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Post by OrochiGeese on Mar 5, 2021 7:44:50 GMT
Crazy announcements coming down from SWA this week. Due to the lost time over the last six months, they're running the World Open and Queen of SWA simultaneously this year, on alternating days. Each will be a one-block 10-person round robin and guys that's a lot of content they're trying to push out before Aftermath at the end of April. I'll try to keep everybody up on what's going on! Here are the Blocks: World OpenMatt de Leon Armel St. Martin Raye Groves Chad Jackson N-Trio El Rey Dorado Kyle Sieras Kazuo Saji Aaron Wolff VOLT Tsukuda My Thoughts: There's a time bomb hiding in the middle of this block. What the hell is N-Trio doing in the World Open? Especially with Connor Cipris not in this years block - marking his second year out of the tournament. There's some other stuff we could talk about as well, like the fact that it's cool to see Chad Jackson and Matt de Leon getting this shot on the big stage, or the fact that this is the first appearance by Aaron Wolff since the breakup of the Brotherhood of Fallen Angels. But my mind keeps going back around to N-Trio. What the hell is he trying to pull?
While I'm on the subject of the inexplicable, where is Samael? He hasn't been seen since the breakup of the Brotherhood of Fallen Angels. He was never fired, nor, as far as any of my sources can tell me, did he ever formally quit. He's just gone. Part of me is relieved, but another part of me is more apprehensive. What could this mean? Queen of SWAMieko Suzuyama Tigress Faridah Brianna Dalton Valkyrie Jameson Cerise Toni Severin Shannon Fulmar Keilyn Coardes Regina Ibanez Olivia Powers My Thoughts: SWA Management must be really high on Tigress Faridah. She debuted with a match for the Joshi Championship at Crescendo, and is getting thrown right into the Queen of SWA directly afterwards. Mieko Suzuyama is a natural inclusion, but after as long as she was champion, it's almost a little weird to think of her as being the one chasing the title again. She'd be my pick to go all the way. Another former member of the Brotherhood of Fallen Angels rearing her head for the first time in a year as well, with Valkyrie Jameson entering the tournament. Between Aaron and Valkyrie, we're going to get to see how things are going for the faction's former members now that the Brotherhood itself is dead and gone. Maybe one of them can tell us where Samael went. Saji is thrilled to be invited to the World Open and chomping at the bit to get a rematch against Armel!! 👏 He's concerned that Connor can't join though but definitely excited to face the rest of the block! 😎 |
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Post by unimportantguy on Apr 24, 2021 21:31:31 GMT
Goddammit. I knew it. I knew it all along and even knowing it I let my guard down. A few weeks ago, I was all ready to tell you how impressed I was by what a clean tournament N-Trio had wrestled. The first SWA Champion had acquitted himself admirably, wrestling matches straight up throughout the World Open, winning most of them with the N-Tropy choke, and silencing critics with every excellent match. Then the last day of the tournament came. The semi-final match of Armel St. Martin vs Kazuo Saji delivered as everyone expected it to - the two have undeniable ring chemistry and Saji was clearly eager to finally get his big win in the World Open after years of being edged out by Armel at the last minute. Kazuo had enough points that if he won this match, then the result of the main event of N-Trio vs. El Rey Dorado wouldn't matter. He would have won. Everyone could feel how close it was. Everyone was super into the match. Then these two jackasses showed up.  Wearing black leather jackets with a logo saying "ROW" on the back, these two ran down to the ring and assaulted both Armel and Kazuo. The match ended up getting thrown out, with one point going to each competitor, and sealing Kazuo's hopes of winning the tournament. Nobody knew who these guys were. Then the main event started and everything made sense.  N-Trio played us, the fans. Again. He worked hard, wrestled clean, and convinced everyone he had finally turned over a new leaf. Then, when everyone's guard was down, he struck. I don't know what bothers me more: That N-Trio did this shit again, or that his new faction appears to include Queen of SWA winner Brianna Dalton, fresh off what I would've called a career-making match with Shannon Fulmar in the finals. She did say last year that nobody would ever forget her again, but is this the way she wants to be remembered? El Rey evened the odds by bringing out several members of Los Diablos with him, and as one might expect, the main event turned into a complete mess of referee distractions, interference, and blatant cheating. In the end, it was N-Trio who scored the low blow to set up the N-Gage and the win. Last week, on the last SWA TV going into Aftermath, N-Trio addressed the crowd and explained his actions. I'm not going to dignify this shit by copying his whole promo down here, but here's the gist: He stepped down and let the new generation "take care" of SWA, and Samael was champion for a year and nearly destroyed the promotion. He realized that he had to come back and do "What's right," for SWA, which meant him as champion and "defender." His new faction, Murderer's Row, was assembled for that purpose.
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Post by unimportantguy on Apr 24, 2021 21:39:01 GMT
Ugh. I can't believe I'm doing this. A NEW FACTION HAS EMERGED IN SWAMurderer's RowLeader:  Other Members:     Goals: "Doing what's right for SWA" - N-trio's words. Not mine. |
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Post by unimportantguy on Apr 24, 2021 21:43:06 GMT
The N-Trio, Ultimo Cielo, and "Nasty" Adam Nishimura edits are now available on the Workshop. In addition, the Raven Briars and Brianna Dalton edits have been updated with Murderer's Row entrance attire. |
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Post by unimportantguy on Oct 9, 2021 21:25:40 GMT
Okay, I've been putting this post off long enough. Non-kayfabed posting ahead. I can't pinpoint exactly when it began, but over the last two years my desire to do anything with Fire Pro has dwindled down to nothing. The release of move craft and parts craft definitely accelerated my burnout on the game, but I was already starting to feel done with it before then. When I made my last post in this thread way back in April, I hadn't properly interacted with the game in months, and it had been months between times of me interacting with the game for a while. I won't say I'm done with it forever (both because who knows what the future brings and because that feels unnecessarily dramatic), but I expect it will be a good long while before I do anything with Fire Pro again. In the meantime, I'm going to go forward with the assumptions I've always had about Sierra Wrestling All-Stars when I wasn't doing anything with it: It continues to exist. Matches are booked, shows are made, wrestlers wrestle. I, as the narrator and eye into the universe, just am not paying attention. This could mean I have years of material to catch up on if and when I come back, but dropping everything for several months like I did in 2020 just felt wrong then and feels wrong now. It disrupts the fictional universe I've created. But I'm guessing that I'm not saying anything that people couldn't have already figured out. I've expressed some of these feelings both on the C!C and on other forums, and I'm sure it hasn't escaped everyone's notice how much Guilty Gear content I've been producing instead. So none of this is new ground, and if I just wanted to make a self-indulgent post about how I wasn't playing Fire Pro anymore, I would've told myself to shut up and keep it to myself. I recognize I've already spent a stupid amount of words on just that, so let me at least attempt to ramble my way over to my point. The way I work with SWA, I always have new edits in the wings waiting to debut. 2020 completely fucked up my edit debut schedule, and one edit that I completed quite some time ago ended up left in the lurch. It felt wrong to walk away without finally publishing them. So everyone, meet Callie Cassidy:  I based her design on Karna from Ys: Memories of Celceta:  And was pretty happy with my design, but due to my fading interest in the game, I just never got around to debuting her. She's now available on the workshop. Please download her and give her a try. |
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Post by OrochiGeese on Oct 20, 2021 8:15:01 GMT
Callie looks awesome, definitely going to subscribe to her and check her out! As to your bigger point: I know exactly how you feel. My e-feds (including the "amazing return of OG-Joshi" 😭) have hibernated for an entire year with the exception of a few RP's (and nothing recently). I was supposed to get my 12/13/2020 show posted within a month of it occurring canonically. Now I probably won't finish it before 2022 starts.I had such high hopes for my 2020 tour. I got maybe 3, 4 shows done and then nothing. I haven't posted a show for over a year now. This is the first time this has happened since I actively quit e-fedding in 2011 before then coming back in 2012. There are a lot of reasons for this but it all comes down to inactivity. Literally my only silver lining is that my edit making "kicked out at 2.9" in the past few months. But I was having the exact same issues with edit making as you were. The addition of Move Craft and the Workshop just led to complete paralysis of decisionmaking for me in creating edits. Somehow I managed to overcome that recently. But I went like a year and a half only making 3 edits until this past August. So I totally get it. That makes the most sense to me too. Just keep SWA rolling in the e-fed world and in your own head canon. Things are happening. When you have the time and energy to check in and update us about it, you can. SWA is still alive. The virtual audience is still watching. Everyone has enough stress in their lives now. Don't let not actively running SWA add to the stress accumulated by the reasons you are not able to run SWA to begin with. That's how I feel about UBL. It's stressful enough dealing with the things stopping me from doing more with it. Adding stress that I can't do it isn't helping me and it was burning me out earlier this year: preventing me from doing any Fire Pro stuff. Honestly, just having head canon has been enough to keep me happy these days. |
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Post by unimportantguy on Oct 20, 2021 11:47:40 GMT
I just got off a twelve hour shift and my brain is mush but thank you, my friend, for your kind and insightful words. SWA always lives on in our hearts even if I don't have the time to report on it.
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Post by unimportantguy on Jan 13, 2023 3:24:44 GMT
Hello, again, CRITICAL! Club. Long time no talk. So, in 2020 I actually got a full time, 40-50 hours a week with benefits kind of job for the first time in my life. It really wrecked my ability to keep up with wrestling and this thread suffered as a result. While I remain a solid 6 months behind on New Japan, though, I managed to muscle through and catch up with SWA. What follows is my notes on every World Openweight, Joshi, and Tag Team Championship match since the last time I updated this thread, every title change for the Aftermath Championship (because trying to record every single Aftermath Championship match would make me lose my damn mind), all the shifts in factions, and every new wrestler debut. It's been an eventful year and a half or so for Sierra Wrestling All-Stars. I'll get right on updating the OPs as well with more current information. SWA Timeline April 2021-January 2023
4/25/21: SWA Aftermath 2021. World Open winner N-Trio wins SWA World Openweight Championship from Paul Lambert. Queen of SWA winner Brianna Dalton unsuccessfully challenges Tigress Amita for the SWA World Championship. Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) win the SWA Tag-Team Championships from High Fly Heroes (Dash McCaine and Ashlynn Reed). Carlos Ortega-Reyes of Underground Wrestling Club defeats unimportantguy in an interpromotional match.
6/21: Callie Cassidy debuts for SWA as a member of The Vanguard.
6/9/21-6/12/21: Aaron Wolff unsuccesfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Becky Bravo unsuccesfully challenges Tigress Amita for the SWA Joshi Championship. Masked Ladies (Lexi Heart and Keilyn Coardes) unsuccesfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Fabio Silva wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Lina.
7/21: Aaron Wolff joins Murderer's Row. DEFCON-1 win the Summer TagFest.
7/25/21: SWA Emergence 2021. Connor Cipris unsuccessfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Raven Briars wins the SWA Joshi Championship from Tigress Amita. Summer TagFest winners DEFCON-1 unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Chad Jackson wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Fabio Silva.
8/21: Blaze, who quietly disappeared from SWA following the breakup of the Brotherhood of Fallen Angels, shows up wrestling for Underground Wrestling Club. DEFCON-1 soon also leave SWA for Underground Wrestling Club.
9/8/21-9/11/21: unimportantguy unsuccessfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Toni Severin unsuccessfully challenges Raven Briars for the SWA Joshi Championship. Los Diablos (Fabio Silva and Aguijon Tachibana) unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Dash McCaine wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Chad Jackson. Carlos Ortega-Reyes returns to SWA as part of the Escalation to Breakdown tournament, but is ultimately removed from the tournament after assaulting multiple other wrestlers with a steel spike.
10/16/21: Ultimo Cielo defeats Kenichi Yamada to win the Escalation to Breakdown tournament. Kenichi Yamada leaves SWA for Underground Wrestling Club.
10/24/21: SWA Breakdown 2021. Kyle Sieras unsuccessfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Kara Stern unsuccessfully challenges Raven Briars for the SWA Joshi Championship. VOLT Tsukuda and Toni Severin unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Escalation to Breakdown winner Ultimo Cielo wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Dash McCaine. Brandon Kennedy and Valkyrie Jameson join Murderer's Row.
11/21: unimportantguy and Becky Bravo leave SWA for Underground Wrestling Club.
12/8/21-12/11/21: VOLT Tsukuda unsuccessfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Callie Cassidy unsuccessfully challenges Raven Briars for the SWA Joshi Championship. Brandon Kennedy and Brianna Dalton unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships.
12/21: Kyle Sieras challenges N-Trio to a second championship match. N-Trio accepts under the stipulation that the loser's faction disbands.
1/19/22: A Block Winner Gabriela Espinosa defeats B Block Winner Brianna Dalton to win the Queen of SWA.
1/30/22: SWA Crescendo 2022 Kyle Sieras unsuccessfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Shannon Fulmar unsuccessfully challenges Raven Briars for the SWA Joshi Championship. Get Nasty (Brandon Kennedy and Adam Nishimura) unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Matt de Leon wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Ultimo Cielo. The Redeemed disbands.
2/22: Matt deLeon joins BHB. Kyle Sieras joins the Vanguard. LeRoy Roundtree leaves SWA to join Kenichi Yamada in Underground Wrestling Club.
3/22: Charles Langford makes his long-awaited return to SWA as part of the World Open.
3/16/22-3/19/22: Fabio Silva unsuccessfully challenges N-Trio for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Leticia Fujioka unsuccessfully challenges Raven Briars for the SWA Joshi Championship. Valkyrie Jameson and Brianna Dalton unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships.
4/16/22: Ultimo Cielo of B Block defeats A Block winner Kazuo Saji to win the World Open.
4/24/22: SWA Aftermath 2022. World Open winner Ultimo Cielo wins the SWA World Openweight Championship from N-Trio. Queen of SWA Winner Gabriela Espinosa wins the SWA Joshi Championship from Raven Briars. Kyle Sieras and Raye Groves unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag-Team Championships. Jake Adair wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Matt de Leon. El Rey Dorado gains his first victory over Charles Langford in an interpromotional no-holds-barred match. Hanami Watanabe and Emi Yamazaki have a "Graduation" match, officially marking the completion of their training excursions and their formal debuts as members of the SWA Joshi roster.
5/22: Ultimo Cielo kicks N-Trio out of Murderer's Row, declaring himself the faction's new leader. Mizuki Yoshinaga and Clint Oliver of Underground Wrestling Club debut for SWA, kicking off a rumor that SWA has executed a talent raid on Underground Wrestling Club. Lina offers Hanami Watanabe a spot in BHB. Hanami declines, preferring to remain unassociated with a faction.
6/8/22-6/11/22: N-Trio unsuccessfully challenges Ultimo Cielo in a rematch for the SWA Openweight Championship. Emi Yamazaki unsuccessfully challenges Gabriela Espinosa for the SWA Joshi Championship. The Power Plant (Tommy Powers and Olivia Powers) unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Hanami Watanabe wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Jake Adair.
6/22: Javier Valiente debuts as a member of Los Diablos. Dash McCaine suffers a neck injury during the Summer TagFest. SWA management allows Ashlynn Reed to select a new partner. She and Callie Cassidy form High Fly Heroes NEXT.
7/22: Samael returns to SWA after more than two years' absence, challenging N-Trio to a Loser Leaves SWA match. He also debuts a new faction: The Lords of Desolation. In addition to recruiting Olivia and Tommy Powers, Mizuki Yoshinaga, and Clint Oliver, Samael also brings in Carlos Ortega-Reyes, and most surprisingly, Akiko Shimizu, who most thought had returned to Japan a year ago.
7/31/22: SWA Emergence 2022. Connor Cipris unsuccessfully challenges Ultimo Cielo for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Akiko Shimizu unsuccessfully challenges Gabriela Espinosa for the SWA Joshi Championship. Summer TagFest winners High Fly Heroes NEXT (Ashlynn Reed and Callie Cassidy) unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships. Clint Oliver wins the SWA Aftermath Championship from Hanami Watanabe. Samael defeats N-Trio in a Loser Leaves SWA match.
8/22: Gabriela Espinosa joins Los Diablos. Regina Ibanez joins BHB. Raye Groves joins the Vanguard.
9/14/22-9/17/22: Armel St. Martin unsuccessfully challenges Ultimo Cielo for the SWA Openweight Championship. Valkyrie Jameson unsuccessfully challenges Gabriela Espinosa for the SWA Joshi Championship. Hanami Watanabe and Emi Yamazaki unsuccessfully challenge Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima) for the SWA Tag Team Championships.
10/15/22: El Halcon Loco Jr. defeats Javier Valiente to win the Escalation to Breakdown tournament.
10/30/22: SWA Breakdown 2022. Paul Lambert unsuccessfully challenges Ultimo Cielo for the SWA World Openweight Championship. Lina unsuccessfully challenges Gabriela Espinosa for the SWA Joshi Championship. The Divine Imperium (Akiko Shimizu and Mizuki Yoshinaga) win the SWA Tag-Team Championships from Miracle Hearts (Mieko Suzuyama and Kaori Nakajima).
11/22: Dash McCaine announces his retirement from professional wrestling due to the injury suffered during the Summer TagFest.
12/14/22-12/17/22: Carlos Ortega-Reyes vs. Ultimo Cielo for the SWA Openweight Championship is ruled a no-contest after both competitors are caught using weapons. Kaori Nakajima unsuccessfully challenges Gabriela Espinosa for the SWA Joshi Championship. Get Nasty (Brandon Kennedy and Adam Nishimura) unsuccessfully challenge The Divine Imperium (Akiko Shimizu and Mizuki Yoshinaga) for the SWA Tag-Team Championships. Just yesterday, block action finished up for the 2023 Queen of SWA. Next Wednesday on Joshi, Mieko Suzuyama vs. Cerise happens to cap off the tournament, with the winner facing the Joshi champion at Aftermath in April. I'm going to try to get back into the swing of things by at least getting ya'll video of that match because it should be a banger. |
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Post by unimportantguy on Jan 14, 2023 6:18:07 GMT
What is Underground Wrestling Club?SWA's 2021 and 2022 were heavily influenced by their co-existence with Seattle, Washington's Underground Wrestling Club. To fully understand Underground Wrestling Club and their relationship with SWA, we need to go back two decades to the very beginning of SWA. During SWA's earliest years, one of their prime rival promotions was San Francisco-based Renegades of the Ring, a promotion founded in the late 90's by Robert "Duke" Stenson.
Renegades of the Ring was known for violent deathmatches, an emphasis on multiman matches, and faction conflict, and their biggest stars were The End, a stable headed by the tag team of Ash Mercer (then just going by "Ash") and Blaze. While Ash revelled in the hardcore stylings of Renegades of the Ring, Blaze wanted out. Renegades' fanbase was extremely loyal, but not very large, and Duke couldn't afford to pay the wrestlers very much. For the amount of punishment his body took, Blaze felt he deserved significantly more pay. It was unsurprisingly easy, then, for James Fushichou to headhunt Blaze for SWA in 2000, bringing a big early star and one of the earliest and most prolific Aftermath Champions into SWA, but also cutting Renegades' biggest act in half.
Blaze's departure didn't cripple Renegades of the Ring, but it was perhaps the first pebble that started the avalanche. Following Blaze, several other high-profile wrestlers would leave Renegades over the next few years for greener pastures in other promotions. With fewer big names on the cards, show attendance steadily waned as well. By 2010, Duke Stenson was doing anything he could just to keep the lights on. That's when Fabio Silva came into the picture.
Fabio Silva made big promises to Duke about the future that he and Los Diablos could create for Renegades of the Ring as their biggest stars, and Duke bought it hook, line, and sinker. He immediately brought Fabio in with the biggest per-appearance deal Renegades ever signed. Disgusted with the preferential treatment Fabio was receiving, Ash Mercer signed a contract with SWA, leaving Duke without a top champion. Fabio was only to happy to step in and claim the Renegades of the Ring Heavyweight Championship. Unfortunately for Renegades of the Ring, Fabio never had any intention of honoring his deal. Instead, he spent months touring other promotions with the Renegades Championship as a prop to bolster his own prestige. When Duke tried to strip Fabio of the championship, Fabio walked out entirely and returned to Mexico, taking the belt with him. To this day, Fabio Silva touts that he was the last Renegades of the Ring champion, but neglects to mention that he was also the most hated Renegades of the Ring champion, and bears significant personal responsibility for the promotion's downfall.
As for Ash Mercer, he rode out his contract with SWA, had a feud with Blaze that drew on their history with each other (and Ash's bitterness at how Blaze leaving Renegades of the Ring had been the start of the promotions downward spiral), and then left when his contract was up. For years afterward, nobody hear anything from Ash Mercer. Many assumed that the prideful Ash had retired instead of be seen as anything but a top star.
In truth, Ash was making a big career transition. Starting in 2018, he started promoting individual events under the banner of Underground Wrestling Club. Inspired by Renegades of the Ring, Underground Wrestling Club events had few if any rules, and were known for their violence, rowdy crowds, and abundance of cage deathmatches. In late 2019, Ash took Underground Wrestling Club full time, bolstered by a deal with Taiyou Dojo to bring over young developing joshi talent. Unfortunately, this ended up being the worst possible timing, with the COVID pandemic forcing Ash to cancel many events, straining his ability to bring in talent, and having a serious impact on ticket sales for the events he was able to run.
Underground Wrestling Club was, of course, not the only wrestling promotion that encountered significant difficulties in 2020. From June 2020 to January 2021, Sierra Wrestling All-Stars went completely dark, for reasons that have to this day not been fully explained. The only sliver of explanation I can offer is that SWA co-owner James Fushichou was spotted all over the country during this period, often with his family's ancestral katana at his side. Rumors flew rampant regarding a series of incidents of violence at nightclubs that occurred roughly around the same times and places Fushichou was sighted, but he was never conclusively linked to any crimes.
With SWA not operating, many SWA wrestlers started popping up in other places. One SWA contracted talent in particular, unimportantguy, popped up in Underground Wrestling Club. Over the course of 2020, unimportantguy made a number of appearances for UWC, including a match for the company's Lord of Death Championship with top star Carlos Ortega-Reyes. UIG took well to UWC's wrestling style, and there was some speculation that he would make it his permanent home. However, when SWA returned, unimportantguy was right back as if he'd never left, leaving his feud with Carlos Ortega-Reyes unfinished at a record of 2 and 2.
Carlos Ortega-Reyes did not take this well, and at SWA Crescendo in January 2021, he jumped the barricade and assaulted unimportantguy after the opening match of the show. Were it not for the intervention of Kyle Sieras and Becky Bravo, Ortega-Reyes would've driven a sharpened steel railroad spike into UIG's head. This would lead to 3 months of back-and-forth fighting across both SWA and UWC, culminating in a No Holds Barred match between the two at that year's Aftermath, which unimportantguy won.
The fighting between Carlos Ortega-Reyes and unimportantguy raised a lot of interest in Underground Wrestling Club, both among fans, and, as it turned out, among SWA wrestlers. UWC's more robust tag-team division and more daring ring style appealed to a number of SWA talent, and over the next year, about half a dozen wrestlers would end up making the jump, including unimportantguy. Carlos Ortega-Reyes, meanwhile, seemed to take an inexplicable liking to SWA, and would continue periodically popping up there, despite the attempts of Alex Morgainne to keep him away.
I can't fully confirm what happened here, so from this point forward, we're working strictly on a "to the best of my knowledge" basis. James Fushichou was said to be furious at the outpouring of SWA talent heading to UWC, and rumors started circulating that Fushichou was planning a talent raid to snap up some of UWC's top stars in retribution. Lending these rumors validation were the unexpected debuts of UWC's Clint Oliver and Mizuki Yoshinaga in SWA in 2022.
However, there turned out to be other hands in the mix. Some of you might remember the Princess Guard, a group of three trainees from Taiyou Dojo who debuted as part of a training excusion in SWA in 2020. Hanami Watanabe and Emi Yamazaki would ultimately end up staying in America, training with SWA and eventually "graduating" to full main roster status in 2022. Akiko Shimizu, however, left SWA as quickly as she could. It was generally assumed that she returned to Japan as soon as the borders were open. What actually seems to have happened is that she fell in with Samael Tangaroa. Samael had disappeared completely from SWA after the dissolution of the Brotherhood of Fallen Angels in 2020. It will probably surprise nobody that he was plotting his revenge. Working together, Samael and Akiko approached talent from Underground Wrestling Club, building a new faction that would help Samael get revenge on The Redeemed, The Vanguard, and N-Trio. N-Trio beat Samael to the punch on destroying The Redeemed, but that only caused Samael to immediately refocus on N-trio. Since banishing N-Trio from SWA at Emergence, Samael's Lords of Desolation have managed to claim the SWA Tag-Team Championships, but have no other major accomplishments under their belts so far. Knowing Samael, though, it's only a matter of time before he lashes out at The Vanguard and Paul Lambert.
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Post by unimportantguy on Jan 14, 2023 8:37:09 GMT
The following edits are now available as Friends-Only on the Steam Workshop:
Hanami Watanabe
Emi Yamazaki
Tigress Faridah
Javier Valiente
Akiko Shimizu
Mizuki Yoshinaga
Carlos Ortega-Reyes
Clint Oliver
N-Trio
Tony Castille
Most of these are new, but a couple of them are edits I've had around for a long time that I just never got around to publishing. I also did a comprehensive re-upload of my other edits to make sure that everything is up to date, since I can't remember when I last did that. Note that most of these edits require Dawnbreaker09's Suneed Move Restoration Collection, Fuee's move packs, and Irbou's Wrestling and Striking.
I fully intend to release these edits publicly eventually, and I'm quite happy with their performance myself, but I'm not fully convinced they're ready for the public to get their hands on. If you're a steam friend of mine, please give them a try! :) |
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Post by OrochiGeese on Jan 14, 2023 10:09:23 GMT
That was some excellent and illuminating backstory about the Underground Wrestling Club and it's relationship to SWA. I truly enjoyed reading that and also thinking about some of the stories I knew but seeing them in a new light with this new information 💡 I also really like how the end of that report, specifically the part that covers the past few years, gives some additional context about the rivalries and matches in the April 2021-January 2023 event report. It's been a very eventful few years!
I'm so glad that Saji won his block in the World Open last year 😎
Really looking forward to the present/future of SWA and the very big things that you have planned!
On a side note, congratulations on the full-time job! That is great news! 😄
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Post by unimportantguy on Jan 14, 2023 10:59:36 GMT
Geese: I'm trying to slowly work my way back into things. I'll probably have 2-3 match videos from the Queen of SWA posted in the next week, and I'll be doing at least a couple for the World Open when that happens, but I'm not going to commit to trying to get the whole of Crescendo capped at this point, for instance. For big shows, I'm thinking about resurrecting the Angry Wrasslin' Nerd blog, because writing that is less time-consuming and stressful. I'd probably make it easier on myself if I didn't book SWA so rigidly, but I can be a bit of a control freak at times and I just can't allow the simulation to tell me what happens. |
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Post by OrochiGeese on Jan 14, 2023 11:58:15 GMT
Geese: I'm trying to slowly work my way back into things. I'll probably have 2-3 match videos from the Queen of SWA posted in the next week, and I'll be doing at least a couple for the World Open when that happens, but I'm not going to commit to trying to get the whole of Crescendo capped at this point, for instance. For big shows, I'm thinking about resurrecting the Angry Wrasslin' Nerd blog, because writing that is less time-consuming and stressful. I'd probably make it easier on myself if I didn't book SWA so rigidly, but I can be a bit of a control freak at times and I just can't allow the simulation to tell me what happens. If we allow the simulation to tell us what happened, then we are truly living in a simulation. Hopefully it's not being run by the edits that we create 😲🤯
There are some matches I have more flexibility for but I'm mostly locked into my league matches since I figure out all the standings/results at the start. I'll only change them earlier in the league (before the matches are public/official) if I get a new idea I really like or a 6-star match that I absolutely have to showcase. Otherwise, I stick to my results and that means Fire Pro can't always help out. I don't have hours to spend on capping sims like I used to and it's often easier to just write out a match than hope Fire Pro gets the results right. I can be more flexible with non-league matches though so that's why my Dimensional shows have a lot of videos and not the Continuum ones.
I really like the idea of bringing the AWN write-ups back. That's a great way to cover the action and move along the narratives with a commentator that has a lot of personality. I'm still trying to find ways to achieve the balance of having commentary flavor on my shows while keeping them manageable to read and write. It's not easy since I fall into old commentary habits easily. I also have so many sub-divisions in my promotions and I want each one to have its own style for shows. I was thinking of having some kind of "fan recap" but it may be from the perspective of multiple fans: like one fan for each match for certain shows. I can see that working for OG-Joshi and Jean personally thanking each fan after and sending them a gift basket LOL 😄
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Post by unimportantguy on Jan 19, 2023 8:34:19 GMT
The 2023 Queen of SWA has been crowned! Congratulations to Mieko Suzuyama, who will go on to compete for the SWA Joshi Championship at Aftermath in April! Mieko was synonymous with that title for two solid years during her last reign, but it's been three years since she held the strap. Can she climb that mountain again? I also wanted to highlight one other match from the tournament. On 1/4, newcomer Hanami Watanabe had her first singles main event match in SWA Joshi. Hanami is marked by many SWA fans as having the potential to be a future star. This was a big opportunity for her, not only competing in her first Queen of SWA, but also getting a main event match. Though she lost the matchup, I think Hanami showed a lot of the spirit and drive of a star, doing pretty well against an aggressive Lexi Heart. |
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Post by unimportantguy on Jan 19, 2023 18:09:41 GMT
Non-kayfabed posting ahead: Being real for a second I really just wanted an excuse to show off Hanami's appearance. It's one of my favorite appearances I've done. I did the whole Princess Guard back in like 2019 and then had to "Rookie-fy" their appearances because they all looked too much like stars. I'm so happy to finally have these edits out there in their fully unleashed forms. |
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