Oh boy, OHPW is basically a year old. A little older really. Though, the time from the first episode to now is less than a year the actual inception was more than a month before that. We won't have a show this week so let's have a look:
To make this archivable later I resized the tables. If you want to view them in their full size or simply want to look at the data without reading what I have to say about it then
go here
I've included the durations of the three LPFWA seasons to add a little perspective. These all go from the first episode to the last. In this time we've seen many stories begin and end. Too many to really list here. Every character has some story. Most simply emergent. Like Kayu Zakisaka never giving up even when she was the longest-reigning Jabroni Royale but she's currently clawing her way up, keeping her promise that she would be champion one day. Angus McMutton, meanwhile, is on a downward slope. Started hot but it just hasn't been going his way since. Others were planned, such as Flamander's arc of failure to be redeemed or Dash Rendar amassing more Dash Rendars but eventually, their egos and just plain desire to be the most Dash is what caused a falling out and their weird ascension to... godhood? The execution deviated a bit from the original pitch but that's how it always is.
The thing all these four stories have in common is that they spanned all or nearly all of OHPW's life so far. This shift to allowing more long-term stories to bloom came from me learning to appreciate the storytelling of New Japan Pro Wrestling. In what some might view as the feud of the decade Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada took over 18 months to reach the climax of their story. But the thing with wrestling is that it just isn't over after an angle has neatly wrapped. It continues. A better real life example would perhaps be the tale of The Golden Lovers, Kota Ibushi and, again, Kenny Omega, which was or rather still is told across multiple years and several promotions. That story is probably the main reason I actually respect canon from back in LPFWA when it's there rather than just handwaving it away, wich the design of OHPW's world allows. But oh, I shouldn't get carried away with this... we'd be here all day.
399 matches. LPFWA Season 3 had 409, to give you a point of reference. We have fewer episodes so far but a normal show has seven instead of six bouts. Kind of a necessity that comes with our bigger roster. And I went over this a little when I made a post like this after Episode 9 but even if we had the exact same roster size as LPFWA it would be different. As there are no separate men's and women's divisions anymore. A good thing, I never wanted to do that anyway. It was a restriction of the WWE games. That way I have to draw from one big pool rather than two smaller ones. Speaking of our roster...
For the context of this "Active" means the wrestler is finished and ready to go. Developmental means I started but haven't finished work on these. All the others are either self-explanatory or not relevant. Anyway, the point is our roster is huge. I still make it a point to at least book everyone in a match. When the roster was smaller this would be every 3rd episode or so. Now it's between 4 and 6 episodes until someone not currently involved in the title picture or ongoing storylines is booked for a match.
Here's a small glimpse into my spreadsheet I use to, among other things, not forget to book people. The column "last match" is the relevant one here. And note how it says "All Matches" on the top. Yes, I do in fact have separate sets of columns for Singes, Tags and Battle Royals as well as "Other". There are further bits here and there. But the most important part here, and what helped me gather some of the stats in this post is in the very top right. That's right, I can restrict my monstrous booking spreadsheet to only show me data from a certain timeframe. Actually, let's move on to some of those.
Here's the singles rankings for each quartal so far. This uses the ELO formula. There's a PPV every fourth episode and each column represents a span of three PPVs. The most notable thing here is that Suzan Blades was never really surpassed (except by VACANT who I'm excluding here because VACANT would always be on top). The only reason Suzan doesn't show in the 25-36 EP range is that she didn't have a singles match in that time. The rest of the field is always shifting with Pantha and Black being the only other mainstays. Black, though, is in the process of surpassing Suzan. Keep in mind, although it says it respects a range of Episodes, say 13-24, all this affects is that it excludes wrestlers who haven't had a singles match in that time. The ranking doesn't degrade so as soon as they have a match again they are where they were before, which is why Suzan is still on top.
This, however, actually reflects achievements in the specified timeframes. There's a lot more back and forth here as only wins and losses in that time matter. Singles wins are weighted a little higher but tag and battle royal victories still count. Tragically Palpatine is on top for our most recent quartal. This doesn't use the ELO formula but a much simplified formula that essentially awards points for winning matches. It's not nearly as accurate as it doesn't respect an opponent's record.
Just some general stats regarding common match statistics and who is the "highest" one. It might come as a bit of a surprise that Black isn't even listed in "Shortest Avg. Matches" considering that three of the shortest matches we've had all involve him squashing someone. What's not surprising is that Midas is on top of the Longest Avg. Matches since he's in the two matches we had that went over an hour. Mind that this does not mean the time he spent in that match but just that the matches he was in lasted really long, even if he was eliminated beforehand. The numbers after the dashes show the number of matches considered for the data given. I only really counted people who had more than 3 matches.
Here's the same stats but for singles matches only. It's still a bit of a shock that Black isn't even in the four people with the shortest average match times. But really, this is because when he has longer matches they often approach or surpass 20 minutes. It's no surprise to see Manic in the longest matches column, though. However, the fact that he's surpassed by Pantha is a surprise, though, a small one. Freddie's had that one match with Flamander that went over 40 minutes.
Here's a couple of fun ones. We got four people who beat VACANT sorted by first to most recent. MGMon and Black are both the "monsters" who clean swept VACANT. They are sure to meet in the ring eventually. Best Bout Machines refers to who has the most matches marked as highlights. The highlights, by the way, can be found
here. I should get on at least linking to all the episodes. The longest and shortest reigns are self-explanatory. The Top Workhorses refers to how many matches someone's had on average per episode. This does consider the fact that some wrestlers have debuted later than others.
Now for our longest matches... the top two were the result of a bug with the mod pack that made it so people could not be pinned in elimination Battle Royals. It's since been fixed but it resulted in two ludicrously long matches during the time the bug was active. The remaining two, funnily, are from the first and most recent episodes. The only common link between the two is EGO who was still called The Ego in the first match. When they went on excursion and came back stronger and better they simply went by EGO in all caps.
Our shortest matches, in the meantime, suspiciously feature Black in three matches. After he squashed Kayu I nerfed him considerably. He was always supposed to be super strong and a force to be reckoned with but I didn't want him to straight-up squash people. But eventually, I decided that it's more fun if it happens sometimes and reverted most of my changes soon after. So it's a bit of a surprise that nothing of the sort happened for a very long time and then it happened again twice in a row. The shortest match, though, goes to Nero Sin submitting DCB in a First Fall Four-Way. DCB later beat Nero in the runback while Nero, after some stumbling back and forth, went on to beat Ryu for the Darkweight Title.
I don't have a lot to say about these, but I have access to the numbers so I figured I might as well show them. They are numbers I found interesting but I don't have any interesting stories to tell about them.
As for our title reigns, it turns out that the 7DP has had the most champions at 20. No surprise considering that it's the hardest title to defend and luck plays just as much of a role as the ability to eliminate others from the matches. Never mind the fact that for PPVs the rules are stacked against the champ because they start that match, while someone new comes in every few minutes. This lists VACANT as the inaugural champion for every title because kayfabe.
Now, let's get to the tag titles because this is where it gets weird. The lineage split when The Fun Gang won a title match via DQ. Due to this The Fun Gang as well as the Fallout Boys who later beat The Fun Gang both have unofficial Legion Tag Title reigns. The alternate lineage also doesn't respect the oRa 66' first reign. Y'know, the one where they actually defended the title. It also has one more champion than the official lineage. Once 1 1/2 Dragons captured the titles from the F.O.B. (during what was otherwise their first successful defense in the regular lineage) the lineage was the same except for the fact that there's one more championship reign. The official lineage has 12 reigns, mine has 13.
And finally, let's top it off with something silly. YerPalHal, the person behind Angus McMutton wanted to know how fast Angus fell after his initial strong phase. Subjectively it happened much faster seeing as he was knocked out in the beginning a 7DP match that main evented the show and was only woken up at the start of the next episode. If you simply look at his win percentage you can see a steady decline. Sometimes he comes back a little briefly but overall it's all downhill. The second major beat of his story was when he was defeated by VACANT who he challenged to avenge Mina (who was fine). The loss crushed Angus so much that he gave up the rights to the letter G in his name and became Anus. Finally, I got to write "Anus at record low" into a spreadsheet. I included the timeframes from his major incidents until now as well and they show just how far Angus has fallen even better. Who did he piss off? Did he sneeze near Vince McMahon? Is it simply RNG that we decided to roll with. Who knows?
