Post by Jayson Price on May 7, 2018 19:43:04 GMT -5
(In the words of WCF's creator, Seth Lerch)
(More to be added...eventually?)
WCF v1
Creation
Long story short, I'd joined my first efed ever, NCW, run by Steve Carr. As far as I remember I was only involved for two months or so before Carr decided to close it. I'm not sure what exactly made me think that someone with my experience would be a good owner, but regardless, I opened WCF. The WCF acronym came about from trying to combine WCW and WWF, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say. I don't remember very much about these early days. I know Mace, who had been an NCW star as AJ Jam, won the World Title in the first War style match (though I don't think it was called War at the time). He would go on to give the Title to Steve Carr, saying Carr deserved it more. I would mainly gather members by getting old NCW members and advertising in AOL chatrooms, which is where Logan found the fed and decided to join. Logan was a problem from the start but would of course prove to be very, very important to WCF in the future. Logan was fired in this time, I believe, for pretending to be me on the messageboards and doing a whole lot of flaming. I don't remember specifically why I closed WCF; I think it was just a lot of work and I wasn't quite at the experience level I needed to be at when it came to efedding.
WCF v2
Shortest Return Ever
Not much to say about WCF v2. I'm surprised after this people ever came back, because we only ran for two weeks until I decided I didn't want to run it again. Mace was back in the fed, though I believe he was mainly using AJ Jam at the time, and there was a big out of character fight when he accused Steve Carr of saying something racist in a promo. It eventually worked out between both parties I think, but that fight, and my desire for free time to play video games, are what lead me to closing once more.
WCF v3
Still Not There Yet...
I actually never intended to reopen this version of WCF. I'd roleplayed in an efed that was JUST for humorous roleplays (mostly bad, dirty humor, but humor nonetheless) and I'd planned to open my own fed like that, called HWF, Humor Wrestling Federation. That never got off the ground, and I believe Logan convinced me to reopen WCF instead. This was the first time the War match was actually called War. This incarnation didn't run for a long time, but I enjoyed it when it did. One, Logan won the World Title and we created the Team of Treachery, which is something that is still a big deal now. Also, I had a lot of people joining from around the world: the UK, Australia, and Canada, which was pretty cool. I didn't at all intend for this version of WCF to close. I "sold" the company to a different owner so WCF could continue, gave him the password to the website and everything, but the man disappeared after that and never did anything with it, much to my displeasure.
WCF v4
Finally, Success
My fourth try was a charm. WCF v4 was when I really hit my stride with running an efed. I found ways to make some of the more annoying
e consuming jobs (like making roster page) go faster and easier. Also, I'd somehow managed to accumulate quite a following: Creeping Death and Gravedigger were both talented roleplayers that helped with a lot of writing on the shows as well. Logan did a lot of entertaining stuff in this time. I also got lucky enough to get PC Cradle and Defman. I think Cradle versus Defman was the first really great feud in WCF history. Sadly, I can't take credit for most of the stuff that was going on at this time. A lot of it was "unmates running the asylum," as Gravedigger did most of his storyline, and Defman and Cradle worked out their storyline with each other as well. This was my second favorite incarnation of the Team of Treachery, with Logan and Rick Mad tricking PC Cradle into joining them, only for Cradle to find the truth out later.
Unfortunatly, WCF v4 also featured the low point of the WCF World Title, when I discovered that Logan, with the World Title, had been stealing his roleplays from another source. I had to fire him, and a tournament was held to decide the new Champion, which Trent Hunter would ultimately win.
Soon Madd Dogg would bring in a lot of new talent.. Dake Ken, X-Rated, and Trent Hunter. Dogg also created probably the single worst match in WCF history, the Euthanasia Chamber match, which to this day I still can't explain. It happened at Aftermath so go check it out if you want to. Regardless, Hunter, X and Dake Ken forming the Elite was pretty major. I enjoyed Hunter's World Title reign, which culminated at the very first One.
Torture debuted in this era, as a tag team with Death. Death and Torture came from the same wrestling messageboard as Creeping Death had. They had a bit of success as a tag team, and to this day Torture claims he and Death got screwed out of a match and that is why they decided to quit. I maintain they didn't get screwed at all, and quit because they were upset about a loss to DKX or something like that.
The idea of One was pretty perfect for me. I'd gotten to running the fed for one whole year, which seemed like a huge accomplishment with all of my other false starts, and I'd yet to have a huge "Wrestlemania" style PPV. Metallica was my favorite band with One being my favorite song, and I'd made a one year milestone... the whole event came together nicely. I think it had a pretty decent card; some entertainment, some big names, the conclusion to the Defman/Cradle rivalry, and Neo defeating Trent Hunter in what I had thought was a pretty good feud between the two.
Unfortunatly, Neo's reign didn't work out how I expected, and X-Rated beat him for the belt almost immediately after One. Nothing against X-Rated, but I hadn't imagined him as a World Champion yet and I'd wanted Neo's reign to go better. Recognizing that Cradle would make a great Champion, at War I booked Cradle versus X, which Cradle won. And in one of my favorite moments in WCF history, the whole War PPV was held in the WCF chatroom for the first time ever. I'd scheduled Trent Hunter to win the match, pinning Epic. But as the chat was going on, the roster was very clearly of the opinion that Epic should be the one to win it, so I changed the end of the match during the live chat to have Epic win it.
That was the last show of the era. Once again, I don't know why I closed it down.. almost certainly, once again, just because I felt like it took up too much of my time. I think I probably felt that I'd run WCF for over an entire year and it was time to give it up.
WCF v5
The Missing Era
I regret a lot about this era. I moved the website from Angelfire to Angeltowns, a free host with no ads. And for some reason, I decided not to back up the results files on my computer, having the only copies of results on the Angeltowns server itself. And one day, everything was gone. Angeltowns said that the FBI had taken all of their servers and that there was no way to recover anything. The only reason I have any results from that era were that one, I still had the One results on my computer, thank God, and two, Reckless Jack saved many of his matches from that time. I don't remember much from this era. Logan was once again fired for one reason or another, once again when he was Champion, and I took the World Title off him by having him be defeated by Rick Mad. I had Rick lose it soon thereafter, of course, but it was kind of a silly thing to do looking back. Torture was established in this era with his Hardcore Title reign and feud with Mike Maida. I also had a lot of fun with Nate Nytro, Twister and J-X, who were all pretty talented, Nate Nytro especially. I held the second One, which was kind of weird because WCF hadn't been running for a year yet but I'd felt like it was a good time for a "Wrestlemania" style PPV, as I had lots of good feuds going at the time. Again, I just wish I hadn't lost all these results and everything.
WCF v6
At Our Prime
For my money, this was the best version of WCF overall. Between versions, Nate Nytro had opened his own fed, KWA. That closed, and we were going to run another fed together, CWF, but I decided I couldn't do it and left. That never really went anywhere and I reopened WCF instead. Although it WAS my favorite era, I think it also might have had more drama than any time before it.
A lot of great talent joined early on. Namely Bobby Cairo, Jack of Blades, and Ellis. In a way, they were so good that I didn't really know what to do with them, and Blades and Ellis quickly started up a heated feud. They pretty much controlled and wrote out the feud themselves. Behind the scenes, however, Ellis was a bit unstable. For whatever reason there was always a lot of animosity between he and Creeping Death, which came to a head when he accused Creeping Death of hacking into his account and posting negative things about him. It turned out that Ellis had posted these things himself to frame CD, and Ellis' relationship with WCF came to an end. I had to write his characters out of storylines, of course, and he flipped out on me for "using his characters without his permission." Good times.
Torture's reign as World Champion. A very, very long reign so I can't speak about everything all at once. Logan and Torture had a lot of heat between them out of character, and with Torture the heir apparent to being THE man in WCF to beat, the Torture versus Logan match was made. To this day it is probably the biggest match in WCF history, in my opinion. Both Torture and Logan had factions, the New Dynasty and the Team of Treachery, respectively, so WCF was pretty much divided on who they wanted to see win. The New Dynasty versus ToT storyline was really entertaining because both sides had some great characters like Jack of Blades and Lawnmower Jones. As for the Logan/Torture match itself, I ended up going with Torture as the winner. I don't remember the roleplays specifically, but I know it was incredibly difficult to pick a winner. No matter who won, there was going to be hell.
Luckily, Logan stayed on board long enough to finish the New Dynasty/Team of Treachery feud, where Torture turned heel on his group. Also around this time I allowed Creeping Death to run his own show, XIII. It proved to be a success each time, generally, and CD really went all out, but for the first times I was really nervous that CD would mess things up, or not come through and get me the show on time. But everything turned out fine and XIII is still a fun show to hold.
The second really great feud in WCF took place in this era, with Striker versus Vice outdoing even Cradle versus Defman. They wrote amazing roleplays and amazing matches to boot. Along with Jack of Blades, Striker and Vice also thought of some really great, intense storylines. WCF wouldn't have been half as good without these guys.
The end of Torture's World Title reign... this was some controversy. One was coming up, and there were four guys that had been feuding the entire year: Reckless Jack, Logan, Creeping Death, and Torture. I put them all together for a World Title match. It made perfect sense, but for some reason none of them wanted ANYTHING to do with it. Behind my back, they planned on sabotaging the main event and not roleplaying for it. I took this really, really personally and briefly closed WCF, though it turned out that it was only a hiatus. Regardless, when WCF came back Torture was not a part of it anymore. I decided to finally give Jack of Blades a shot at the World Title, believing that he and Logan could tear the house down if they so chose.
I was wrong, however. Logan and Blades' storyline went on for three months, and Logan must have been disinterested in WCF at the time because he never really rose to the occasion in any of the matches, which was disappointing. Blades was a good Champion, though for some reason I never really pulled the trigger on any big World Title defenses for him. He would only lose the Title when he decided to take time off, and I passed the belt to Skyler Striker.
Striker had been doing amazing work in WCF for quite a while now, and he helped me run what was basically a copy of one of my favorite angles ever. Unknown to everyone else in the fed, I had a masked wrestler named Biohazard join. I roleplayed as him, and roleplayed HORRIBLY, though it was so bad people ended up really loving him. Anyway, Striker had taken time off. I had Biohazard win a World Title Contendership battle royal, only to unmask to reveal Skyler Striker, ready for revenge on Blades. It was a shame to do such a big Title change without an actual roleplaying contest, but the story was pretty neat so I didn't mind too much.
Realizing that the World Title hadn't been the best part of the show since WCF opened and that the midcard Titles had been kind of outstaging it the whole time, I created the WCF Championship Series. I really wanted to push the World Title, and Skyler Striker in the process. I think it worked really well. Striker got in a lot of Title defenses and we ran some great stories with him and Cairo.
Unfortunatly, Bobby Cairo and I had a falling out as well. I wanted the Cairo vs Striker to be a straight up roleplaying contest, and Cairo and Striker felt like it wasn't the right time in their feud to do that. Cairo was the last man in the Championship Series, and I just really wanted all of those matches to be real, legitimate matches without angled endings. On top of that, Cairo wrote a Hardcore Title match that was so ridiculous so as to be unusable: all I remember is that it featured a UFO. Cairo was offended when I wouldn't use the match and he left WCF, though we're on good terms now.
Once again, I suppose I'd had enough of running WCF for a while. I was in college and I felt like at this point in my life, efedding was something I should be leaving behind (ha!). Danny Vice would go on to create GWC. GWC lasted quite a long time and I was only briefly involved with it as a roleplayer, but I know many people had a great time there.
The WCF Classic
Dedication
Sometime while running GWC, Vice had asked me to help him name a tournament he was holding, and I came up with the GWC Classic. In late 2007 I decided I wanted to keep WCF alive and announced a one time tournament, which I decided to call the WCF Classic.
The WCF Classic was a good idea, but I suppose maybe my heart wasn't in it. After one show, I decided I didn't want to finish. Twelve men competed in the first round matches, which included Steve Carr vs Seth Lerch and Cairo vs Striker.
Even though I wasn't going to finish, however, the tournament didn't end. Bobby Cairo, Creeping Death and Steve Carr seemed to be the main people involved in keeping it going. They made sure everything got written, and posted the matches on the boards. It came down to Steve Carr versus Creeping Death, and Creeping Death won. I really had nothing to do with the rest of the tournament but I really did like the fact they kept it going, it would have been disappointing looking back if it hadn't been finished.
Unfortunatly Danny Vice disappeared off the radar, Skyler Striker got too busy for efedding, and Thunder showed no interest in WCF following the Classic. But, of course, I decided to bring it back anyway.. and here we are!
Creation
Long story short, I'd joined my first efed ever, NCW, run by Steve Carr. As far as I remember I was only involved for two months or so before Carr decided to close it. I'm not sure what exactly made me think that someone with my experience would be a good owner, but regardless, I opened WCF. The WCF acronym came about from trying to combine WCW and WWF, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say. I don't remember very much about these early days. I know Mace, who had been an NCW star as AJ Jam, won the World Title in the first War style match (though I don't think it was called War at the time). He would go on to give the Title to Steve Carr, saying Carr deserved it more. I would mainly gather members by getting old NCW members and advertising in AOL chatrooms, which is where Logan found the fed and decided to join. Logan was a problem from the start but would of course prove to be very, very important to WCF in the future. Logan was fired in this time, I believe, for pretending to be me on the messageboards and doing a whole lot of flaming. I don't remember specifically why I closed WCF; I think it was just a lot of work and I wasn't quite at the experience level I needed to be at when it came to efedding.
WCF v2
Shortest Return Ever
Not much to say about WCF v2. I'm surprised after this people ever came back, because we only ran for two weeks until I decided I didn't want to run it again. Mace was back in the fed, though I believe he was mainly using AJ Jam at the time, and there was a big out of character fight when he accused Steve Carr of saying something racist in a promo. It eventually worked out between both parties I think, but that fight, and my desire for free time to play video games, are what lead me to closing once more.
WCF v3
Still Not There Yet...
I actually never intended to reopen this version of WCF. I'd roleplayed in an efed that was JUST for humorous roleplays (mostly bad, dirty humor, but humor nonetheless) and I'd planned to open my own fed like that, called HWF, Humor Wrestling Federation. That never got off the ground, and I believe Logan convinced me to reopen WCF instead. This was the first time the War match was actually called War. This incarnation didn't run for a long time, but I enjoyed it when it did. One, Logan won the World Title and we created the Team of Treachery, which is something that is still a big deal now. Also, I had a lot of people joining from around the world: the UK, Australia, and Canada, which was pretty cool. I didn't at all intend for this version of WCF to close. I "sold" the company to a different owner so WCF could continue, gave him the password to the website and everything, but the man disappeared after that and never did anything with it, much to my displeasure.
WCF v4
Finally, Success
My fourth try was a charm. WCF v4 was when I really hit my stride with running an efed. I found ways to make some of the more annoying
e consuming jobs (like making roster page) go faster and easier. Also, I'd somehow managed to accumulate quite a following: Creeping Death and Gravedigger were both talented roleplayers that helped with a lot of writing on the shows as well. Logan did a lot of entertaining stuff in this time. I also got lucky enough to get PC Cradle and Defman. I think Cradle versus Defman was the first really great feud in WCF history. Sadly, I can't take credit for most of the stuff that was going on at this time. A lot of it was "unmates running the asylum," as Gravedigger did most of his storyline, and Defman and Cradle worked out their storyline with each other as well. This was my second favorite incarnation of the Team of Treachery, with Logan and Rick Mad tricking PC Cradle into joining them, only for Cradle to find the truth out later.Unfortunatly, WCF v4 also featured the low point of the WCF World Title, when I discovered that Logan, with the World Title, had been stealing his roleplays from another source. I had to fire him, and a tournament was held to decide the new Champion, which Trent Hunter would ultimately win.
Soon Madd Dogg would bring in a lot of new talent.. Dake Ken, X-Rated, and Trent Hunter. Dogg also created probably the single worst match in WCF history, the Euthanasia Chamber match, which to this day I still can't explain. It happened at Aftermath so go check it out if you want to. Regardless, Hunter, X and Dake Ken forming the Elite was pretty major. I enjoyed Hunter's World Title reign, which culminated at the very first One.
Torture debuted in this era, as a tag team with Death. Death and Torture came from the same wrestling messageboard as Creeping Death had. They had a bit of success as a tag team, and to this day Torture claims he and Death got screwed out of a match and that is why they decided to quit. I maintain they didn't get screwed at all, and quit because they were upset about a loss to DKX or something like that.
The idea of One was pretty perfect for me. I'd gotten to running the fed for one whole year, which seemed like a huge accomplishment with all of my other false starts, and I'd yet to have a huge "Wrestlemania" style PPV. Metallica was my favorite band with One being my favorite song, and I'd made a one year milestone... the whole event came together nicely. I think it had a pretty decent card; some entertainment, some big names, the conclusion to the Defman/Cradle rivalry, and Neo defeating Trent Hunter in what I had thought was a pretty good feud between the two.
Unfortunatly, Neo's reign didn't work out how I expected, and X-Rated beat him for the belt almost immediately after One. Nothing against X-Rated, but I hadn't imagined him as a World Champion yet and I'd wanted Neo's reign to go better. Recognizing that Cradle would make a great Champion, at War I booked Cradle versus X, which Cradle won. And in one of my favorite moments in WCF history, the whole War PPV was held in the WCF chatroom for the first time ever. I'd scheduled Trent Hunter to win the match, pinning Epic. But as the chat was going on, the roster was very clearly of the opinion that Epic should be the one to win it, so I changed the end of the match during the live chat to have Epic win it.
That was the last show of the era. Once again, I don't know why I closed it down.. almost certainly, once again, just because I felt like it took up too much of my time. I think I probably felt that I'd run WCF for over an entire year and it was time to give it up.
WCF v5
The Missing Era
I regret a lot about this era. I moved the website from Angelfire to Angeltowns, a free host with no ads. And for some reason, I decided not to back up the results files on my computer, having the only copies of results on the Angeltowns server itself. And one day, everything was gone. Angeltowns said that the FBI had taken all of their servers and that there was no way to recover anything. The only reason I have any results from that era were that one, I still had the One results on my computer, thank God, and two, Reckless Jack saved many of his matches from that time. I don't remember much from this era. Logan was once again fired for one reason or another, once again when he was Champion, and I took the World Title off him by having him be defeated by Rick Mad. I had Rick lose it soon thereafter, of course, but it was kind of a silly thing to do looking back. Torture was established in this era with his Hardcore Title reign and feud with Mike Maida. I also had a lot of fun with Nate Nytro, Twister and J-X, who were all pretty talented, Nate Nytro especially. I held the second One, which was kind of weird because WCF hadn't been running for a year yet but I'd felt like it was a good time for a "Wrestlemania" style PPV, as I had lots of good feuds going at the time. Again, I just wish I hadn't lost all these results and everything.
WCF v6
At Our Prime
For my money, this was the best version of WCF overall. Between versions, Nate Nytro had opened his own fed, KWA. That closed, and we were going to run another fed together, CWF, but I decided I couldn't do it and left. That never really went anywhere and I reopened WCF instead. Although it WAS my favorite era, I think it also might have had more drama than any time before it.
A lot of great talent joined early on. Namely Bobby Cairo, Jack of Blades, and Ellis. In a way, they were so good that I didn't really know what to do with them, and Blades and Ellis quickly started up a heated feud. They pretty much controlled and wrote out the feud themselves. Behind the scenes, however, Ellis was a bit unstable. For whatever reason there was always a lot of animosity between he and Creeping Death, which came to a head when he accused Creeping Death of hacking into his account and posting negative things about him. It turned out that Ellis had posted these things himself to frame CD, and Ellis' relationship with WCF came to an end. I had to write his characters out of storylines, of course, and he flipped out on me for "using his characters without his permission." Good times.
Torture's reign as World Champion. A very, very long reign so I can't speak about everything all at once. Logan and Torture had a lot of heat between them out of character, and with Torture the heir apparent to being THE man in WCF to beat, the Torture versus Logan match was made. To this day it is probably the biggest match in WCF history, in my opinion. Both Torture and Logan had factions, the New Dynasty and the Team of Treachery, respectively, so WCF was pretty much divided on who they wanted to see win. The New Dynasty versus ToT storyline was really entertaining because both sides had some great characters like Jack of Blades and Lawnmower Jones. As for the Logan/Torture match itself, I ended up going with Torture as the winner. I don't remember the roleplays specifically, but I know it was incredibly difficult to pick a winner. No matter who won, there was going to be hell.
Luckily, Logan stayed on board long enough to finish the New Dynasty/Team of Treachery feud, where Torture turned heel on his group. Also around this time I allowed Creeping Death to run his own show, XIII. It proved to be a success each time, generally, and CD really went all out, but for the first times I was really nervous that CD would mess things up, or not come through and get me the show on time. But everything turned out fine and XIII is still a fun show to hold.
The second really great feud in WCF took place in this era, with Striker versus Vice outdoing even Cradle versus Defman. They wrote amazing roleplays and amazing matches to boot. Along with Jack of Blades, Striker and Vice also thought of some really great, intense storylines. WCF wouldn't have been half as good without these guys.
The end of Torture's World Title reign... this was some controversy. One was coming up, and there were four guys that had been feuding the entire year: Reckless Jack, Logan, Creeping Death, and Torture. I put them all together for a World Title match. It made perfect sense, but for some reason none of them wanted ANYTHING to do with it. Behind my back, they planned on sabotaging the main event and not roleplaying for it. I took this really, really personally and briefly closed WCF, though it turned out that it was only a hiatus. Regardless, when WCF came back Torture was not a part of it anymore. I decided to finally give Jack of Blades a shot at the World Title, believing that he and Logan could tear the house down if they so chose.
I was wrong, however. Logan and Blades' storyline went on for three months, and Logan must have been disinterested in WCF at the time because he never really rose to the occasion in any of the matches, which was disappointing. Blades was a good Champion, though for some reason I never really pulled the trigger on any big World Title defenses for him. He would only lose the Title when he decided to take time off, and I passed the belt to Skyler Striker.
Striker had been doing amazing work in WCF for quite a while now, and he helped me run what was basically a copy of one of my favorite angles ever. Unknown to everyone else in the fed, I had a masked wrestler named Biohazard join. I roleplayed as him, and roleplayed HORRIBLY, though it was so bad people ended up really loving him. Anyway, Striker had taken time off. I had Biohazard win a World Title Contendership battle royal, only to unmask to reveal Skyler Striker, ready for revenge on Blades. It was a shame to do such a big Title change without an actual roleplaying contest, but the story was pretty neat so I didn't mind too much.
Realizing that the World Title hadn't been the best part of the show since WCF opened and that the midcard Titles had been kind of outstaging it the whole time, I created the WCF Championship Series. I really wanted to push the World Title, and Skyler Striker in the process. I think it worked really well. Striker got in a lot of Title defenses and we ran some great stories with him and Cairo.
Unfortunatly, Bobby Cairo and I had a falling out as well. I wanted the Cairo vs Striker to be a straight up roleplaying contest, and Cairo and Striker felt like it wasn't the right time in their feud to do that. Cairo was the last man in the Championship Series, and I just really wanted all of those matches to be real, legitimate matches without angled endings. On top of that, Cairo wrote a Hardcore Title match that was so ridiculous so as to be unusable: all I remember is that it featured a UFO. Cairo was offended when I wouldn't use the match and he left WCF, though we're on good terms now.
Once again, I suppose I'd had enough of running WCF for a while. I was in college and I felt like at this point in my life, efedding was something I should be leaving behind (ha!). Danny Vice would go on to create GWC. GWC lasted quite a long time and I was only briefly involved with it as a roleplayer, but I know many people had a great time there.
The WCF Classic
Dedication
Sometime while running GWC, Vice had asked me to help him name a tournament he was holding, and I came up with the GWC Classic. In late 2007 I decided I wanted to keep WCF alive and announced a one time tournament, which I decided to call the WCF Classic.
The WCF Classic was a good idea, but I suppose maybe my heart wasn't in it. After one show, I decided I didn't want to finish. Twelve men competed in the first round matches, which included Steve Carr vs Seth Lerch and Cairo vs Striker.
Even though I wasn't going to finish, however, the tournament didn't end. Bobby Cairo, Creeping Death and Steve Carr seemed to be the main people involved in keeping it going. They made sure everything got written, and posted the matches on the boards. It came down to Steve Carr versus Creeping Death, and Creeping Death won. I really had nothing to do with the rest of the tournament but I really did like the fact they kept it going, it would have been disappointing looking back if it hadn't been finished.
Unfortunatly Danny Vice disappeared off the radar, Skyler Striker got too busy for efedding, and Thunder showed no interest in WCF following the Classic. But, of course, I decided to bring it back anyway.. and here we are!
(More to be added...eventually?)
