THE GOODThe presentation of your format is visually exciting. You obviously have a working knowledge of HTML, and adding things like bold face and pictures goes a long way towards keeping your readers’ attention. That little bit of extra effort shows that you have some genuine enthusiasm for what you’re doing, and that enthusiasm is contagious. If you’re excited about writing these shows, then I’m going to be excited about reading them. You’ve created a layout that’s easy to follow, and that is greatly appreciated!
The purpose of any television program is not just to entertain the people watching, but to give your audience a reason to want to tune in again next week. On that front, your show was a rousing success. From the continuation of the US Title Tournament, to the Tag Team Title rematch, to the “They are Coming” videos, to Undertaker laying out Sting at the close of the program, you have laid out a groundwork for future happenings that people can look forward to following as the weeks progress. I know I will be!
I love the fact that you have Ted Dibiase in the US Title hunt! The Million Dollar Man still has the skill to carry just about any opponent, but he’s far from being a Main Eventer at this point in time. Some fantasy bookers would have the propensity to push Dibiase as if it were still 1988, but you are keeping him within his limitations and I greatly respect that. Dibiase has about one more year before he retires, and keeping him in the US Title division where he can either chase after the gold or work against some of your up and comers as a defending champion is the perfect way for the Million Dollar Man to wrap up his career.
THE BADIn no way, shape, or form should Ted Dibiase vs. Ron Simmons have been your opening match. If anything, it should have been your Main Event, given the star power of the participants. If you wanted to open the show with a tournament match, then William Regal vs. Tiger Ali Singh would have been the better way to go. Sure it’s a heel vs. heel match, but they’re still two up and comers who can warm up the crowd with a hot match and that’s what an opener is supposed to do.
As has already been stated, RVD and Rey Jr. should NOT have gone over the Natural Disasters. I understand you wanted the win to look like a fluke upset, but when Van Damm gets the win with his FINISHER (one he doesn’t debut for another five years, at least) then it ceases to be a fluke. To give you a better idea of why this was wrong, let’s look at your challengers objectively for a moment. 1n 1992, RVD and Rey Jr. and twenty and eighteen years old respectively with a combined total of three years experience between them, and their total combined weight is still less than ONE of the Natural Disasters. At two hundred and fifteen pounds, RVD probably would have bounced off Earthquake and landed in the front row if he hit the frog splash
To recap, your challengers are giving up a height, weight, strength, age, and experience advantage to their opponents and are outclassed in every way possible. By having this woefully under qualified team beats your super heavyweight Tag Team Champions on your debut telecast, it doesn’t make the challengers look good. It makes your champs look bad for not being able to put them away in half the time the match lasted. Had this match happened a few weeks from now AFTER you had established both teams and done an actual fluke victory, this would have been fine, but doing this match cold with this being a fan’s first look at both teams was absolutely the wrong call.
Some people took you to task for having Ultimate Warrior vs. Jimmy Snuka go to a double count out. That doesn’t bother me so much as does the fact that you have Warrior competing for the US Title to begin with. Warrior is still a Main Eventer in 1992 and using him as anything other than a tippy top guy or a Heavyweight Title challenger (especially when Sting is your champion) is a waste of his drawing power. Say what you will about his limited skill or his mental state, but the man was OVER in the early ‘90s unlike any other wrestler in the United States except maybe Hogan, and as someone who lived during this era and remembers watching WMVI on PPV at Matt Newcomer’s sleepover party like it was yesterday I will argue that Warrior was MORE over. Revisionist history likes to diminish Warrior’s relevance and drawing power during this era, but the truth is that any wrestler would sell his soul to the Devil to have the ratings numbers, PPV buys, attendance figures, and merchandise sales that Warrior had at his peak. And this is the same guy you chose not to put over Jimmy Snuka in the first round of a tournament to crown your mid card champion!?!
THE WHYWhy were there only three tournament matches on the show? I could understand doing two now and two on the next show or getting all four done in one shot, but why do three and leave a single match to stick out like a sore thumb on your next broadcast? I don’t get it, although I will admit to being OCD when it comes to even numbers.
Why are you booking Regal as Sir William instead of Lord Steven? The switch to William occurred because the WWF had numerous Steve’s already on their roster and didn’t want to create any confusion (
), but that’s not a problem you currently have on your roster from what I can see. Like using RVD and Rey Jr. at the peak of their skills in 1992, calling Regal William instead of Steven is annoying to the fantasy purists who are looking for a somewhat accurate recreation of the era.
Why was the show only an hour long, as opposed to the two hours it was in real life? Saturday Night was the flagship program for WCW at this time, and one hour just doesn’t seem like enough programming to squeeze in all your talent and angles. The timing of the show felt completely off as well, as there were only four segments between three commercial breaks. Normal broadcast television traditionally averages one commercial for every ten minutes of content (although there are exceptions that you can play around with), which means there should have been four or five ad breaks and several more segments. Basically, it feels like we should have gotten more content out of this show than we did.
Why did Ted Dibiase go over Ron Simmons clean? Unlike RVD and Rey Jr., Simmons IS in his prime in 1992. Heck, this is the year he becomes WCW World Champion, yet here he can’t get past the first round of the US Title Tournament? If that’s what your booking plans are, that’s cool, but Simmons could have easily lost by a quick roll up with a pull of the tights and saved some face. DQ, count out, foreign object, etc.; there were a hundred different finishes you could have went with, but getting knocked out by the Million Dollar Dream should not have been one of them. Forget that Simmons has the size and strength advantage and probably could have fought his way out of the hold (if Dibiase could have even put it on him in the first place). My point is that any babyface loses a great deal of his credibility when he loses clean to a heel via submission or knockout and lies in the ring in defeat while the heel cuts a promo afterwards, and you did just that with a guy who could easily be one of the top faces in your company. With a little creative booking this could have all been avoided. Had you switched the tournament opponents around and had Dibiase beat Snuka clean and had Simmons go to the double count out with Warrior, there’d be nothing to complain about. As it was, you protected Jimmy Snuka when you should have protected Simmons, because unlike Snuka Simmons’s best days are still ahead of him.
SOME SUGGESTIONSVary your match write ups a little. I don’t necessarily mind the lack of description, but using the same verbiage over and over again, like “back and forth match...” or “Match dominated by...”, will get real old real quick.
Learn to budget your show time a little better. Using this first show as an example, you had a one hour program with thirty five minutes of wrestling and let’s say ten minutes of commercials. Entrances and exits are going to eat up at least three minutes a match (one minute for each participant, and one minute for the winner, we’ll say), and with four matches that ends up coming out to twelve minutes. That leaves you with only three minutes of air time for videos, promos, and announcer intros/outtros/banter and that is nowhere near enough time. As I already stated, each segment of programming should normally average around ten minutes before necessitating a commercial, yet you had your Main Event go a full uninterrupted twelve minutes and tacked on the Taker/Sting attack onto the end. Including entrances, exits, and announcer banter, you’re looking at an eighteen to twenty minute segment, and that’s just not realistic. Watch some wrestling programs (‘90s wrestling is preferable, but even a modern day Raw or Impact will do) and observe their format. Take note of how long their segments last from commercial to commercial. Note how many commercials they take and how long the commercials average. See how many matches normally fit in a two hour broadcast, how the longer matches stretch through to a second segment, and how some segments don’t have any wrestling at all. Get a feel for how a real wrestling show is constructed, and apply what you’ve learned to your fantasy product and I guarantee you’ll improve your shows exponentially.
Don’t give all of your big matches away for free on TV. Dibiase/Simmons is a match that people would have easily paid money to see at the Omni with a little build up, and instead it got wasted as an opening match. Vince isn’t running against you in the same timeslot, so you don’t have to have every match feature your crème de la crème. A classic Saturday Night show mostly consisted of some jobber squashes, a random six man tag, one or two competitive matches, and a decent Main Event that was hyped throughout the show, and that’s all you really need to give us. Save the big name vs. big name matches for your paying customers, because if you continually give it to them for free then all of your fans are going to simply stay home and watch the TV show instead of buying a ticket for your big shows.
IN SUMMARYThis debut show of yours was a decent effort with a lot of room for improvement. I understand that you’re a new writer and all, but the promotion you’re writing for is a flagship of any and every fantasy wrestling league, and as such your programs will and should be held to a higher standard. If you were writing for Kansas City or Pacific Northwest, I’d cut you a lot more slack, but you CHOSE to write for WCW and with that higher profile comes raised expectations. With your stacked roster and the notoriety of your promotion, I expect WCW to be the best territory in this fantasy league. I’m not going to continually grade you on a curve or dismiss each mistake with “well, he’s still learning.” OVW is for learning. WCW is where the big boys play, and if you can’t hang with the big boys then you need to get off the playground. I say this not to be a jerk or to portray myself as a know it all, but because I’m genuinely impressed with your enthusiasm and want to see your product get better. If I didn’t like you or what you’re doing, I’d keep my mouth shut, say nothing, and read something else. I want your next show to be better, and I EXPECT your next show to be better. Furthermore, I KNOW your next show’s going to be better because you’ve got some passion in you that a lot of fantasy writers don’t, and that’s going to push you to keep improving yourself. Stick with it, and I wish you nothing but the best of luck!
To recap, your challengers are giving up a height, weight, strength, age, and experience advantage to their opponents and are outclassed in every way possible. By having this woefully under qualified team beats your super heavyweight Tag Team Champions on your debut telecast, it doesn’t make the challengers look good. It makes your champs look bad for not being able to put them away in half the time the match lasted. Had this match happened a few weeks from now AFTER you had established both teams and done an actual fluke victory, this would have been fine, but doing this match cold with this being a fan’s first look at both teams was absolutely the wrong call.
), but that’s not a problem you currently have on your roster from what I can see. Like using RVD and Rey Jr. at the peak of their skills in 1992, calling Regal William instead of Steven is annoying to the fantasy purists who are looking for a somewhat accurate recreation of the era.