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Sagitta
12-18-2005, 06:04 PM
I've been tinkering around with a dataset based around 30 years in the future (2035 to be exact).

As such, (some of) today's young talent would be legends by then, most current workers would be dead or retired, and a select few would remain in the business with office, booker or road agent duties.

Since I want the set to be somewhat of a challenge, I decided that it would be based roughly 10 years after a devestating series of events crippled and almost destroyed the industry. I'm doing this so that I can eliminate most of the current feds in lieu of fictional ones - the only survivers would be the major players of today (WWE/TNA/maybe RoH) and the miniscule independants who wouldn't really be affected anyhow due to their being so tiny

What I would like is for people to suggest feds and/or workers who would (in 30 years) be worthy of inclusion.

Bear in mind I'm very much a 'casual' fan and as such I'm doing this more for fun than accuracy.

I have a very rough established history that should be used as a guidline. Each major world region area underwent a couple of significant changes in my fictitious future world and so any ideas handed my way should abide by them:

North America/Europe: Major economic depression which is only now being recovered from. Wrestling has for a good 15 - 20 years been considered by the general public to be a 'dead' industry despite the survival of a few hardy feds.

Japan: For reasons I have to decide upon, wrestling was deemed illegal for roughly 10 years spanning roughly 2015 - 2025. As such 'legit' feds have only just now begun reestablishing themselves in the nation. (this is done primarily due to my utter lack of knowledge about this region)

Mexico: Booming, as it was largely unaffected by the depression that crippled its northern neighbors, but its still all lucha wrestling and thus practically unknown by the casual fan outside of Mexico itself. (I'd need someone to basically donate their time and energies to doing Mexico for me as again I know very little of that area)

General wrestling history spanning today - 2035:

The business peaked around 2010 before it began suffering a series of unrelated but devestating effects.

The public fixated on the continuing problem of wrestlers prematurely dying either due to accident or medical malady and as such efforts to regulate at a governmental level were begun by various countries. This ultimately failed, but stigmatized wrestling worse then perhaps it ever was before, and ticket sales plummeted along with most television shows either being cancelled or censored to the point of silliness.

This generally becomes known as the wrestling 'crash' which is generally dated from roughly 2014 to 2020.

In Japan something (I haven't decided what yet) happened to cause the government there to blacklist the sport and essentially render it dead. Underground and low level 'black market' feds continued of course, but the days of huge wildly popular promotions there were essentially gone.

In the US (and Europe and Canada) the economy tanked and killed ticket sales. Cheap inexpensive feds survived, but players such as WWE and TNA are forced to cut salaries and expenditures, dropping their status to cult or regional levels.

To make matters worse, in 2015 a WWE flight carrying around half of its roster went down, killing all on board. Included in the fatalities are Vince and Stephanie McMahon. The resulting power struggle between Linda McMahon, Shane McMahon and Paul LeVesque for control of the company essentially destroys the company and marks what would become known as the low point of the 'wrestling industry crash.' Ultimately Shane retains ownership leading up to the point where the dataset would be set to begin. The WWE regains its 'F' and reverts to the WWF around this time as the World Wildlife Fund merges and becomes a part of a seperate conservation program, thus freeing up the WWF monicker.

TNA survives - as a subsidiary of WWF Entertainment. During the low point of the wrestling crash (not long after the devestation to its roster by the plane wreck) and coinciding global recession/depression Panda Energy does what every good corporate entity would do - it bailed, selling its investments for whatever cash can be had. This isn't a wise choice by WWF as they overpay and take years trying to recoup the losses of a bad transaction.

RoH continues to survive, though it fails to grow. It remains a local fed known primarily in the Tristate, New England and Mid Atlantic regions.

Numerous smaller feds exist at this point, but they are all very regionalized and have ironically set up a structure very much like the territorial system known 50 year prior. Most bide by a very loose series of agreements that form an unofficial alliance of sorts in an effort to stave off the overbearance of the WWF monopoly on the industry.

In Europe, there is a national federation in the UK that competes with a roughly equal sized fed based in Europe. I haven't even begun to hash out any details beyond that yet for them. Again, a handful of smaller feds also exist.

GOALS:

I want to have roughly 30 feds with around 1000 - 1500 workers. The difficulty should vary depending on who is chosen to be played. I would like to include at least one representative of every style available in the game as feds, and an equal amount for possible startups. I also would like to have a small number of '2005' workers who would have moved on in their careers by 2035 and taken what would be a realistic position in the industry of that time.

What I have done: Locations, and a handful of workers on the WWF roster.

What I would like: People with some spare time to 'donate' rosters and/or fed ideas to me that could be used in the dataset.

NickC13573
12-18-2005, 06:08 PM
Northern Impact Wrestling would be in MN & WI

Arik Cannon would be in TNA

Shane McMahon' kids would probably wrestle in WWE.

MrCanada
12-18-2005, 06:12 PM
Have WWE and TNA be the only North American Survivors.

Have WWE owned by Stephanie McMahon and booked by Triple H (retired). Give them a son named Vince Levesque wrestling under the name Vince Helmsley or something and have him be their top star.

Have TNA owned by Shane McMahon and booked by his son Declan James McMahon who was born (real life) February 13, 2004. Or have Shane and Declan have their own promotion and have TNA owned by someone else. Give Declan the same type of stats of his father and that he can step in the ring and really "go" if he has too. Have Shane's main story be that he was disgusted that Vince chose Stephanie over him to "take over the biz" and that he felt replaced by Triple H so he left to dominate the wrestling world.

Have the sons like Dominick of Mysterio and Benoit's kids all wrestle. Have a major Canadian promotion owned by Chris Benoit and booked by Jericho or Storm or something with major stars from the Hart Family and such.

I think 30 years into the future is pretty far (and most people dont realise it) Harry Smith who is 19 right now would be 49... so Anyone 20 or above would be in their 50's and honestly, how many people last that long wrestling long-term? Especially the modern style? Jack Evans wouldnt be doing no 630 or flippidy flop and no indy guy can use his "super cool spots" so they'd all be worthless in the ring.

ZMAN
12-18-2005, 06:14 PM
Have the superstars who died in the plane crash rise from the dead, making it the first ever death angle. OMG then have it lead to the first ever airplane match, they drop 10 superstars from an airplane and have them wrestle in mid air.

Sagitta
12-18-2005, 06:20 PM
I think 30 years into the future is pretty far (and most people dont realise it) Harry Smith who is 19 right now would be 49... so Anyone 20 or above would be in their 50's and honestly, how many people last that long wrestling long-term? Especially the modern style? Jack Evans wouldnt be doing no 630 or flippidy flop and no indy guy can use his "super cool spots" so they'd all be worthless in the ring.

Thats why I went with such a long stretch - its far enough that all the weirdness I want to do is at least semi plausible, and most of the workers would be fictional. You'd have to remember that the stars of today would be seen by that generation much as the stars of the 70's would be to us now.

MrCanada
12-18-2005, 07:39 PM
I'm not sure they will be. The stars from the 70's were unique, and revolutionairy. Most of today's wrestlers have only turned wrestling into acrobatics. I honestly think in 30 years, most people will forget who AJ Styles is. If there are going to be any legends I think 99% of them would come from WWE. And I dont think there would be that many.

YBDynamo
12-19-2005, 12:44 AM
Legends: AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, CM Punk, John Cena, Randy Orton

The Franchise
12-19-2005, 01:07 AM
I gotta agree with MrCanada, at least to an extent. Many of the guys we happen to remember from the 70s are the guys who either made some impact during an era we lived in or were so incredible that could never be forgotten. I mean, as a wrestling fan born in the mid-80s, who watched primairily the WWF from the early/mid-90s to now (I didn't know about WCW until '98), I have no idea who was wrestling in the 70s, except for (I think) Hogan and Flair.

Anyways, moving on. These are just ideas of mine that I'm throwing out there. Use them if you want.

For the WWE, with Shane as owner and his son, Big D McMahon, as head booker and Uber-face champion, the company slowly begins crawling out of the creative slump it had been in for many years, thanks also in part to the rivalry between McMahon and "The Nature Boy" Reid Flair. With their very talented champion, and a group of hungry youngsters with some devoted vets sprinkled around, the company looks to return to greatness.

TNA barely hung on when the economic troubles hit. Though without Panda's backing the company had to severely cut back on the saleries of many wrestlers. Because of this, many of TNA's workers simply retired from wrestling to find jobs in the world, leaving only the most devoted, loyal workers still there. After merging with the also ailing Ring of Honor, things looked bleak until the Jeff Jarrett Memorial Show, which did big business for the company and kept them from going under.

With wrestling becoming less and less popular, fewer and fewer kids learn to wrestle, leaving the talented as a very rare breed. Because of this, when the stars like Samoa Joe and Bryan Danielson retired or were too old to put on good matches, there wasn't a good pool of workers to pick from to replace them. However, not growing did help the company make money, enough to stay comfortably alive, but not much else. They eventually merged with what remained of TNA in 2028, only a short few months before Jeff Jarrett's passing.

In Canada, thanks to the WWE's drug policy, Benoit doesn't end up like his hero, The Dynamite Kid. After retiring in 2006 (putting over CM Punk at Summerslam), Chris opened a promotion/school in Edmonton, following in the footsteps of Stu Hart.

In Japan, a brutally violent match that ends with the death of one of the competitors causes Japan to ban professional wrestling and start having all the promotions closed. NOAH and Zero-One go underground and start doing their shows in Yakuza sponsered secret shows. All Japan, being the company with the offending match, was first to be targeted and was destroyed. New Japan changes their name to New Japan Fighting and start passing themselves off as legitimate fights (which are legal thanks to a loophole).

I would do Mexico, but I have no idea about it either.

Weden
12-19-2005, 04:51 AM
In Mexico, you could have wrestling move one step up from what it is today, and have it become some sort of fanatical religion. They pretty much worship it nowadays, but you should really push it and have practically the entire population involved.

NakedRedneck
12-19-2005, 09:44 AM
This sounds very interesting. I have moderate knowledge of Mexican wrestling, so I would like to volunteer to do that area. I have watched AAA and CMLL casually over the past three or four years on DirecTV, so I've become familiar enough with the characters and style to be able to do a quasi-original take on it. I'll also help you with whatever else you might need help with.

andytaker
12-19-2005, 05:07 PM
I think you should create

Ted Theodore Loagan
and Bill S Preston Esquire (not sure of the name)

have them form a team called the Wyld STallions

kind of a take of the Bill and Teds excellent adventure movies.

Any way due to a few wrestlers not getting the push they deserve, some had been chroyigenically frozen and are now being defrosted to try there luck again

HHUK
12-19-2005, 05:17 PM
I'm pretty sure there would be alot of offspring from current wrestlers involved in wrestling.

I'm pretty sure any child of HHH and Steph would have the surname "McMahon-Helmsley" for continuity reasons.

I do think 30 years is abit too far, how old is Rey Mysterio's kid? Even if he's as young as 6... he'd be 36 in this, way past his prime. I thought 20 years would be fine just to stop the extreme alienation.

MrCanada
12-19-2005, 07:52 PM
I think 20 years isnt even that much to "change the wrestling world dramatically". 6 years ago there was WCW, ECW, and WWF all going strong. TNA and ROH didnt even exsist.... so maybe 20 might be better.

That Crazy Guy
12-19-2005, 08:11 PM
Legends: AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, CM Punk, John Cena, Randy Orton
Jimmy Jacobs, Alex Shelley, Austin Aries, Samoa Joe, Colt Cabana and Jay Lethal*.

ZMAN
12-19-2005, 11:09 PM
Something like 10 years sounds better to me. Seems like with 20 you'll end up having to create more than half your database of workers... unless everyones like 38 and above.

Greg McNeish
12-20-2005, 10:11 AM
Seems like with 20 you'll end up having to create more than half your database of workers.

I think that's the point.

Oldschool
12-20-2005, 10:22 AM
I think 10 would be awesome, because then you could have Reid Flair (Ric's son) and Ricky Blood (Steamboats son) , both these guys have solid amatuer credentials and they both would be 28 and in their prime and the greatest rivalry ever could live on.

berrysi
12-21-2005, 09:00 AM
I think you should start with a 5 or 10 years in the future update IMO. Then you can always do a 15 or 20 year one after that update. Make a series of different future year updates that all follow on from each other. Alot of work but it would be very cool.

Sagitta
12-21-2005, 03:49 PM
I think that's the point.

Exactly.

I'd rather not try to guess where every single active competitor may or may not be in 10 years and who they may or may not be having relationships with.

30 years clears out all but the true superstars and hanger-on from the lot, yet still allows a select few to remain to help with the 'new' generation of stars that would be played with.

ZMAN
12-22-2005, 05:03 PM
Exactly.

I'd rather not try to guess where every single active competitor may or may not be in 10 years and who they may or may not be having relationships with.

30 years clears out all but the true superstars and hanger-on from the lot, yet still allows a select few to remain to help with the 'new' generation of stars that would be played with.

Then you might as well play the original data, if you're making up workers from Japan, Europe, America, Mexico, and Canada. I think some futuristic data that has, like, Orton, Carlito, and Shelton as the top guys in WWE, and like Rock and Lesnar in TNA would have been better.

What about worker pictures?