Digital Championship Wrestling Federation (DCWF)

Digital Championship Wrestling Federation (DCWF) (prior Second Life Championship Wrestling), is a Second Life wrestling federation that was founded in January 2008 by Ivan Halfpint and Mattie McCullough, and is currently the longest running federation in the history of Second Life. The DCWF is currently owned and operated by Katheryn Blackadder, and managed by Numbers Rossini, Mythil Woyseck, and Nicki Roxz. When Alpin Criss departed the DCWF in April 2009, the DCWF went on hiatus while it reorganized. It re-opened on Saturday, September 13, 2009, at the DCWF Arena in front of a capacity crowd of over 50, lifting near to 100 people before the sim crashed after the opening match. The show continued and also saw Chairman Eric Stuart become the Heavyweight Champion after defeating BigEvil Mandelkorn and firing him thereafter. The DCWF celebrated its two year anniversary and entered its third year of existence on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at the second annual WrestleFest event. April 2010 saw the departure of chairman Eric Stuart. Beginning in the summer of 2010, The DCWF had a brief partnership with Over the Edge Wrestling (OEW).

DCWF would change ownership in 2023 with ownership now going to former SCPW owner Kristen. The new era is due to begin March 3rd 2023 shows moving to 2pm SLT on an Friday and currently still has an partnership with WPWF.

History

The Start

When Ivan Halfpint and Mattie McCullough failed to strike a deal with Icy Blackburn, who was owner of fledgling promotion Second Life Wrestling Entertainment (SWE) in mid-January 2008, they both decided it was best to start their own company. They started the Second Life Championship Wrestling group in-world, and began an operation to recruit a small group of wrestlers needed to put on shows and events for residents. At the same time, Alpin Criss was developing his first wrestling system for the SWE. After Ivan and Mattie persuaded Criss to join them at SLCW, he defected and pledged his allegiance to the new wrestling company. The SLCW began recruiting a number of wrestlers and staff willing to help out and perform. This included well known names such as Eric Stuart, Sidney Washborne and Waroop Bravin. With other wrestlers joining, and the consensus that they had enough staff to set up an event, it was decided that Saturday February 16th would be SLCW's first house show date. The company also began planning out their first storyline to introduce their World Heavyweight Championship belt. It was decided that Sidney Washborne and Rob Bukowski (who wrestled for the Evolution Pro Wrestling company, which was SL's first recognised and fully operating promotion) would challenge for the new belt. The show on February 16th went off without any major hitches and was declared a success, as a good crowd turned up to watch a quality night of wrestling. It was announced just a couple of days later that the promotion planned to host its first Pay-Per-View style event "St. Valentines Massacre" on March 1st. The company got its name out via various Second Life press sources, also getting onto a news programme the day before the event. The show's featured bout saw Sidney Washborne defeat Rob Bukowski to become the first World Heavyweight Champion. On this day as well, future wrestler, Hall Of Famer and now commentator Celtdan McMahon refereed the card.

[Alpin's Comment: Icy was very young. Ivan and Mattie just wanted to work with him, but he flat out refused. I ended up going to Ivan's sim because Icy had thrown up so many freebie vendors (which he was attempting to markup for profit) that the sim would lag so bad you couldn't do anything. It was soup in there. So I went over to Ivan's sim just to be able to animate and integrate moves.

Thus the first version of the ACPWS was born. There wasn't any targeting. I was using a multi-animation script I found online. You could only target one guy with that. Basically, One person would wear an Odd numbered HUD, the other and Even. That's the way it worked. Very basic.

Our first crowd was very small. A handful of people, all of them people who we knew. It was fun though.

To this day I miss Ivan and Buger on the microphone. They were so much fun to listen to.]

Stumbling Blocks

St. Valentines Massacre was highly successful and attracted another large crowd. Although, in the days following the event, the promotion started to encounter problems in and outside of the company. First, wrestlers from rival company SWE were spreading rumours about other staff inside the SLCW and about the system that Alpin Criss was developing. This had come shortly after the company began promoting its second house show a couple of weeks after their first Main Event. Commissioner and part owner Mattie McCullough disappeared after booking the card, and Ivan Halfpint was on holiday going into the event. Griefers had attacked the arena hours before the show which eventually become known as "Hell Saturday". The event did go off without any hitches, but in any case was still dubbed a major disaster. McCullough never returned, and therefore, Ivan Halfpint decided he must take full ownership of the company. Halfpint decided that Eric Stuart must now become a bigger head in the company and appointed him Head Builder. Stuart set out to build a brand new arena on the same patch of land. The company then began promoting its 2nd Main Event show "April Fools Hardcore Rules" in which every match would be a hardcore style match. While building went on, the company did not hold any events. During this time, a number of new faces began working with the company, and Alpin Criss continued development of his wrestling system, which evolved by the day.

The building of the new arena had finished in time for April 5th, the date of the Main Event. As the wrestlers prepared for the show, Second Life shut down for maintenance. The grid never went back online until the scheduled start time of Noon SLT, and therefore the show was postponed until the next day, putting some of the matches into chaos. Fortunately, the event on the Sunday once again went off with success. The Main Event saw Alpin Criss fail in his attempt to take the World Championship off Sidney Washborne in a First Blood match. The SLCW then decided to hold weekly Saturday House Shows, which would evolve into "Saturday Showdown" at 12pm SLT, with "Main Events" on the first Saturday of each month.

The company used these shows to build up to "Locked Up" on May 3rd. The planned Main Event was to see Buger Shan formerly of the Living Dead faction face off with Sidney Washborne in a Cell match for the World Heavyweight Championship. As always, good crowds turned out for the Saturday events and matches were put on with success. During this time, Ivan Halfpint had began negotiations with SL television channel Metaverse TV, who were interested in airing the weekly Saturday events on their station. MBC had planned to attend Locked Up to see how their events went, and to see the quality of the product. The SLCW Arena was transformed into a prison yard for the event, and another good crowd was beginning to turn out. Unfortunately, this, and the quality of the mainland sim on which the company had its arena caused major lag problems. Matches were ruined and couldn't flow due to the problems. This all culminated in a "horrible" Cell match Main Event match between Buger and Sidney. Buger did go onto win the World Heavyweight Championship, as planned, but the company decided that it was time to find a new home. It was then announced in the company, that Alpin Criss had developed a large enough stake in the company to become joint owner.

[Alpin's Comment: "Hell Saturday" was crazy. We showed up to the sim and there was all this stuff all over. Nobody had rights to return it, and Mattie didn't show up. So we basically just wrestled around it. Lesson learned ... Deed the land to Group.

Early on it was really getting heated. Mattie was really upset because Eric kept going on about how amateur his and Ivan's building was. To be honest, none of us had any building skill. Eric was a legitimate builder. To compound the problem, Mattie and Ivan really didn't care about getting bigger or having a more professional build. There was a big ego clash between Eric and Mattie, and Ivan was stuck. One one hand, he didn't really care about having the best promotion ever. He just wanted to have fun and enjoy it. Both of them came close to banning Eric and just moving on, but I liked Eric, saw potential like he did, and didn't want us to sell ourselves short. I lobbied hard to not only keep Eric, but to let him be head builder. Really all that meant was that we would go with Eric's stuff instead of Mattie's. Mattie got the message, and left to form Power and Glory Wrestling. He was one of many who would leave SLCW and drop 30,000L or 100,000L or whatever Gavin was asking for his broken EPW system. When that thing didn't work, and with real life requiring more his time, Mattie left.

The First Blood Match was tough. Sid and I were going to end with his finisher (a cutter bulldog) onto a steel chair. We practiced so hard trying to get the alignment perfect. The last spot lagged, and by some miracle my head hit the chair. I'm sure we all had those moments at one point or another, and it's definitely one I will share with Sid for all time. We both gave thanks to the wrestling gods for that one.]

A Good Future

Despite the problems of "Locked Up", MBC were delighted with the show, and agreed to screen the weekly Saturday event. This event would become known as "Saturday Showdown". The company found land on the "Davey Jones Locker" sim, and began building their new state-of-the-art arena. The company postponed events for 2 weeks, but Ivan Halfpint laid down a strict new policy for wrestlers. Until further notice, there would be no storylines or Main Events. Finally, building was completed of the new SLCW Arena, and the company formally opened the new arena on May 24th with its first event to be recorded by Metaverse TV. The company's biggest crowd turned out to see the event, and once again, was a success. The joint ownership of Alpin Criss and Ivan Halfpint had steadied the ship. Alpin's system had evolved and was growing quicker than originally expected. More wrestlers than ever before were flooding in, and interest of the company was growing. The company had also introduced its Women's Championship, and Tag Team Championship, which helped draw even more interest in the product.

The SLCW along with Metaverse TV obtained a spot of land for SL's 5th Birthday celebrations, which helped attract new fans and wrestlers. As the company passed through the summer months, things behind the scenes were in stark contrast to how things were going from the outside. Halfpint, without consultation of other wrestlers and staff, moved their weekly Saturday Showdown event to Sundays. The relationship between Halfpint and Eric Stuart was heavily strained, not just due to this decision, but because of other things. Despite this, the company was in good shape, and growing bigger than people thought it ever would.

[Alpin's Comment: This was a good time for all of us. The SLCW was growing every day. There were also growing pains. Personalities were creeping up. People were starting to take things too seriously, including themselves. Ivan was struggling to keep a lid on the beast he let off the leash. I mean, by going with me and Eric instead of Mattie, he signed on to go the "take ourselves too seriously" route. But that just wasn't Ivan's basic nature, so his future with the SLCW was kind of predetermined.

Really, we ended up dealing with a lot of bad apples. Not the staff, but the general SL public. People would come in and grief us. They would harass our staff. Typical stuff that most fed's see at some point. Ivan didn't like banning people from his sim. Eric and I didn't like our people getting harassed. It's a tricky thing. We are all playing as pro wrestlers, but many of our staff were just kids. In the end, Ivan relented, but hindsight is 20/20. It was his sim, and it was great he listened to us, but he shouldn't have if he really didn't want to go that route. I think that Ivan often gave in to my requests because he felt I contributed so much with the system. Plus he's generally just an easy going guy, so he never approached things with as much a dog in the fight as Eric and I.

Navistar started showing up and commentating exhibitions for the wrestlers. After hearing him do his thing, Ivan and I created Warzone because we were so impressed by the commentary. You could tell he loved wrestling, and its history. So the transition to two shows was very smooth. At this point, we basically had three people doing shows. Ivan was focused on Showdown and Navistar on Warzone. Eric was constantly pushing the Free-Per-Views. Those were basically his chance to get input into organizing a match card. Plus they were great opportunities for him to show his stuff. Many of his set designs were great for those things.

I don't really know who else Ivan needed to consult with as far as staff goes. Ivan was running Showdown and Navistar was running Warzone. So Ivan moved Showdown to Sunday because its what he needed so that he wasn't overextending himself. Real Life comes first, and I remember him telling me he needed to do it because he was losing his entire weekend. Navistar and I gave him our support. Whatever Ivan needed he deserved.

Not sure what all the Ivan and Eric stuff is about. Eric was just head builder. Navistar and Eric were butting heads and Navistar ended up leaving over it. So Ivan had to deal with that mess. So far we had two managers leave for basically the same reason, and somehow I managed to convince Ivan to let Eric cover Warzone, instead of just cancelling it. I think that's when Ivan started thinking about leaving.]

The New Regime

Halfpint had told peers that he was thinking about leaving the company and handing over full ownership to Alpin Criss. In late July, things started to change around the SLCW. Eric Stuart had more power in what happened in-ring, which saw the now popular and infamous "Anarchy" group of Stuart, Mike Freeman and Waroop Bravin begin. Ivan Halfpint's involvement was much less than what it used to be. Finally, even with the success of the company's first Rumble match in mid August, Halfpint resigned as SLCW owner.

Alpin Criss became full Owner and installed Eric Stuart in the new General Manager position. The company became more of a business in a way that Criss and Stuart envisioned SLCW to be. Criss and Stuart had a good relationship, and this saw the company succeed. Metaverse TV was receiving its highest ratings from airings of Sunday Showdown, crowds were steady and the talent was brilliant. With this new regime, things started to change quickly. Sunday Showdown once again became Saturday Showdown, and as of October, Main Events ran again. This was a big move for the company, that was welcomed, and was a big decision business wise that worked.

World Heavyweight Champion at the time, WolfPR Magne, was not the most popular wrestler, and the relationship between him and General Manager was not to be desired. This strained relationship eventually reached breaking point at "Danger Zone" in October, when Waroop Bravin failed to show for his scheduled World Championship match. With this, Magne refused to go out and wrestle in his Buried Alive match with another opponent. Taking actions into their own hands, Anarchy members Eric Stuart and Mike Freeman decided to aid their fellow member, by dressing as Waroop and WolfPR respectively. "Waroop" won the match, thus in turn, making him the World Heavyweight Champion. Just 2 weeks later, WolfPR left the company, and Waroop was officially recognised as the new World Heavyweight Champion

Around this time, new talent such as Tenzan Karu, Shiva Auerbauch, Sini Nubalo and Wolfy Kessel were making their name on the scene. Talent continued to flood in and business was booming. Even with crowds nowhere near as high as before, the company was as big as it ever had been. The company continued to put on high quality events, and eventually events in December would change the SLCW forever.

First off, Tenzan Karu became World Heavyweight Champion when he defeated World Heavyweight Champion Waroop Bravin, after losing to Vince Easterwood, in Vince's debut match on WarZone. Then, at the December Main Event "Blizzard", which featured the first ever SL "Elimination Chamber" match for the brand new International Championship, which was won by Morpheus Shelman, the company garnered its biggest ever crowd of 47. The atmosphere around the promotion couldn't have been better. It felt good to be part of the SLCW.

[Alpin's Comment: Actually this is inaccurate. I was also leaving the SLCW. I was at the point where I wanted to flex my own building muscle, but any attempts of it with the SLCW just ended up with me and Eric bumping heads. I created a new federation, the VWA, complete with stage and ring area, and I told Ivan I was leaving. The only problem was Ivan was looking for a way out, too. We honestly had a long conversation where we were basically deciding who would stay with the SLCW and work with Eric and who would run VWA on their own. Neither were in a rush to stay or leave. In the end, I gave Ivan the VWA. He didn't want to work with Eric. I wasn't going to make him, and I didn't want the SLCW to fold after all it had been through.

Wolfpr was hillarious. I'm beginning to figure out where most this information came from, because it has a particular slant that seems familiar. We all loved Wolfpr. Eric thought the guy was ridiculous. Wolfpr hated Eric. You gotta love Wolfpr, though. He loved wrestling more than any of us. Which is why he deserved to be champ and I think he did great at it. He even gave up his "furry" avatar for us.

The crowds were getting smaller. At this point, Eric had banned all the guys who worked with Ivan at VWA. He also banned all the guys that were looking into Seth Cameron's outfit. Basically, we were banning everyone but our own guys. I tried to implement a "no permanent ban" policy, but this was pretty much ignored by everyone with ban rights. Hense, a majority of the people who would support our shows weren't even able to come onto the sim. It should be noted that Ivan's events, although not following the WWE format, were packing sims with 50 or more people. The wrestling wasn't as good, but the spirit was much better. They were enjoying themselves. In fact, SLCW guys would go to the show, so we basically helped them pump up their own numbers.

(Eric's Note: Most of those that were banned were for other reasons, like harassment, griefing, and the like. I very rarely banned anyone, and I never once banned someone just for being part of a different fed. WolfPR was banned after he continually refused to work a match, which put personal reasons over the "love of wrestling".)

I can't say I was feeling as high as I guess everyone was. Eric was becoming more and more difficult to work with. I was also becoming difficult to work with, because I felt extremely stifled. My building skills were coming along, and I was looking for a way to start putting my own work out there. Somehow, the GM and Head Builder title trumped the Owner one in that argument. The Staff was great, though. I mean, we had the best group out there, as far as talent. I just wish we didn't jump the shark. Remember the ring of steel match? ...

What had started as a federation grounded in the wrestling was becoming more and more about the gimmick. We were basically knocking-off Smackdown vs Raw. Worse, our storyline's were coming from the WWE dirt sheets. I was really upset we were going that route. I tried desperately to shift gears, but without Eric's support there was no way to influence the actual shows. So basically I just started pushing more and more people to do exhibitions. This got even more resistance. Unfortunately, things would get more heated, because my building skills were sufficient to do a lot of what we did for our main shows. Our exhibitions would have videos, pyro, lighting, the whole nine yards. This really caused friction between me and Eric.

And I was also upset that we were going to VWA shows and basically harassing people. We were doing it to Seth's outfit as well, and they weren't even off the ground yet. There was no reason for any of that, yet here we were, supposedly the biggest and best of them all, engaging in that kind of behavior.]

Into the New Year

As the company headed into 2009, the promotion looked forward to reaching its 1-year anniversary of holding events in February. The company announced its first ever "WrestleFest " Main Event on February 7th. Dubbed as SLCW's answer to WWE's "WrestleMania", this was to be the company's biggest ever show. With this, the company moved into a brand new arena, and obtained a full sim, complete with training centre, club and mall. The company promoted a bumper card which saw Alpin Criss challenge Tenzan Karu for the World Title in an "I Quit" match. As well, Mike Freeman defeated International Champion Morpheus Shelman and Celtdan McMahon in a Triple Threat match. Katheryn Blackadder also won the Women's title defeating Sini Nubalo and the first Chaos For The Contract battle royal saw Big Evil Mandelkorn win a contract for championship match. WrestleFest I was a massive success and was a big day for the promotion.

After WrestleFest, it announced that Alpin had purchased a full sim for the SLCW to be based and would be opened in March. This was great news for the promotion as it now enabled it to have its own base without interference.

[Alpin's Comment: This was an intense time. Seth Cameron was getting ever closer to opening up his big federation, and all his stuff was professionally done. His system was getting off the ground and he was going to open with a Wrestlemania type Free-Per-View, the name of which was going to be "WrestleFest." There was a big fight between me, him, and Eric over that, because he felt like we ripped off his name. Unfortunately, Seth ended up getting very sick and requiring pretty serious surgery. He was to leave Second Life (tm) for some time. We dodged a major bullet.

The greatest thing we did the entire time was our training facility. I'm still really proud of it and everyone who helped with it. At its height, we had some of the best wrestlers in the business (Misaki, Katheryn, Morpheus, Vince, Celtdan, Ari) helping to train all the new recruits. It was a slick operation, and a lot of the best wrestlers out there today went through it. Everyone did amazing work, and the wrestling was absolutely wonderful during that time frame.

Not really sure what Eric purchased. Eric never contributed money to buy anything. In his defense, neither Ivan and I would have taken any money from him. He was hard nosed enough about getting his way when the only stake he had was his time sacrifice. When Ivan ran the SLCW he paid Tier. When I ran it I paid it.

(Eric's comment: Templates, lighting systems, pyro systems, uploads, builders tools, props and prefabs, and more were purchased using intake from the SLCW Store, and some of those things weren't cheap, like the 20k alone we spent trying lighting systems to ensure we got the best, lowest lag system. Paying tier is wonderful, but that "only stake" of my "time sacrifice" included training, moderating, booking, building, recruiting, managing, marketing, designing, and numerous other things, all without seeking any sort of return.)

This is also around the time that I had Katheryn Blackadder sign us up for SL Showcase. Our traffic went through the roof for about a month and a half when we got featured on it, and things were great.]

[Celtdan's comment: About the "WrestleFest" name thing, I remember coming up with that name originally in about mid-2008, and the first few times I suggested it to Eric, he wasn't too sure about it as he felt it was quite generic, which of course it is. But eventually after pushing it to him, and nobody else really coming up with a name that we could agree on, it was decided we should go with that. I certainly don't remember hearing of Seth planning in any case to use the "WrestleFest" name, as I had came up with it almost out of the blue.

The time we were on showcase was great. I remember logging on and people would just be streaming in to the arena seeing all the vendor shops we had, climbing up the stairs into the large arena we had at time. Exhibitions were regular, and nearly every member of the roster, if not all, was involved regularly in a match. People were volunteering to ref, to commentate and wrestle, and made the experience. I always feel a buzz from loads of people coming into the arena before a show whether I would be wrestling, or now, commentating, because you know that more people are going to get to see or hear what you're doing, and hopefully enjoy it. One of the great things about SL wrestling is, that even if the wrestling matches are sometimes not the highest quality, there's still going to be a decent entertainment level from the commentary, the other fans and the characters portrayed in the ring.

The DCWF

During this time, Linden Labs was contacting a number of of organisations inside SL using the terms "SL", "Second Life" in their name. SLCW was targeted and forced to change their trading name near the end of February. After a long discussion with other wrestlers and staff members and then further consultation behind the scenes, the name the Digital Championship Wrestling Federation was decided on. The SLCW name was used for the last time at "Retaliation". The next week DCWF became in use. This was also the same time when things started to become strained behind the scenes. Since Alpin and Eric began working together in mid 2008, their relationship had been a very strong one, which in turn became a successful thing for the DCWF. Although, in late March, going into April, things started to change between them. Arguments were becoming a more common thing, and disagreements happened between them more often too. This threatened to kill the DCWF, and nearly did. Alpin, feeling that not enough money was being made in the DCWF, decided that after over a year of development exclusive to the DCWF, the AC Pro Wrestling System should go public. It went on sale in April and was met by a mixed reaction in and out of the DCWF. It gave new promotions the opportunity to start up, but eventually ended in the near death of the DCWF.

[Alpin's Comment: Changing the name to DCWF wasn't really that upsetting. What was upsetting was the fact that Linden Labs only periodically enforces its trademark. We had been going strong for over a year when we were told to change our name. A lot of other Second Life (tm) organizations also had to change their names. While in the end, its not really that big of a deal, it still felt like a slap in the face to be told we need to change our name, or logo, our groups and our website. Groups like ours made Second Life (tm) a better place to be, so there wasn't much sense penalizing us to enforce a weak trademark to begin with.

As for not making enough money, I don't think our goal was ever to make money. I don't remember charging anyone to wrestle with us, or even to come to our shows. As for making the ACPWS public, the only reason I even put a price on it at the time was because I wanted to favor the SLCW guys, who were always going to get it free anyways. In fact, the only objection I got from Eric was that I was going to sell it too cheap. One of the biggest motivations for the public move was the sheer number of people we were turning away (Eric was rejecting at least 30 applications a week). With Seth Cameron having almost launched his own system, Sugar and I agreed that going public was a preemptive strike to make sure that we didn't have to worry about that kind of competition. Besides, in the end, I didn't like having made something that discriminated. Who was I to say who should or should not get an opportunity to wrestle in Second Life(tm)? Who had a right to make that decision? None of us did.

And in all fairness, the exact thing that nearly killed the DCWF was exactly what we feared. A public system versus a private one. If it was the ACPWS that stayed exclusive to DCWF, and then some other system, like Seth's came into existence, then we would have gotten the same result. Private system loses.

And that's why I was really upset at Eric's decision not to continue using the ACPWS. I NEVER withdrew the ACPWS from the DCWF. I was ALWAYS planning on letting DCWF wrestlers use it. The only people Sugar and I were going to charge was the general public, and our primary reason was to keep the DCWF at the top of the mountain. Eric basically told me to take a long walk of a short cliff, and in no uncertain terms declared that he would build a system that would trump mine. I told him that's fine, but that the ACPWS wasn't going to be a safety net. I wasn't interested in having Eric thumb his nose at me, not finish a system, and then turn around and ask for DCWF to get preferential treatment back. The reality was, I still gave many DCWF wrestlers free movesets. They were using them with alts so they could wrestle during that pointless hiatus while Eric tried to reinvent the wheel.

But ultimately, what Sugar and I predicted would be the near end of the DCWF was exactly what happened. The DCWF ended up trying to hold onto it's own private wrestling system and compete against a cheap public system. It didn't matter if it was the ACPWS being private versus Seth's Cameron's system. It didn't matter if it was the ACPWS public or Eric's system. It wouldn't matter if it was Eric's system public and the ACPWS private. The fact of the matter was, hundreds of people were going to want to wrestle. When we rejected a majority of them, we created th perfect conditions for other systems to spring to life. People would wrestle once they new it was possible. That was inevitable. If we didn't give them a way, then they would make their own way. That's the nature of Second Life (tm).]

The Split

In mid-April, the DCWF finally began to tear apart. Even with things looking good on the outside, with events continuing to be succesful, the story was not so bright behind the scenes. A public voice chat argument between Eric and Alpin started to make people feel that the end was in sight. And on the week of April 21st, 2009, the landscape of the most successful promotion in Second Life changed forever. On Wednesday, after thinking his options over, Eric Stuart handed in his resignation from the DCWF, leaving Alpin Criss in sole charge, should it have gone through. But then, two days later, things changed for the worse. Alpin Criss decided that he was also to leave the DCWF, thus leaving the promotion without a recognised owner. It was decided later that Friday, that Eric Stuart was to continue on with the DCWF, and a mass meeting with staff was held to decide the future of the company. It was almost unanimous that rebuilding should commence immediately, and a day later, land was purchased and the rebuilding process began. The creation of an in-house wrestling system started, and work to get the promotion back to the good old days began.

[Alpin's comment: The above is not entirely accurate. First, the timing of who left is backwards. I told Eric that I was leaving the DCWF at the end of the argument that ended up being the final straw for me. The grind had strained our relationship, and we had been fighting more and more. The final straw for me was a deal between us and SLTV (now Treet.) SLTV had been sweet talking me for over a month to do a weekly show. the entire time Eric resisted, despite the fact he would frequently demand that I should "fire" Metaverse for being so incompetent (at the time Metaverse had not taped a show in several weeks, which really bothered Eric, even though I felt they weren't obligated to tape shows any more than we were to do them.) After strongarming Treet into several concessions, the only thing keeping the deal from going through was the fact they wanted to co-produce a new show, World Avatar Wrestling, as opposed to just taping DCWF Warzone. Eric flat out refused, and told me that I to go along with what he wanted or to get out of his way. Having had enough, I told him the DCWF was his and that I was leaving. Since it was late I told him I would transfer all the rights to the groups to him the next day. When I logged on, Eric had sent out a notice of his resignation.

I find it a little insulting that there's a rumor I left for money. I paid a full tier for nearly 6 months. That's over 600,000 Linden. If there was any money issue, it was that I had begun resenting the fact that I was paying all the bills and yet I was having to constantly fight with Eric over the silliest things. If I tried to build something for the DCWF to use, it became a turf war with him, and ultimately I got tired of shelling out that much money for that much aggravation.]

It was projected the company could re-open in mid May, but as time went on, the projected re-opening date changed day after day, week after week and eventually month after month. Despite efforts to open the promotion as quickly as possible, the rebuilding process didn't go as smoothly as hoped. Even with this, morale was high and excitement was building. Finally, in early August, the system had been developed to a point that Applications were accepted for the first time since the closure. An immediate boom of new applicants saw the promotion begin to take the final steps towards reopening. At this time, a brand new promotion, HKWF, had just started, and was looking to rekindle interest in the SL Wrestling business once again. A number of former SLCW/DCWF starts worked with the promotion, and helped the company's image grow. It was announced a few short weeks later that September 12th was the day that the DCWF would once again re-open its doors to the public. A massive re-opening show was planned and interest around SL was growing

A New Beginning

As the clock ticked down to the re-opening, people began to show up into the arena. A large crowd was expected, but expectations were quickly blown out the water. By 12pm SLT, start time, there was up to 70 people on the sim at the arena. The sim limit was 100. Wrestlers were getting nervous, the crowd were getting excited, and the atmosphere was great. Ari Lane and Celtdan McMahon were out first to have their match. The match went off without any real hitches, and Celtdan got the win. By this time, nearly 90 people were on the sim and lag was at a high. Even more people streamed into the sim...and suddenly it crashed. The amount of people on the sim and the lag caused the sim server to overload.

Thankfully, the sim did come back up, and the show continued and was once again a major success. The DCWF was back, and better than ever.

[Alpin's Comment: I was really happy when the DCWF reopened their doors. I just wished they were never closed. In the interim, several federations started popping up. Sugarcube helped some people start the HKWF and with the golden rule operating (the unhappy will always leave and will always continue wrestling, even if they have to build their own place to do it) several DCWF wrestlers jumped ship. More and more people were coming to find wrestling in Second Life (tm), and numerous small promotions sprang up. The only thing you could do to stem the tide was to accept everyone you could who applied and promise them the world in doing it. Unfortunately, with no wrestling going on, the DCWF missed a great opportunity to soak up some great talent.

Of course, Seth Cameron returned. Of course, he resurrected his federation, this time using the cheap ACPWS. And eventually the whole community sprang to life.

The DCWF has continued to grow strong, held intact by a core group of wrestlers whose dedication is ironclad. I was always split on the DCWF's system. On one hand, I wanted it to take off. To be honest, I was burnt out from the whole breakup. Eric's smear campaign painted me as everything from a money grubber to an asshole. As much as I tried to ignore it, it cut deep to have so many friends within the DCWF pop onto my sim or to other federations and smear me and my work. Or worse, to have people that were my closest friends in Second Life (tm) give me the cold shoulder.

(Eric's comment: I was far from the first, and definitely not the only one that saw Alpin's leaving being for greedy, money-desiring reasons. None of us did anything we did in the DCWF for money. That was never our motive, and to see one of our biggest centerpoints leave to sell the same system he offered to the DCWF for free didn't need anything smeared about it. The reaction towards Alpin, referred to as "Nipla" by those that chose to not even speak his name after a joke that it would curse the DCWF, was purely gained through reaction to his actions.)

But, like all good things, all bad come to an end. The DCWF has returned to using the ACPWS. People who either gave me the cold shoulder or outright called me names are now being friendly. Wrestlers are defecting to the DCWF, instead of from it. The DCWF has finally joined the whole wrestling community, and I have no doubt that is a good thing for everyone.]

The DCWF began a recruitment drive and tried to find the best talent that was available across SL. During the hiatus, Stuart had secured the signing of Maryse Neox, who had impressed during her short time with the PWL. As well, in September, Hero Of Hearts Parkin jumped ship from HKWF to DCWF, who was rated as the hottest talent in SL wrestling at the time. Unforunately for both, their DCWF careers never got off the ground despite fellow staff members having high hopes for them.

Luckily for the DCWF, they were able to hold on to their strong band of experienced wrestlers such as Katheryn Blackadder, Misaki Yumako, Vince Easterwood, Celtdan McMahon, Ari Lane, Waroop Bravin, Mike Freeman and Paula Wilcox to keep the company going. As the ship continued to steady, and with the main rebuilding process finished, the company began to plan forward. The company once again endeavoured to build a training academy and an entertainment centre with club, gaming area and other things to keep visitors and wrestlers occupied when wrestling events were not taking place. Also, the 2nd anniversary was fast approaching in February 2010, and the company was looking to plan towards that date. The company continued to employ new wrestlers and staff, and attempt to once again expand to its past success.

As the months rolled on, there was a steady ship. Once again, shows were drawing decent crowds, the wrestling continued to be of a high quality, but finally, the competition they had been striving for had arrived.

The Competition

Seth Cameron had returned to Second Life to once again operate a large scale wrestling promotion. After failing twice to get his Virtual Championship Wrestling group off the ground, he decided to start from scratch. PWL, owned by Sam The Man Jarvinen and GCW, owned by Loody Graves, joined forces with Cameron to open two new brands under the WCA company. Seth Cameron had been viewed as the promoted most likely to provide stern competition to the highly succesfull DCWF product. MPW and XPW opened in October 2009, but shortly afterwards, the two companies merged to form Xtreme Wrestling Action, which would become fully owned by Cameron. The company provided a roster which was a mix of experience and newcomers, which gave the company its early sucesses. Finally, Seth Cameron had a promotion off the ground which could compete with DCWF.

At the same time, the HKWF was drawing in good crowds and had a strong roster, but things were changing behind the scenes. Owner Sugarcube Woller had handed over most of the ownership duties to Louve McMahon, who had good relationships with wrestlers at XWA. HKWF was seen as the 3rd largest promotion in SL behind XWA and DCWF, and also without the experience and stature to provide big enough competition to the two companies. Seth Cameron saw HKWF as an opportunity to acquire a large group of new wrestlers, and also to get rid of the HKWF meaning XWA would be directly in competition with the DCWF.

DCWF with their large fan base, experienced roster, and the fact that they had been running the longest continued to be the established No.1 promotion, but XWA were not to be underestimated. The DCWF didn't change the way they operated in anyway, continuing to operate as it nearly always had done. XWA had been able to use contacts and professionals to provide an exciting production value alongside an explosive product, which fans enjoyed.

In December, Seth Cameron had succesfully negotiated with Louve McMahon to merge the XWA and HKWF, leaving just two major promotions in operation.

Changing Landscapes

The XWA and DCWF were going at it regularly battling to draw fans in, and to draw talent in. Originally, competition between the two was not friendly, and people outside of the two promotions were unsure what to think of each group. A large group of the SL wrestling community saw the DCWF as outcasts, as it did not use the widely used ACPWS, and therefore should not use the ACPWS community groups to promote events. Alpin Criss publicly stated that no matter what system a promotion used to wrestle, it was part of the wider SL wrestling community, and could use any ACPWS-related group to promote events. At the same time, the XWA was slowly rising to the top, and in some cases, above the DCWF as the No.1 promotion in SL. Their landmark event, WrestleSeries, drew in a massive crowd and traffic count, and many people saw this as the moment the XWA fully established themselves on the SL wrestling scene as one of the top companies.

DCWF still had their established base of wrestlers, and was drawing a lot of new, exciting talent. But, the DCWF began to realise that a number of things they did could not compete with the XWA. The production value was not as high as it once was, and was in stark contrast to that of the XWA, although the DCWF usually aimed its main focus on its in-ring product, and saw that as the way to sucess.

The DCWF saw WrestleFest II in February as the platform to once again take them back to the top. The show would once again feature the Chaos for the Contract match, which continued to exceed expectations. The event also saw Celtdan McMahon wrestle his last match before retirement against long time rival, tag team partner and friend Ari Lane, in which Celtdan won. The Main Event, though, saw Eric Stuart and then World Champion Big Evil challenge kayfabe Chairman Numbers Rossini for ownership of the company, a match, in which Eric Stuart won. But, this was the start of a tough period for the DCWF.

Eric Stuart's Departure

Despite another sucessful WrestleFest weekend, which included the Awards ceremony and Hall of Fame ceremony before and after the main card respectively, the way things were going behind the scenes, as had been before at times, was changing for the worse. Stuart promised many things, yet couldn't deliver. Even though there was fresh talent coming through, that was impressing, something wasn't clicking. Crowds were going down, and morale was not as high as it was before. In early April, Stuart threatened to leave, and like one year before, threatened to comdemn the DCWF to its death. For the 2nd time, almost exactly a year after the first, Eric Stuart handed in his resignation to the DCWF, and left the company without an owner. Katheryn Blackadder stepped into the President position, and Numbers Rossini was appointed Vice-President. Their job was to once again steady the ship, and rebuild. It was decided first and foremost to return to the use of the ACPWS, and abandoned Eric Stuart's controversial DCWF wrestling system. The company had received sponsorship and financial backing from a number of businesses, mainly Sinful Entertainment LLC., who provided the company with land until the promotion could operate on its own land along side Sinful.

Blackadder and Numbers changed a number of things in terms of how the company was run, and didn't make such bold promises like Stuart did. They wanted to return the company to its former sucesses, but had to start on a good base before becoming a large company once again. The XWA had established themselves at the top, and were starting to make good ground ahead of the DCWF thanks to Stuart's departure. Despite this, once again the DCWF continued on, and morale was high. Stuart's departure opened up a number of new opportunities for the promotion.

(Eric's Comment: I would like to say that my retirement didn't come from anything other than personal reasons. There weren't threats of retirement, just notices. I gave myself a month to attempt to finish certain projects I had been delaying and said if I couldn't, I'd realize and accept that I was simply hindering the federation and would resign. On my resignation I did state that Katheryn would be taking over if she accepted, and Numbers would be appointed General Manager. While my departure was untimely, it did indeed open new and better opportunities, which was my original realization and my hopes for my retirement and hiatus from Second Life as a whole at that point.)

A Kitty & Bull Story

The DCWF moved into a brand new purpose built arena in May 2010, and has continued to operate events twice a week, with a Main Event on the first Saturday of each month. The roster is growing, and the company announced a brand new partnership with Over the Edge Wrestling, who will help the DCWF with providing talent and training for new wrestlers.

It was announced in mid-November, that for the first time two Professional Wrestling promotions on Second Life were to hold a cross-brand event. OEW/DCWF First Contact took place on Sunday, December 12th and was held at DCWF's Ophydian Coliseum.

At the start of 2011, DCWF began official negotiations with Pulse TV Network, a budding TV channel in Second Life, but a deal was not reached. Luckily for DCWF, they were already in working with TwstdHeart Productions, a brand new TV production company in Second Life, and were able to re-commence negotiations with Treet.TV, who came close to securing a deal with DCWF in 2009, before the infamous "Split" occured. Treet.TV will broadcast special TV exclusive "Showcase" matches in the near future, instead of broadcasting Showdown and FPV events. Free-Per-View events are sometimes streamed live through TwstdHeart Productions.

It was also announced that DCWF would be moving into its own purpose built full sim at WrestleFest. Slam City was opened on WrestleFest weekend and will contain a brand new Ophydian Coliseum, a Hall of Fame, DCWF's Corporate Headquarters, a Universal Training Gym open to all wrestlers on SL, a bar, and shops.

WrestleFest III was a major success and was hailed as arguably the best event in DCWF history. A crowd of well over 76 resulted in 30,000 traffic throughout the sim on the day. The Plexi awards and Hall of Fame ceremonies were also well attended, meaning that WrestleFest III was the most sucessful event in DCWF history. Fans and other wrestling personalities inside SL voiced their praise of the event as well.

The DCWF continues to strive on to provide the best talent and the best training scheme in Second Life and shortly after WrestleFest, announced plans to reform their training system and branch it off into a new developmental fed, the first fully operational of its kind in SL wrestling since the VWA in 2008. "The Show" looks to produce brand new talent in a revolutionary way by giving budding wrestlers the chance to show off their skills in live events instead of the old way of giving wrestlers their first opportunity to do so after completing training. Wrestlers who graduate from "The Show" are immediately placed on the main DCWF professional roster and are free to participate regularly on WarZone and Showdown.

During the course of 2011, Wednesday WarZone has been emerging as a show on par with traditional flagship event, Saturday Showdown. In spring 2011, WarZone went back "old school" when the old "No mans land" rules were put back in place meaning that there were no disqualifications outside the ring. This made matches more exciting, and drew crowds back in. Often during this period, crowds on Wednesday nights have been bigger than they have been for Saturday Showdown.

In June, the vice-president of DCWF, Numbers Rossini, announced and shortly thereafter released a brand new, completely free wrestling system into the SL wrestling community. The NexGen Wrestling System looks to give each individual wrestler a chance to enhance and revolutionise their own wrestling career in SL. The system is the first released in SL to give tag team options, and allows wrestlers to put in their own moves for free, as well as gestures.

(Numbers' comment: We found ourselves in a unique time, systems and innovations for them were at a stand still. The users of the recent VWES System, were promised much free and woke up one day to find themselvs being charged, this was unacceptable. So in a few short weeks Nexgen was out. Several of our friends around SL Wrestling participated in getting the project off the ground and continue to participate today.

Imagine a system that is so open and modable that you can swap sells, moves, combine anims to make combos, thats exactly what the NexGen does. As of today Labor Day 2011 all SL Wrestling federations apart from the VWE use NexGen. Those of us who have worked on the project are quite proud of what we have accomplished so far and a the moment, the NexGen is growing with no signs of stopping.)

2011 continued on for the DCWF in a positive manner, and once again the landscape of SL wrestling changed in late August. The all-women's promotion HAWX, which since it's early days had been affiliated with the VWE, became independent and moved it's arena on to Slam City. It became affiliated with UHW, DCWF and XLW which allowed wrestlers from all three promotions to participate at HAWX. Later on in September, a brand new revolutionary event was created as Friday Night X became the first cross-promotional weekly event in SL wrestling history.

2012 was a mixed yearfor the DCWF although changes have been afoot with Warzone moving forward one hour to 3pm SLT and changes in the championship structure. The International Championship was re-christened the Slam City Championship and it was the end of an era as the Hardcore and 24/7 Championships were merged at Smash of the Champions into the Next Generation title which can only be competed for by first year pros.

Changes also took place in terms of the PPV structure with the calendar changing from 12 PPVs a year to 6 a year allowing storylines to be able to progress better and to also allow more time for build-up, particularly for more important matches. There have been, however, no outstanding changes to the calendar with most of the main PPVs remaining in place, for example, WrestleFest staying in February to reflect the company's anniversary.

2013-2015

2013 began with a week of celebration for DCWF's 5th anniversary in February. WrestleFest week featured a string of "Retro" style matches presented inside "The Box", a replica of the venue used by the DCWF in it's first month. The week also included auction events and a DWRT special previewing what was coming up at WrestleFest V. It all culminated in a two day event, first on the Saturday with WrestleFest V, which was attended by a large crowd, featured some fantastic matches, very memorable moments, and once again seemed to trump the previous year's event. On the Sunday, DCWF hosted its annual Plexi/Hall Of Fame ceremony, and DCWF was delighted to induct some famous names into its prestigious Hall Of Fame, including Tenzan Karu, Ivan Halfpint and Horses Morrisey. WrestleFest V also marked the last DCWF event for commentator Celtdan McMahon, who stepped back from SL wrestling afterwards.

WrestleFest V was also the last to be held on Slam City. In June, DCWF moved from its home of 2 years to Phoenix Pass. HAWX moved along with it, and this provided an opportunity for a wonderful new arena to be built. DCWF continued as normal on the 3rd of July after a three week break and the future looked bright for DCWF as it headed towards its Sixth anniversary in 2014.

As 2013 moved on, the focus of DCWF shifted towards new World Heavyweight Champion Pietro Shelford, who had cashed in his Chaos for the Contract opportunity at Six on the Beach, and his reign of terror over the promotion. He was standing in the way of Voodoo Cooperstone, who had made it his goal to not only dethrone Pietro, but achieve his dream of winning the Heavyweight Championship.

Both Shelford and Cooperstone had a bitter feud for the rest of 2013 through to 2014 which culminated in a Hell in a Cell match at WrestleFest VI for the championship. It was on that night that Cooperstone finally reached the top of DCWF when he took victory and became DCWF World Heavyweight Champion. WrestleFest VI was an event that showed how much the company had evolved after its fifth anniversary and a new era had emerged.