't move his office to Dallas & buy any promotions. 😛

One question I do have, & maybe this more appropriate for the General Questions thread on the General Discussions board, so apologies if that is the case. But I noticed on the AI results for the WWF, the Dream Team wrestled King Tonga & Moondog Spot in a cage match. What influences the AI to book cage matches? Sometimes those can be so random.

[jhd1]

On 2/14/2023 at 12:19 AM, Mattywood said:

One question I do have, & maybe this more appropriate for the General Questions thread on the General Discussions board, so apologies if that is the case. But I noticed on the AI results for the WWF, the Dream Team wrestled King Tonga & Moondog Spot in a cage match. What influences the AI to book cage matches? Sometimes those can be so random.

It definitely seems random, although whether they are booked at all is based upon the product. You do (speaking very unscientifically) see more cage matches for the likes of WCWA and JCP than promotions like PNW which is something at least. Sometimes it works really well (like the Magnum TA/Ivan Koloff cage match) and sometimes it's just a bit odd (like the one you mentioned). Then again, teaming King Tonga and Moondog Spot is an AI special all in of itself!

UWF is coming up tomorrow; I realised as I was doing the AI booking screenshots that the watcher I had used for JCP was done before I gave Eddie Gilbert any booking skills so the ratings for the UWF were skewed (downwards). I might get AJJ done tomorrow as well if I can.

[jhd1]

Company Preview

Universal Wrestling Federation

Company Tour

Championships

Couple of points with the UWF titles; at this point in time they weren't actually known as the UWF titles because the company hadn't yet been rebranded but because you can't rename titles by narrative it seemed sensible to go with the UWF from the start of 1986. The UWF Heavyweight Championship doesn't normally include the North American Heavyweight lineage either but it seemed sensible in the circumstances. That said, if people think it would be better to split them out I can set the North American Heavyweight title to inactive and add in a new, history-free UWF Heavyweight Championship.

In real-life Butch Reed dropped the title on 1 January 1986 (and left the promotion soon after), but I opted to keep him as champion for the game start. Again, if the majority rule is to give it to Dick Slater I'm happy to change it. The AI treats the titles well, albeit the latest watcher had runs for the random duos of Chavo Guerrero & Butch Reed and then Dick Murdoch & Koko Ware. Why not!

AI Event Booking

As you can see (particularly now I've fixed the booking stats for Eddie Gilbert), the UWF has a great starting roster with the potential for some fantastic matches, particularly at the top of the card. The lower card is a bit less strong, with the likes of Kelly Kiniski doing his best to ruin both the Kiniski and Masked Superstar legacy with mediocrity. Some smart hirings to bulk out the bottom of the card could help and there are a couple of possible stars in the midst; Blade Runner Rock and Blade Runner Flash in particular look like they could be ones to watch...

I'm in two minds about giving the UWF a home arena; because of the importance of Dallas and Houston (over OK) they tend to hold shows there rather than Oklahoma City or Tulsa. It's not ideal, but would at least differentiate their results from WCWA.

Because the UWF didn't hold PPVs I don't have event names for them. I'll probably just add a generic UWF Live Event or something similar to avoid names like UWF Hollyweird!

Closing comments

The Universal Wrestling Federation is in a position that fits the AI pretty well. If they can retain the likes of Jake Roberts and Ted DiBiase then they have a strong upper card that is more than capable of putting on some fantastic shows. If their top card is stolen, however, they'll struggle a lot more. They also struggle to rise at the speed of the likes of JCP and the WWF because their syndicated slot is significantly smaller. Still, they do have a national reach which could help massively to fight off the financial pressures faced by the more regionally televised promotions (like CWF). In year-plus watchers the company does reasonably well financially; I haven't added in a narrative for the oil crash yet but that'll have an impact in their longer-term viability.

Technically speaking Eddie Gilbert wasn't the head booker at this point in time, but it was the best option to allow Ernie Ladd to go off and commentate at WrestleMania II if players want to. He is a free agent at the game start though so if UWF players want him they can usually get in there without too many problems.  

The promotion also didn't open in 1950; most sources say "1950s" and that seemed an easy short-hand. If anyone has a more specific date just let me know.

In terms of finishing off, the UWF is pretty much done (aside from the usual bios and employment histories). Changes like whether to scrap the multi-taping schedule (the AI ends it after a month every time) or leave it in will become clear when people start testing a bit more.

Coming next: All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling

[Jaysin]

For UWF you could give them a monthly UWF SuperCard event. 

[jhd1]

Any Quebec wrestling fans able to identify the referee in the image below? It's from 1986 but the ring announcer speaks far too quickly for me to catch the name. I've already got an image of Andre Roy so I'm hoping this is Eugene Brie but really can't tell!

[spiffyone]

Just found out about this mod being worked on. Wonderful! Was hoping someone would work on that year, as it was a big turning point year for the business, and probably the last real time up until the Monday Night Wars that the WWF was somewhat vulnerable to the competition, IMHO. Warning: long response post ahead.

On 1/28/2023 at 5:19 PM, jhd1 said:

The AWA's Battlestar event had three women's matches, but they were pretty well booked actually. StarCage in March only had the one (plus one in the pre-show). CWF only had one at Battle of the Belts II so I think it's doing the trick.

Speaking of women's wrestling, I've been adding some names to AJW to stop them from going on a hiring spree. I'm discovering that it was very common for joshi wrestlers to only work two or three years and retire which might complicate things a little but I'm pretty sure there will be a way to add relevant wrestlers in without overloading the database with workers unnecessarily. Are there any 1980s joshi fans about? I've found that results for the promotion in 1986 are a bit thin on the ground (at least in English) so I'm not entirely sure how their schedule was set up etc. If you think you can help just drop me a PM

That Battlestar event wasn't actually an AWA event, but a Pro Wrestling USA event that kind of borrowed from CWF's own previously Battlestar events (and indeed essentially became a CWF event itself as in Summer of '86 CWF hosted "Battle of the Stars II", not to be confused with their Battle of the Belts events).

As for AJW: yeah, they had a forced retirement rule in place, where the wrestlers "aged out", automatically retiring at 26 years old iirc. That was later changed, because it is what brought about their own competition when wrestlers who didn't want to retire would leave and join other nascent promotions. As for their schedule: it is kinda hard to discern, but there are some of their TV shows from '86 on youtube which have some scrolling text showing upcoming tour events (like all Japanese promotions at the time, they were strictly tour schedules with periodic big events). That should give you some idea of their schedule.

On 2/4/2023 at 6:28 AM, jhd1 said:

I originally placed the NWA World's Heavyweight Championship as an alliance title, but it didn't behave very well and until 1992 it was basically a JCP title anyway. I'm open to a discussion about this however, and happy to play around a bit more. For the time being the only NWA alliance titles are the World Women's and World Women's Tag Team belts. As with the WWF titles above I need to do some tweaking of prestige and defence frequency but on the whole things look fairly realistic. It's not uncommon for Flair to drop the title to Race; no idea why the AI likes that but it does. As with Hogan's WWF title, because only a handful of JCP shows are classed as "Normal Events" at the start of the game, the NWA World's title doesn't appear in events very often which is frustrating. I could try switching their in-between events to tour shows to see if that helps.

While Crockett definitely pulled back on Flair's touring as champion, it was still somewhat in effect in '86. TBQH, there's no elegant solution for how JCP handled it. It was still an alliance title, technically, but one in which Crockett kept tight control due to his position within the NWA hierarchy at the time. I've tried editing dbs to make it so that title is rarely defended by setting the event frequency to being very infrequent and the rest to "none", but again...inelegant as a solution as the AI will still borrow the belt on occasion. I have been thinking about creating a copy of the belt, one alliance controlled and one JCP owned and controlled - both with the same lineage. Maybe that would work to mimic the '86-92 history a bit, if the alliance belt is set to being inactive. Again, no elegant solution there with the way the game works, but maybe that would suffice.

BTW, the World Women's and World Women's Tag Team belts were not actually alliance belts at the time, per se. They were both essentially traveling regional belts controlled by Moolah at first until she went to WWF. The later World Women's belts were also territory and/or worker controlled. There's no real way to mimic that in the game, though. Wish there was, as it would make the similar, but much more headache-inducing situation of worker controlled titles in Mexico workable. But I guess making them alliance belts in games somewhat mimics it enough.

The NWA National title to which you later referred definitely wasn't an alliance belt, though, and shouldn't be treated as such. There were a few "National" belts used in respective territories, none controlled by the NWA as an alliance.  They were promotion specific belts using the NWA moniker. The one that you may be referring to is that used in Georgia, which by '86 was essentially swallowed up by JCP (it's a bit more complicated that than, but long story short  the NWA supported Georgia territory and its titles were taken over by JCP once Crockett got the exclusive on wrestling TV on TBS and brought in Ole). I would just have the Georgia belts Crockett used for a time be retired/inactive and owned by JCP with the original owners being Championship Wrestling from Georgia or Georgia Championship Wrestling if you prefer).

And I dunno if setting them as a touring schedule would help things, as it would hinder their house show ability.

On 2/17/2023 at 11:12 AM, jhd1 said:

The UWF Heavyweight Championship doesn't normally include the North American Heavyweight lineage either but it seemed sensible in the circumstances. That said, if people think it would be better to split them out I can set the North American Heavyweight title to inactive and add in a new, history-free UWF Heavyweight Championship.

In-story, the MSW North American Heavyweight championship and the UWF Heavyweight championship are two completely distinct championships, the latter having no lineage ties to the former. That was the big deal with the story of Duggan finally winning the NA belt only to have it stripped from him when the UWF HW title was created. It was playing on the tragedy of him finally winning the big one and then getting cheated by the system (kinda/sorta) and then cheated by the heels when he tried to do the right thing by winning the new title in the tournament the right way. So I vote keep it separate.

As for Reed's having the belt...he dropped it on the first day, his last day with MSW. So...eh, start with Slater holding it, IMO. Or have Reed as champ on a 1 show deal to open and let the AI (and eventually, the player, if they play as MSW/UWF) decide what to do.

On the subject of the company branding: I'd say have it start as MSW and set narratives to handle the name change to UWF, and then just instruct players to rename the belts when playing (even if they're not playing as MSW/UWF). Another inelegant solution, sure, but probably the best strategy for sake of historical accuracy.

Or...have the start date for the mod be later, after the rebrand.

On 2/17/2023 at 11:12 AM, jhd1 said:

I'm in two minds about giving the UWF a home arena; because of the importance of Dallas and Houston (over OK) they tend to hold shows there rather than Oklahoma City or Tulsa. It's not ideal, but would at least differentiate their results from WCWA.

Because the UWF didn't hold PPVs I don't have event names for them. I'll probably just add a generic UWF Live Event or something similar to avoid names like UWF Hollyweird!

When the UWF rebranding came about, Watts and company sold their TV as a direct competitor to World Class'. And they were in league with the Houston office. So, yeah...either the Houston arena or the Cowtown Coliseum seems apt. But note that they did tape weekly in Tulsa in addition to the Dallas based Cowtown - and the A show was at the former, with Power Pro, the B show at the latter.

For events, in '86 and '87, there were a handful of named events:

Jun. 14 - Superdome Extravaganza
Jun. 29 - Summer Spectacular '86
Sep. 27 - Wrestlefest 1986
Nov. 27 - Superdome Extravaganza 

Note that the Nov. show was their annual Thanksgiving show, which they typically held at the Superdome. Even when they had the deal with Crockett to hold a local show and have the Closed Circuit feed of Starrcade as the main attraction they still held it in the dome on that date, iirc.

They skipped the Spring show at the Dome in '86, which they had held in years previous. But they did bring it back the next year, on April 11th, this time with a new name: Superblast at the Superdome

Their other big events were the annual Christmas and New Year's Day shows.