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Post by Thunderkiss on Jan 25, 2009 18:57:38 GMT -5
This is dedicated to the names, faces and places that are long gone but live on through my memories. I will never forget. 1996. It was a good year for this then 18 year old punk. I had just graduated from high school and I still had that “life is mine for the taking” look in my eye. Now that the cesspool of mixed emotions from the past four years had ended, I was able to set my sights on a much brighter future. With my days now empty, I started to fill them up with slacking and well, obsessing about wrestling. I had always been a big wrestling fan in the 80's and early 90's. Wrestling was introduced to me by my father and I still haven’t forgotten the first time I sat on the floor with him watching “WWF Superstars.” I was instantly hooked, like a fish choking on a great big worm. In ‘96, it was the start of the last big wrestling boom. WCW was burning up the ratings with the nWo and the WWF really gave their all to keep themselves in business. Flipping channels back and forth on Monday night was not just a practice, it was a religion to most. Around this time, new technology entered my life. Living in a rural setting at the time, I was excited when I found out that we could finally could get access to the internet. We had it in school my senior year and I spent my study hall looking up pornography and chatting with others on the official Sega page. Just like when I was introduced to wrestling by my father, I was hooked the instant I was able to log on with my first internet name of “Kenom.” Now able to chat at home, I quickly found that I could combine my two favorite past times for one cup full of win. I typed in “WCW CHAT” onto the yahoo search engine and up came a page that will forever be entwined in my history - The Wrestling Empire. It was a wrestling news site, complete with it’s own chat room. Needless to say it didn’t take me long to enter it and soon I was chatting about the nWo, Hulk Hogan and my dislike of Ric Flair to “peeps” all over the world. Inside this chat room many “characters” could be found, people with gimmicks that could rival the wrestlers they so loved and adored. Part of this included chat “stables,” complete with leaders and a pecking order. Right off the bat I got into trouble, which is the story of my life. After being invited to the “IWO” by one of it’s members, it was determined by the “leader” that my membership was null and void due to the fact that he had no say in the matter. My response was simple, so fucking what? Low and behold, it stuck. The initials “S.F.W” were then plastered upon my new name at the time, “StingsSpawn,” and it quickly blew up. I’ve often carried myself on being a people person and I think others saw that too. People that were sick of the “order” of things carried my mantra as well and soon the S.F.W pretty much ran the entire chat. During this time I ran into many people in every corner of the world but some ended up having more importance than others. A chatter from a “rival” wrestling page, Wolverine from Ringside Seat, introduced me to a “fantasy” type game involving roleplaying and wrestling. I was given an address to an insidetheweb dot com board and low and behold, what I saw really did change my life. Here was a wrestling federation with made up characters, staff and weekly shows. I knew I wanted to do this and quickly learned every facet of the game. I spread the word to some of my good S.F.W. buddies and four of us entered the “Wrestling Empire Championship Wrestling Federation,” or “WECWF” if you will. My first guy was nothing more than a neon Sting knock off named SURGE. I’m sure most of you have heard of him by now. Over the next few weeks the S.F.W. engaged in writing 2 paragraph promos that I would later laugh at but at the time we didn’t care - we were having fun. I was having so much fun in fact that I started writing promos on pieces of paper in my college classes, only to rush home with them and type them up on the computer. I quickly won the intercontinental title, however, as quick as I won it I also found out a disturbing fact about e-feds, that being they don’t last long. After Wolverine had decided to sexually assault the S.F.W.’s valet in one of the shows, we all jettisoned the fed and it quickly died. Though the fun was over, it was only temporarily. Surge and the S.F.W. traveled to two other federations, the C.W.F. and the C.W.F. Pro, each time his career was cut short due to impromptu closings. Meanwhile, I still continued to chat and most of the chat sessions now only had the topic of e-fedding. I was obsessed with it and this attitude was infectious. A frequent guest of the chat room was none other than one of the site’s owners, Jon Shelton or as we called him, “Mr. Empire.” He could tell I was into it and after seeing that Ringside Seat had their own official e-fed, he decided the Wrestling Empire should have one as well. Knowing nothing about the game other than people liked to play it, Mr. Empire needed someone to run it and he found his man in me. In 1998, he approached me about the job and I, of course, said yes. Things would never be the same again. |
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Post by Thunderkiss on Jan 26, 2009 21:13:45 GMT -5
In May 1998, The Wrestling Empire Wrestling Federation (WEWF) was born. Yes, I realize it has the word “wrestling” in it twice, but that is beside the point. Mr. Empire made an application page and stuck it on the site’s main page and within one week had over 200 applications. Yes, you read correctly, 200. At the time my VP, a man called “DaJuice,” and myself told Jon to take the main link off the page since we were swamped with applications. We knew there was no way possible to have a roster of 200 people even with two shows:
Tuesday Terror &
Saturday Night Slams
In order to decide who we kept and who we would kick out, we let nature take its corse. It was here that I learned my first big lesson in running an e-fed, that being more than half of people who actually sign up never do a damn thing. To this day I scratch my head over the phenomenon since I don’t see why anyone would even bother if they have no intentions of actually writing. Over the next few weeks or roster quickly dwindled down to 40 solid promoers each that I still remember to this very day.
Brad Blacksmith, VIPER, Big Country Jones, Albatross, Apocalypse, The Kid Wonder, ZERO (Yes, another guy named Zero), Pacdog, The King of Puppets, “Superstar” Duncan Miller, The Medieval Times, The Underdog, Jenner, Anaconda, Cobra, Hurricane, Patrick Holly, MOLOKO, Slash, The ADMIRAL, Z-Pac & The Mirror.
At our first big PPV, “Globalmania” champions were crowned and the federation was off to a solid start. Things were going well the entire summer of 1998 and notable WEWF PPV’s such as “Patriot Games” & “Heat Spell”put us on the map. I couldn’t ask for a better start but around four months in I experienced my first headaches. My VP basically wanted the title but not the job for he never did a damn thing. To make matters worse, Jon Shelton all but vanished and the Wrestling Empire page experienced major update problems. The sites other owner, “Hollywood G” aka Gerald had everything dumped onto his lap and the last thing he was concerned about was our e-fed. For me this meant that our main site went unupdated for ages. It wasn’t until a guy named “Cooper 316" came in to help Gerald that things finally got done. Another challenge I faced is that I did not have the passwords for our promo board and rival federations were taking advantage of that fact. They spammed our boards into oblivion and I couldn’t do a thing to stop them. Through all this turmoil the WEWF kept on strong, not missing a beat. However, the end blow finally came when it was discovered that the Empire’s domain name was paid for by its missing owner and since he had not paid up, it was taken off the internet. With no home page, nobody could see our federation except those who played within it. Without new blood to join the roster, feds dry up and fade away and the WEWF was no exception. I knew this would happen unless I did something drastic and luckily for me, something drastic came my way.
And his name was Calvin Martin. You may know the site he created, lordsofpain.net.
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Post by Kim Jong CP on Mar 19, 2009 23:38:08 GMT -5
This is an excellent read so far TK, and I look forward to the next bit.
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Post by Thunderkiss on Mar 20, 2009 1:07:05 GMT -5
Now while the Wrestling Empire (WE) page was on its way out, another new wrestling page was coming onto the scene. Lordsofpain (LOP) was established by Calvin Martin, who, ironically enough, was hired on as an Empire Wrestling co-webmaster to replace the missing Jon Shelton. Feeling as if he wanted to have a page of his own, he left Empire Wrestling, pulling the plug on the page’s life support in the process. Due to this, many long time Empire Wrestling loyalist were very unhappy and that’s putting it mildly. To make matters worse, the Empire Wrestling’s official chat was owned by Martin and when he jumped ship, he took the chat with him. While WE members were welcomed in the new LOP chat, the truth was that they quickly became “play things” with the chat mods who were all Martin’s friends. Two other individuals and myself finally had enough and pooled our money together to buy a new IRC chat server for the S.F.W and the rest of the Wrestling Empire loyalists. This new chat server needed a page and this idea gave way to the creation of the Wrestling Dominion.
The Dominion was supposed to be the equal to the now fallen Wrestling Empire. Wrestling news stories 24/7, complete with message boards, chat and an e-fed. Of course, that e-fed was the WEWF, now renamed “Worldwide Empire Wrestling Federation,” due to the flat lining of WE. Just like many ideas on the internet, it quickly became apparent that the lofty ambitions of all involved were just that - ambitions. Nothing got done and the Dominion was nothing more than a lost page on the internet. Meanwhile, over at LOP, things couldn’t have been better. They had tons of hits, visitors and chatters. I’ll be the first to admit my envy. It must have been very apparent, for Mr. Martin unexpectedly knocked on my door one day and asked me if I would move the WEWF over to LOP and have it become it’s official e-fed. I knew it was done in an attempt to deep six the Dominion, but alas, I did not care. I knew what my answer would be the moment he asked me and I agreed. The implications of my decision did not escape my conscious for a second for I knew ...
I was a traitor.
I brought the WEWF to LOP and that made me public enemy number one with my old friends. Now, my decision put me in the spotlight, I won’t lie, but I honestly didn’t do it for me. I did it for the fed. I wanted my players to have major exposure once again. I wanted them to have outsiders read the show, come into the chat during the show’s posting and actually cheer for their favorites. While that may sound absurd to those reading this, I can assure you that actually happened. Being stuck at the Dominion kept the door closed to any of this for my players. I was willing to bite the bullet for them and face the wrath of the public opinion.
For the most part it wasn’t bad for I simply ignored those who now had a vendetta against me. The worst part was that the S.F.W chat group finally disbanded due to my actions, ala the Entourage. What can I say, history repeats itself, doesn’t it? All I knew and cared about is that my players were basking in the glory of their new digs. A secure posting board, thousands of visitors and a massive ooc community. It was like moving from the outhouse to the penthouse. In the chat I quickly became a mod, one of Calvin’s guys. It was pretty cool because they were heavy into all the hacking stuff and IRC, and I learned a lot of computer stuff from them. They also introduced me to the Turner server, which was like 4chan before 4chan, only wrestling related. The things on that chat server defined the saying, “the internet is serious business.” Guys got arrested for stalking and I soon couldn’t watch a second of Nitro without being logged on.
Indeed, this roller coaster ride was on a peak once again. However, you can’t be on a peak without realizing you are heading back down - fast. Cue my first fed split and a very torrid real life fling with someone I met over the internet ...
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Post by Thunderkiss on Mar 21, 2009 15:50:08 GMT -5
At Lordsofpain (LOP) my WEWF was back on top and my inbox was overflowing with so many applications to join that I pretty soon just started deleting them. I wanted to be nice, but since I was still a one man band, I had not the time to reply to everyone. However, I did let a few people in and those were the one’s who kept bugging me about it. Remember that as a life lesson, folks. The squeaky wheel is the one who gets the attention. Some of the more notable names that joined the WEWF at this point were Silver and TaylorMade. Their names will certainly come up quite a bit later. Now throughout all this madness I did an excellent job of writing two shows, booking and judging promos. Never was a show late, and if it was, it was just by a few hours. I’ve made it clear over the years that someone may not like me, they will never call me “unreliable or unprofessional.” Never. Unfortunately, someone disagreed and it was a member on my own roster.
In the Winter of ‘98, I experienced my first e-fed split. The “King of Puppets,” a guy roughly my age who had a creepy A.C. Evans/Kross type gimmick (only more slasher film like), had taken exception to some of the losses he was occurring. While I tried to smooth things out, he decided to create his own federation, the DWF (Destructive Wrestling Federation). I had no issues with this. After all, if he was unhappy and I felt I did the right thing, it’s best for us both to part ways. Unfortunately for me, things went south the moment he started to raid my roster. You know where I’m going with this; it’s happened thousands of times to thousands of e-feds. KOP pleaded his case with the entire roster and soon a handful of my talent jumped ship. Not a lot to make me nervous but enough to get my attention. Now being young and immature, I started firing back at him by creating a jobber named the “Mad Russian.” Knowing that KOP was a Jewish Russian immigrant who lived in New York (sound familiar? He also was a death metal attic. lol), I knew this would make his blood boil and did it ever. Pretty soon the gloves came off and he made the comment that the only reason I ran a fed was because I couldn’t promo to save my life.
That was it. My motivation. I decided to show him he was wrong that I slipped into his e-fed using a character I came up on the fly with called Steve “Thunderbolt” Johnson. Within one month’s time I became the DWF World Champ. The next Tuesday on WEWF’s Terror, I had Thunderbolt take the title and throw it into the trash. While I quietly waited for round two, it never came. The DWF folded shortly and KOP made amends, apologized and returned to the WEWF. To this day I still talk to good ol’ KOP, one of the few from this time. Believe it or not he went on to become a successful guy who does computer stuff in NYC. Good for him.
Back to the past, there was more drama that I encountered around this time, only this altered my all aspects of my life. I began flirting with a frequent visitor of the LOP chat and her name was Mistress Luv (Mary). Yeah, I still remember that to this day and how could I not, considering what transpired between us. She was so into WCW and all the things I liked, it was only natural that we really struck it off. Add in the fact that she liked to get nasty and you had a match made in heaven. There was only problem, I had a girlfriend. Now on one hand we had my girlfriend who I truly adored, but did not like wrestling. On the other, we had Luv, and not only was she a freaky sexpot, she could run down all the matches on Nitro forwards and backwards. The choice was pretty crystal clear for me. I parted ways with my real life girlfriend and in came Miss Luv, who lived close enough for us to meet up several times. While our time together is putting a smile on my face as I type this, truth be told, I knew I still had feelings for my girlfriend. I did a 180 about a month in, ended up hurting Mary and patched things up with my ex-girlfriend who amazingly still wanted something to do with me.
Yeahhhhhh, I was a bit of a creep. If you lost respect for me just now, I won’t hold it against you. I did for myself as well.
What ensued next was a series of harassing phone calls that embarrassed me to no end. At this point in my life I was 19, almost 20, and still living at home. Imagine the fun I had in explaining that a girl I went out with for a month turned into a psycho bitch to my family. Over the internet to boot. After asking her nicely to just leave me be, she finally got the message after I threatened to turn her in for harassment. Slowly but surely things got quiet again and life returned to normal.
But not the WEWF, for soon one of the most heinous things I’ve ever seen one person do to another in all my years of e-fedding was about to happen.
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Post by Kim Jong CP on May 17, 2009 23:55:56 GMT -5
Moar please.
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Post by Thunderkiss on May 18, 2009 0:02:36 GMT -5
My other duties have put this on the back burner yet again, but I have a big vacation coming up which should allow me to the time to get more up. |
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Post by Kim Jong CP on May 18, 2009 0:05:37 GMT -5
YES!!!
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Post by Trainer libertines on Aug 19, 2009 2:09:34 GMT -5
What happen to TK? I loved this guy
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Post by BK London on Aug 19, 2009 9:35:13 GMT -5
He exploded.
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Post by BAWSE Train on Mar 11, 2013 22:27:22 GMT -5
4 years later Ken. I'm waiting.
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Post by Thunderkiss on Apr 21, 2013 10:21:18 GMT -5
4 years later Ken. I'm waiting. Then I covered to Islam, called myself Ali Asshole, moved to London, married one of their stupid white women, strapped a bomb onto myself while yelling - AHLALALALALALALALAL the end. |
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Post by Thunderkiss on Apr 21, 2013 12:16:39 GMT -5
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Post by BAWSE Train on Apr 24, 2013 9:58:42 GMT -5
4 years later Ken. I'm waiting. Then I covered to Islam, called myself Ali Asshole, moved to London, married one of their stupid white women, strapped a bomb onto myself while yelling - AHLALALALALALALALAL the end. I wouldn't expect anything less. |
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