IFWA: The Legacy

Modern technology is amazing.

PART 5: QUEEN'S SPECIAL

OK, that's just me being cute and playing off of one of the Fire Pro titles. We never had a pet name for our female wrestlers, like "divas" or "knockouts" or any of that. They were always just female wrestlers. But then, Jazz had a quote in the ECW Anarchy Rulz strategy guide that I tried to take as the division's philosophy for the most part: "My only T&A is Talent and Ability." (Or something to that effect.)

LEAH ROSE: Over Mae Young. Not nearly as old as her original counterpart but still probably should've looked older because of her championship mode dialogue. I don't know what age I intended her to be, actually. A half-finished version of her in Fire Pro Returns described her as a "proud daughter of Canadian wrestling."

ALYRIA: Over Ivory/Jacqueline. I had to look it up again but I think Mike named her after Illyria from Angel, except with altered spelling. I don't know if there was any special significance to that, nor do I remember what she was actually like. For that matter I don't remember if she filled the slot by herself or if it remained a shared slot with the next character.

FELICIA NITEWIND: Over Ivory/Jacqueline. I remember the character came pretty early on so, if they didn't share the slot, she was probably the one that got replaced. In any event she was kinda goth but in that "could be Kittie's next bassist" way. Was also briefly paired with Justin Bailey for reasons I don't recall.

MISS JULIA BALE: Over Terri/Debra. As mentioned earlier, she mostly existed in a managerial capacity, serving as advisor to the "Ocean's Three" team (which I think did become their official name) of Russ Valentine and Andrew Slade. So, perhaps something closer to Terri's "York Foundation" days but without the financial angle. And some actual tech savvy.

LALA LOPEZ: Over Tori. A dancing character inspired by Dance Dance Revolution, since that was one of my big obsessions during this period. I guess she's an honorary member of FALL, too, since she's Manuel's accompaniment. I forgot about that last time.

THE VIXEN: Over Tori, but not as two characters in one slot. Rather, she was a separate character that was around early in the conversion but got replaced later. She was Yamazaki's valet during his Yiff Daddy period, so you can see why she got replaced after he dropped that gimmick. She had kind of a "hot goth" thing going too, as I recall.

DJ PRIDE: Over The Kat. Rave DJ and another relic of my obsession with DDR. I always pictured her with rainbow hair but I think I just made it red in-game.

SAKURA SONODA: Over The Kat. Again, one replaced the other. It looks like I tried to turn DJ into a full CAW at some point (I imagine her moveset was pretty high-energy) so she was probably her replacement. Anime fangirl character created by Mike, with the expected blue hair. He gave one of her finishers the name "Ichi-Ni-San."

JENNY ZERO: Over Lita. Basically pretty similar in spirit. Tended to hang with Mike Reese and Sean Mad when she wasn't doing her own thing.

AMY POWERS: Over Chyna. I don't really have anything to say about her as a character. She's named after Lita and Tori's real names. Ended up as Rick Knoll's accompaniment but I think that was more "she happens to exist in this slot already" than any sort of conscious decision.

CHRISTINA SPEARS: Short-lived character from the IWA but I might as well mention her. She was Rod's valet before he formed The System. If you can guess where I got her name, you can deduce what kind of character she was.

PART 7: THE STAFF

We did come up with our own assorted staff to replace some of the WWF staff characters as well. Honestly most of them are generic so you can think of them as "serial numbers filed off" versions unless otherwise specified. So yeah, this is for the sake of completion more than anything.

JON MARSHALL: Over Vince. The IWA commissioner, even from the first show. Not nearly as megalomaniacal as the character he replaced, despite how he acted in championship mode.

JIM WALSH: Over Shane. The FIF's main authority and co-chair of the IFWA.

JOANNA CARRINGTON: Over Linda. Impartial mediator with no ties to either founding company. Again, just a generic character. I was playing a lot of Perfect Dark at the time and just put that as a working name but then I never replaced it because, hey, generic staff character.

SAM TRABOLD: Over Mick Foley, and yet basically no different. I think we were running out of ideas by that point. I don't think we had any specific use for him, either. In hindsight we probably should've kept him connected to Jon Grey and Phoenixx somehow because I think that change meant there was one specific championship path where Grey retires only to "come back" as Trabold. Oh well.

The Lawler/Ross/Patterson/Brisco slot had:

SPIKE THE SHARPMAN: Like I said, I may have lost touch with his real world counterpart by then but I kept the character around as a retired legend because of his historical significance. I guess that means he became part of the announce team too, as the play-by-play guy.

RUBEN MCKEEHAN: The other half of the announce team. The name was taken from a lyric in a TobyMac song, though I don't know which one because that came from Mike. I do remember that he was meant to be an obnoxious heel commentator.

JEAN-ERIC REVENDEUR: Old French-Canadian wrestler like Patterson. And yes, Jean-Eric is derived from "generic." I forget what meaning I was going for originally with the last name (I think some approximation of "jobber") but apparently it means like, retailer.

MARK HALE: The other stooge, generic old guy. I think I picked Mark because of its meaning in wrestling jargon but I don't remember why I picked Hale as a last name. Soundalike for heel? I dunno.

The Hebner/Finkel/Bearer/Cole slot had:

IWA REFEREE: Over Hebner. Some of my early shows made reference to a referee named Matt Calloway, who was based on another friend of mine, so he was probably the basis for his appearance. In-game I just called him IWA REFEREE, though.

FIF REFEREE: Over Finkel. That means we didn't come up with a ring announcer but having another referee still kinda fits how Finkel was used in cutscenes. Even though this was meant to be one big company, the founding companies still showed independent branding here and there. We didn't have a "brand extension" system going, though.

SLADE: Over Paul Bearer. Since he's the only character that doesn't appear anywhere in championship mode, he could be anything. So, I used the spot for one of my oldest original characters. No relation to Andrew Slade; Mike came up with that name on his own. Actually, I think we may have decided the original Slade was Andrew Slade's trainer after I told him about that character, with the surname being taken in homage. Or something.

CLAY ROSS: Over Michael Cole. One of the commentators from the first show, he came from the same source as Spike the Sharpman. I had apparently moved him to backstage interviewer by this point, though.

And that's basically everyone. Some characters went through changes I didn't really discuss but this is mainly how everyone was by the end of this project. Looking at it again there are obviously things I would do differently, especially since I have a number of new characters I've created since then, but this was meant more as a reflection on the IFWA as it was then instead of as it would be now.

I can be somewhat obsessive about making lists and charts for things, so that helped it. This was also something that developed gradually over time, even if it did have a predetermined end goal. Trying to build over the existing roster did prove restricting at times but we still had some fun developments there.

And yet, for all my notes, I never kept title histories or win/loss records. Oh well.

Sounds like what we're doing these days. I've got my personal CAWs backed up on an emulated copy and the cartridge is just for fun.

I'm just going to add this on to the existing IFWA thread because there's a lot of carryover from it, even though it may or may not exist within its own continuity.

Anyway, when I finally got into Fire Pro Wrestling Returns in 2009, I decided to redo my personal fed. The IFWA was over. In its place was, originally, Border City Wrestling. I think. Unless there was another name before that.

Either way, I had a secondary fed on my save for fictionalized real world edits that was called Burning Pro Wrestling, itself a fictionalization of Fire Pro Wrestling. I liked the name enough to eventually steal it for my own fed (main theme: "Burn" by Throwdown). Finally it became Can-Am Wrestling, as a pun on CAW.



The roster went through a number of changes between 2009 and 2014, as evidenced by old documents. This will mainly focus on wrestlers found on the "final" version, though. And I'm not that good with backstory so a lot of this is about the design process instead. Personally I find that kind of thing interesting anyway.

One thing I will note is that some of the DOBs seem weird to me now. I didn't put much thought into most of their intended ages since this wasn't planned as an ongoing thing and so didn't have to be in real time. Presumably it takes place after the end of the IFWA but that had a fuzzy timeline too. And that's also assuming this isn't a separate continuity, which I usually like to do with projects.

Still, the intended timeframe could go anywhere from 2007 (NA release) to 2010 (my peak of creativity), 2012 (digital conversion of save), or 2014 at the latest (final update). Treat the DOBs accordingly, I guess, even though I treat them as "loose canon" myself.

Also, everyone's intended ranks are from documents written during this period but are somewhat arbitrary. I didn't have anyone broken up into factions within the game either so I've forgotten who was face and who was heel for the most part.

I've broken it up into chunks again but it's still kinda long. Also, I actually have pictures of most of them this time thanks to my old Photobucket account. Some of them are outdated compared to how they looked on my save but I don't feel like messing with getting newer pictures on there at this point, given how Photobucket has changed.

PART I: THE OLD GUARD

Mostly comprises my main recurring CAWs but also includes a few IFWA alumni that received further development.



NAME: Justin Bailey
RANK: Upper Card
FROM: Canada
DOB: 1977/12/21
HEIGHT: 185cm
WEIGHT: 108kg
CRITICAL: Sitout Pile Driver
PROFILE: Bemulleted fighter loves heavy metal.

This is one of the few DOBs that still makes sense to me. Even in the early 00s when most of my more personal characters (e.g. Adrian, Jeremy) were supposed to be around my age, I thought of Bailey as being older. The particular day is pretty close to when I first designed him too, as it happens.



NAME: Bastian Coniglio
RANK: Legend
FROM: USA
DOB: 1973/06/30
HEIGHT: 200cm
WEIGHT: 112kg
CRITICAL: Edgecrusher (Side Roll Stunner)
PROFILE: Punishing wrestler with many reigns.

A more "realistic" version of Phreak. By this point I was treating the character as a respected veteran a la The Undertaker. You know, been around forever, doesn't wrestle much anymore but is still a big name. That deal. It was mainly as a legacy thing since I wasn't seeing much of his real world inspiration at that point. Also I gave him the nickname "The Killer Rabbit."



NAME: Samoan Dragon
RANK: Main Event
FROM: USA
DOB: 1975/06/03
HEIGHT: 190cm
WEIGHT: 123kg
CRITICAL: Samoan Cyclone (Large Rolling DDT)
PROFILE: The Samoan-Asian Wrestling Sensation.

My top face, based on Big Rick Dragon from the IFWA. Imagine a cross of Samoa Joe and Rikishi. Basically he's got a high impact fighting style, including a rare headbutt or two, and he also knows how to have fun outside of the ring.



NAME: Matt Epic
RANK: Main Event
FROM: Canada
DOB: 1972/03/11
HEIGHT: 188cm
WEIGHT: 104kg
CRITICAL: Epic Experience (Half Nelson Suplex)
PROFILE: Despised former hero that loves to dance.

The former Risc. For reasons that I don't recall he had "fallen into disfavor" with IFWA management once and was treated as a comedic jobber until the move to FPR made me want to reinvent him. As such, his story now held that he was a popular underdog that had grown so desperate to finally hold the top title that, upon winning it, he became just as desperate to keep it. Thus, he turned into a top heel and gained his own Epic Army of underlings. As much as I may have liked "happy Raven," this version with added heel traits is even more fun.

And yes, "Epic" by Faith No More was his theme under this name.



NAME: Jeremy Moore
RANK: Upper Card
FROM: USA
DOB: 1982/11/20
HEIGHT: 188cm
WEIGHT: 100kg
CRITICAL: Chicken Wing Suplex
PROFILE: Captivates fans with boundless tenacity.

I think it's funny this guy became as important to me as he did. Late one night in November (hence DOB) of 2001, a poem came to mind that I wanted to share on an art site I belonged to at the time. So, I created some random guy to put a face to the subject, who dies in the end. I'm glad the character stuck around despite that, though. So yeah, I wanted to say his FPR version was a reinvention but a few years ago I found a notebook from maybe 2003 or '04 that had an old version of his No Mercy CAW. It was more recognizable in spirit than I thought.

Fun Fact: I played through the SvR 06 story mode with him once and could not remember a single move from that version when I was thinking about it again a few years later.



NAME: Adrian Munoz
RANK: Main Event
FROM: USA
DOB: 1979/07/09
HEIGHT: 180cm
WEIGHT: 91kg
CRITICAL: Luna de los Muertos (Moonsault)
PROFILE: Second gen star has made his own name.

He was my personal avatar character for a long time as well as the CAW I played the most on No Mercy. So, I made him my first FPCPP character to help ease me into the efed experience. I retconned his history to have him be old enough to have debuted in the late 90s and gotten a little ring time under his belt by his "real world" creation in late 2000. So, this made me make him be older by 5 years when he was typically around my own age before that.



NAME: S.T. Owens
RANK: Upper Card
FROM: USA
DOB: 1975/11/09
HEIGHT: 188cm
WEIGHT: 107kg
CRITICAL: Cradle Pile Driver
PROFILE: Comical smartaleck and sneaky grappler.

From the IFWA. Back around 2003 I made a (now long lost) Tecmo Super Bowl hack with an assortment of different teams, with S.T. Owens being among the many randomly generated names on one of them. For some reason, though, that name stood out enough to make it into other projects. I think it helps that as soon as I saw it, I immediately decided the S.T. stood for "Sure Thing" as well as whatever his real name was supposed to be. In keeping true to his original IFWA incarnation, he takes a lot of inspiration from Chris Jericho while also throwing in some Jerry Lynn as well.



NAME: Ricky Rollins
RANK: Lower Midcard
FROM: USA
DOB: 1988/02/29
HEIGHT: 173cm
WEIGHT: 79kg
CRITICAL: Beat Blaster (Guillotine Crusher)
PROFILE: Do people even go to raves anymore?

The former Kray Z from the IFWA. The character was originally inspired by an actual conversation I had on IM one night in 2005 with a random stranger that wanted me to "mentor" him on how to rave (I was never a raver; I just like techno). Because of that I made him be about teen-aged for the time frame, and then I made him a leap day baby as well for fun. For a few reasons, though, I now consider the character to be retired.



NAME: AJ Stone
RANK: Upper Midcard
FROM: Canada
DOB: 1983/01/23
HEIGHT: 178cm
WEIGHT: 95kg
CRITICAL: Shooting Stone Press
PROFILE: Can hit the Stone Cutter in many ways.

This guy's an interesting case. He's been around since 2003 and I've had many plans for him over the years but they all seem to fall apart for some reason. Oh well. He has his fans despite that. He also seems kinda generic in ways but that works for him somehow.



NAME: Rod Thorne
RANK: Legend
FROM: USA
DOB: 1975/11/09
HEIGHT: 188cm
WEIGHT: 107kg
CRITICAL: Cross-Style STF
PROFILE: The rich cocky jerk is making a return.

One of my oldest surviving original characters, despite having been "retired" once or twice. There was a period where his son Mark was running around instead but then I finally decided to bring back the classic. Which means he probably had a different DOB at one point, if he's supposed to have a son that was born at the latest by the early 90s. It's not like a lot of these DOBs are canon anyway.




NAME: Joey Thunder
RANK: Upper Card
FROM: USA
DOB: 1988/05/01
HEIGHT: 180cm
WEIGHT: 98kg
CRITICAL: Thundahajime (Scissors Sleeper)
PROFILE: His chokeouts will bring the THUNDER.

A wrestler with an explosive (thunderous?) kickboxing/MMA-influenced offense that carries himself with hip hop swagger. Weak defense, though. Detractors call him Glass Joe. Also the youngest guy on the roster, though there was an incomplete female edit with a 1989 DOB.




NAME: El Tornado
RANK: Midcard
FROM: Mexico
DOB: 1972/07/13
HEIGHT: 178cm
WEIGHT: 106kg
CRITICAL: Tornado Special (Fire Star Splash)
PROFILE: Has bulked up but hasn't lost a step.

His basic appearance (i.e., head and physical build) is inspired by Manuel Leybor from the IFWA but otherwise he's a total reinvention. Which is only natural since Leybor was literally just a fat X-Pac. YOU WILL BELIEVE A FAT MAN CAN FLY.



NAME: Tiger Yamazaki
RANK: Midcard
FROM: Japan
DOB: 1983/06/09
HEIGHT: 175cm
WEIGHT: 91kg
CRITICAL: Tiger DDT (Double Arm DDT)
PROFILE: Another young tiger on excursion abroad.

I forget how many times I've reinvented this guy. This iteration was once described as "a foreign star that is now plying his trade abroad. In order to side-step the language barrier, he doesn't speak much and instead prefers to let his ringwork do all the talking. He may be quiet and stoic outside of the ring, but he's burning with fighting spirit inside it." So yeah, he's my limited exposure interpretation of 90s AJPW.



NAME: Aleks Young
RANK: Upper Card
FROM: USA
DOB: 1973/05/08
HEIGHT: 188cm
WEIGHT: 106kg
CRITICAL: LTB Drop (Grand Salsa Auto)
PROFILE: Does not like being mistaken for a copy.

AKA Grant Young (full stage name: Grant A Young), who is also older than I thought. Then again, considering he fronted a skacore band in an alternate universe, maybe that's an appropriate age to let him ride the third wave of ska at its peak. In any case I've forgotten what I meant with that profile. Probably something to do with CM Punk being so popular at the time. Oh, and LTB stands for Lower The Boom.

PART III: ALUMNI AND MISCELLANIA

I think I tried porting a large number of our old IFWA characters at some point or another. I had even compiled a grand list of characters from across different projects once (I still have it) and thought about making a sort of "archives" supersave. How many actually got started and how far they developed are another thing. Characters that I found on progress sheets that I remembered well enough to discuss include:

JARED HIGHTOWER - Based on another of my oldest original characters, from 1999. The FPR version was redesigned as a retired legend of the company. For meta reasons I also decided he was the trainer of some of my main characters and thus gave him a fighting style influenced by theirs, which basically meant a lot of arm work. I also remember giving him a DOB of 1956/1/4 because I had a screenname with 5614 in it when I first created him.

SLADE - Before there was Jared, there was Slade. He was a character I played in AOL RPG chatrooms and he absolutely would have been my first "overpowered AF" CAW if I'd had my own N64 at the time. Despite that, I may have still tried making him once on WM2K at Jason's house, because I associate the Screwdriver and Bronco Buster with him for some reason. I think the former is from Fighters Megamix making me love the move before I even became a wrestling fan, and the latter from being an X-Pac fan at the time. I also remember he kept getting taller and thinner in my description of him on AOL, but apparently never to an implausible degree. A few years ago I found a document from 1999 with his stated height and weight, compared it to NBA Live 95, and saw that it was a pretty close match to Dennis Rodman.

SHANE SHARPMAN - Based on Spike The Sharpman from the IWA. He was going to be treated as another "retired legend" type of character, to expand the fed's sense of history.

BIG BEAR DANIELS - Originally designed for DesertPunk's "Project Gimmick" pack, he was a large power character with a biker motif. He was also gay, which I think was mainly represented by a bear hug and a rare chance to kiss his opponent. I thought Aleks Young inherited that trait at one point but apparently I had gotten rid of it by the last update to my save.

LIAM BYRNE - "The Celtic Lion," and basically a wrestling version of me. He was also known as Brian Devine and Bryan Wolf at different points. His style had a focus on wearing down the back. I remember seeing him deliberately roll an opponent face down to do a splash onto his back before getting a pinfall victory once. He was almost submitted to the FPCPP as Adrian's replacement but ended up having some of his logic be transferred to Jeremy before I submitted him instead. I think some of that "wear down the back" mindset may have filtered down to Crash Cassidy and/or Aleks Young as well.

REY DE LEON JR - A luchador with a lion mask, basically. There was an unmasked version as well at one point apparently. He also briefly had a Black Lion counterpart. One fun spot I still remember from testing them was one whipping the other into a corner only to have the Panther style running flip counter happen, then the other whipping the first one into the opposite corner to the same effect. Random headcanon from the time: He's the cousin of Adrian Munoz.

ADAM FROST - Loosely inspired by a character from a ROM hack I had done in my teens, called Afro Man. Technically this puts him amongst my oldest surviving original characters because nostalgia is a funny thing. This version was just a generic "journeyman" jobber but I've made other versions since then.

EDDIE MANOS - Joke character, mostly for the nickname "The Hands of Hate." Which did mean he had a boxing influence to his fighting style.

MIKE SUNDAY - Another joke character. His finisher was the Sunday Driver.

LADY SCORN - Believe it or not I did make more female wrestlers than just Alanna. I had a fair number going on my physical save but only a few appearances got transferred to the digital save before real life intervened. Lady Scorn may be one of my favorite names. "They say hell hath no fury like her." Relevant music link here: m.youtube.com/watch?v=WtPp897vk3E

And for fun I'm gonna throw in a couple of side feds I tried to create.

Back around 2010 I wanted to do a sort of shoot-wrestle promotion on FPR. Something that presented itself like a more realistic take on pro wrestling without necessarily being MMA. Basically how I imagined UWFi from reading about them. I never watched any footage to compare but still.

My guidelines for it went something like:

-Two divisions; Heavyweight and Junior/Light Heavyweight
-Rankings consist of champion, top contender, and up to 10 seeds
-No Irish whips or diving moves
-Strives for legitimacy in its grappling style
-No closed fists - chops, elbows, knees, and kicks are allowed
-No outside brawling, with a 10-count if the physics make them fall out of the ring
-Wrestlers use real (or realistic) names, with nicknames allowed

There was also a note about not being sure how to handle the Tree of Woe yet, since I seemed to have trouble finding a way to prevent that being used in FPR. I considered making it a DQ.

It occurred to me more recently that I could easily do this in VPW2's Ranking Mode if I wanted to resurrect the idea. Mostly, though, I just made these notes because I wanted to keep the wrestlers' nicknames on record in my files.

HEAVYWEIGHT DIVISION
Kevin "Crash" Cassidy
"Dynamite" Deion Hayes
"Texas Titan" Chris Houston
"Hardcore" Matt Kohr
Travis "Tank" Miller
Jorge "El Guapo" Noreaga
Jon "The Sniper" Snider
"The Enforcer" Sergei Volkov

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT DIVISION
Tyler "T-Bird" Boyd
"Bad" Brad Hunter (previously heavyweight)
Alejo "Rage" Ramirez
"The Omega" Ryan Reese
"Machine Gun" Johnny Rose
"Diabolical" Daunte Sanders
"Ice Man" Sean Winters
Taro "The Shadow" Yamada (AKA Rent-a-Ninja)

Other wrestlers considered:
Joey "Thunder" Tate (H)
Donnie Brooks (H)
Adam Black (H)
"Late Night" Nathan Knight (L)
Cordell "Storm" McGowan (L)
Erik Novak (L)

Then I briefly had one called Big Time Battle Theatre to allow me to reuse the default B2T logo. I don't think I really had any big plans for it, though. It seems like it was something I cooked up for DesertPunk's Independent World deal. Most of the pupils had masked gimmicks, which was interesting because dojo master Ishida didn't wear one.

Random headcanon: Rent-a-Ninja was a graduate of this dojo. Originally he wrestled under the name Kagero.

-MASTER
"Big Time" Kunitake Ishida
-PUPILS
KAZE (used that "H-A-T-E" voice sample because it sounded like "K-A-Z-E")
Starman Jr (based on Star Man from Pro Wrestling)
Wrestler X (I think he just wore plain gear and a mask with an X on it)
Ryuunosuke (I don't really remember him, honestly)
Tough Guy JIN (deathmatch attired; a play on words inspired by the band Nice Guy Jin)
Shishimaru (lion-masked ninja)
Fujiyama (another version of Mumeishi from Can-Am, under his original No Mercy name)
Tengu (just a guy in a tengu mask, naturally)
-DOJO BOYS (generic young lions)
Hideyoshi Mori
Takanobu Honda