Control21

Great show. Both of those matches sounded excellent. I really like IPW's identity so far. It feels very low-key yet there is a clear idea in terms of the type of wrestlers and matches involved. Keep up the good work!

With the second pick....I will take Fighting Network RINGS to the shock and awe of many.

Sounds good to me

As for the 4th point, shoot guys should be fine for shoot-style promotions as long as you can reference when/where they were active in a certain year. If anyone else wants to draft those types of people, that's fine too I suppose. I don't think we need to add them to the free agent pool (I can create a list if you need it), but if someone drafts them or adds them during free agency, they can reference their activity in 1996.

Yes, I did plan on making use of some Shooto and Pancrase guys...

That'd be awesome to have another active shoot-style promotion. Even it means I might have more competition for certain talent than I expected!

Card Announcement: UWF Newborn – “Fighting Network Sapporo” August 8th, 1988 Nakajima Sports Center Sapporo, Japan Masakatsu Funaki vs Yoji Anjo Minoru Suzuki vs Shigeo Miyato Tatsuo Nakano vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara Akira Maeda vs Ryuma Go Nobuhiko Takada vs Kazuo Yamazaki

I'm in

This is fine with me. RINGS was a bit different from the other promotions people will probably select, so it might be best that I set my own roster while allowing others to benefit from the draft.

Just a friendly note, Gary Albright is on the free agent list but is with PCW now. Norman Smiley is also on the free agent list but is with UWF. Those are the two names that I am aware of but there might be others. Just wanted to be sure there wouldn't be any confusion.

I'm fine with any of those options.

I'm fine with that. Do we plan on starting with set historical rosters or is there going to be a draft? How will rookies be handled? Will there be a draft for that like in Dawn of War? I know in DoW the consensus is that only North American promotions participate in rookie drafts, which is fine. Although if more than one Japanese promotion is in the game at the start (controlled by a user), we may have to figure out how exactly that will work for this game.

1996 would be perfect! I can jump right into RINGS when it is starting to reach its peak years with Kohsaka, Tamura, Volk Han, and Yamamoto. As for the rules, the initial ideas sound good. I may have my own ideas if I think of any, but I don't have anything to add at this point.

Good stuff! Good to see the Von Erichs get some shine. Tito Santana vs Greg Valentine is a great way to close the show. Can't wait to see what's next.

I think Ken "Wayne" Shamrock should be kept on my roster and taken out of the draft based on the fact that he's always been a shoot-style guy. He had a brief run in AJPW in 1989, bounced around a bit in the US as "Vince Torelli," and then tried out for UWF Newborn in 1990 which led to an extended run with UWF, PWFG, and then Pancrase. That's seven years of working shoot-style or UWF-adjacent promotions until he joins WWF in 1997 for a few years before going back to Japan to work for PRIDE and such. Eight years of working in Japan. Clearly, he's always been a guy closer to shoot-style than traditional pro-wrestling.

I like the 1995 concept as well, but anything in the 90s would be interesting if you ask me.

I would definitely be interested if one ever starts.

My apologies, I didn't mean to cause a scene or get emotions up. I just love shoot-style and shoot-style adjacent wrestlers so I'm naturally eager to work with those types of wrestlers my first time doing this...and I'm trying to be realistic with how I roll out the wrestlers already on my roster and pace myself, so I don't burn myself out. I probably shouldn't have said anything.

I'll be honest...it's slightly frustrating to be stonewalled a bit because I want to add a type of wrestler to my roster to fill a certain role. You have 60+ guys on your roster Rain, don't you think it would be the polite/fair thing to do to let one of the new guys take advantage of the roster turnover as well to get a guy they want? Just seems like my requests are being handwaved. I get this is an established group with a certain hierarchy and group dynamics naturally come into play...but come on.

I see Gary Albright is on the free agent list now. Can I go ahead and claim him?

I don't mind doing that, but I just figured I would make my desire for someone like Vader known and take advantage of the current turnover with some of the rosters and maybe get him on a more permanent basis. I just want people to know that I'm not asking for random wrestlers for no reason. Vader worked UWFi in real life (a descendant of UWF) and was mainly working in Japan in the late 1980s, so things match up to some degree. Shoot-style promotions often used "monster gaijins" to go against their native roster just like any other Japanese promotion.

Vader was working NJPW a lot in 1988. I don't think it would be that much of a stretch for Vader to work UWF (especially since UWF was able to bring in guys like Backlund in 1988).

Are you running both WCW and WWF now? Just curious because if the WCW roster is going to open up then maybe I can get Vader to start his UWFi run a few years earlier than in real life. I really want one of those "monster gaijins" in the vein of Gary Albright or Vader on my roster. Just putting that out there...