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Some Late Night Confessions

BenHalkum

Reverend Asshole
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
516
Points
0
Age
40
Website
www.wrestleuta.com
SOURCE: http://www.ew-blog.com/?p=850

I remember it clearly, it was the middle of November in 1996 when I discovered eWrestling with my high school best friend. We were searching for wrestling websites, and found wrestling simulators. We thought this was the coolest thing ever, we could take real life wrestlers and create our own shows, then we could make up our own characters and have them face Stone Cold, have them face The Rock. It was a blast. From simulators, we found people where posting their shows online, that’s when we introduced to our first e-fed, the Triangle Wrestling Alliance.


It was so fun in the TWA. We wrote as these characters we had created, hell, as we had performed as in Matt’s backyard. But, much like many e-feds during that time, the TWA was short lived and closed within a few months. That’s when I opened the United Toughness Alliance along with Matt. We had a blast. My first real introduction to the eWrestling community was a little site called eWplanet. But it was when I discovered FWLnet, I truly fell in love with the concept of bigger places.


I remember the honor I felt to have the UTA has a Dream Minor League (#3 to be exact), and the excitement to be in the mix over at EWN. Truly, I wish I could go back and re-live those years. I remember using the school’s computers to introduce a sling of new people to the hobby, promote the UTA, and just have fun. When I chose to drop out of high school, I spent all of my free time living in the fantasy world that our hobby allowed me create. Do i regret this? Sometimes, I hurt relationships and never aspired to do anything with my life but live out my fantasies of wanting to be a professional wrestler and emulate what I saw on TV.


I had a chance, when I was 17, to train with Killer Tim Brooks at his Big Time Prowrestling school in Waxahachie. “Broadway” Danny Rose, the guy who saw the tapes of my backyard wrestling, helped me train and pushed me. Since he legally couldn’t get a license to promote wrestling in Texas after some issues he created for himself, we began a wrestling promotion called Heart of Texas Championship Wrestling, HOT Wrestling for short. I was billed as the youngest wrestling promoter in Texas and it was a blast.


My first marriage was rocky to say the least, and my love for professional wrestling did nothing but strain it. I wasn’t making any real money, I wasn’t home, and I wasn’t ever going to go anywhere. I just wasn’t the size to do anything other than manage, and I never wanted to be a manger. I wanted to be that guy, the guy you came to see. When I bowed out of HOT and professional wrestling for good, I went even deeper into eWrestling as a way to escape. I had been away, doing the real wrestling thing, and upon my return I took the UTA back over and tried. But I had a chip on my shoulder, a really big chip.


I remember getting pissed off and pissed on in eDUBn as EWN was called then, and quoting, “Fuck every one on you. I’ll fucking buy eDUBn and do what I want.” I chuckled as I wrote that, it’s funny as that moment motivated me greatly to run my own community site in eWrestling. It was a while later, but I acquired the EWZine.com domain name. EWZine had been an eWrestling magazine site ran by Steve Heady back in the day. I think it only lasted originally about 6 months but was some good stuff from our golden age.


I used archive.org to pull an original Heady designed site and put together the first edition of my EWZine.com. It was probably a week after opening in September of 2007 that I actually got a hold of Heady and got his blessing. I wish it could have been before, but I was impatient. I never wanted to do forums with EWZine and tried to go the chat box route, but soon the site was becoming more and more popular. I opened the forums up and, well, waged an ego driven “war” against all of eWrestling.


I can look back now and I can admit, I burned a lot of bridges during this time. I did a lot of underhanded things, an quite frankly I was a dickhead. I can honestly say I know why I have such a bad rep when it comes to this. One of the first major things I did though, well, was buy eDUBn. I wanted to “stick it” to everyone there. Did this do me any good really? No. The only good thing that came out of it, was the fact Dusty Shull agreed to come aboard EWZine and help with it. I owe a lot to Dusty, he showed me the ropes of being a community leader, and I am very grateful.


From their, W316 shut down after popularity plummeted, PTC closed it’s doors, and I started buying up every old domain in eWrestling history. Seriously, I spent a lot of money for no good reason other than I didn’t want anyone else to compete with me. I said a lot of nasty things to and about RoughKut, who’s only downfall was some mod that isn’t even there anymore. If I couldn’t buy it, I either talked shit or tried to partner with. I became my own worst enemy, creating a bad rep with alot of people very quickly.


By the time I wised up and started to try, it was too late. My opinions only created heat with most. I have a really bad rep now and am perma banned from EFK because I cut their audio show up and provided just the part with me in it. A lot of guys I partnered with are now over at EFK, and hate me for life because of the wars I waged on other communities. I remember a time I took a crap ton of stuff out of the PTC wiki without Ross’ permission, burning that bridge. I feel real shitty about that now that he’s accepted my apology. Ross is one hell of a guy and a straight shooter.


In 2009, when I returned from the Army, being discharged medically, I bought the DREAM wrestling domain name. At one time I had been a DML and having this property was so cool to me. I reached out to Darren Crouse (SP?) on Facebook, told him I got the DREAM domain and asked if I could re-open DREAM. When he gave me blessing I went ahead and did it. During that time I was able to team up with another past DREAM guy, The Big Shot, and for one year straight I ran with shows. Almost always on time, DREAM was a huge success. It never reached the levels of active RPers and amount of shows my UTA did, but it succeeded in so many other ways.


One of them though, was succeeded in putting me in a negative light. No one cared to talk to me about if I had gotten permission to open DREAM, they just assumed I couldn’t be original and had to live off other people’s stuff. Some of those people still have that mind set today. This is the mind set that fueled a lot of things, such as the opening of other communities. I began not to care, negativity ran amok in EWZine and finally, I said fuck it and sold EWZine to Dusty.


Dusty did a great job running EWZine, but I had already tarnished it’s legacy, which is a shame. That and him not having the time or resources to do what he wanted to do, what he envisioned, EWZine was just churning on it’s own, kept alive by a small group of people who where regulars. I couldn’t get into even posting at EWZine as a certain few people with the negative mind sets just irritated me every time I was on. Anytime I posted, they had to mouth off.


A few months ago I started the eW Blog as a place to vent. It is a blog, I can write whatever I want whenever I wanted. I can live with that. It has had it’s up weeks, and it has had it’s down weeks, but it’s been chugging along. During this time, as usual, other resource sites have popped up. eSmarks, I felt was a direct rip off of eW Blog. I felt with the little time they actually put into their site, they could have just came to me and say “Hey, can I contribute” and I would have let them. eWrestler.NET opened up. The first all IC site I’ve seen in many years. It was a breath of fresh air, and I feel if Eric can keep the momentum and dedication, can live on for years.


Last week I decided I wanted to add some forums to my movie and entertainment review site, halkum.com. I began thinking, why buy a new forum license when EWZine has a HUGE user and post database from years of stuff, including stuff I did. I began negotiations with Dusty on purchasing it back, being up front with him my plan to use the forums. A few days into it, I reached out to Justin Voss about EWTorch, a community that had popped up when people where moving away from me and EWZine, and negotiated in purchasing it. This however, right now anyways, isn’t eWrestling related. I wanted/needed the domain for something else and thought the actual site content would be nice to throw up on eW Blog. I still need to go through that and put what I can.


The day after I finalized my deal with Voss, Dusty finally said lets do this. Once he made his farewell post I began making some changes. Theme was changed, some forums moved around, some post archived. My goal was to keep EWZine churning for a few months maybe while I did some stuff to start merging the forum aspect to fit Halkum.com. Some of the staff had wanted to continue Dusty’s plan for an interfed and I dedicated myself by letting them know whatever resources they needed I’d back.


It was a reply from a member that struck a nerve when I posted the interfed would move forward. I realized that me running EWZine, even if in the mid term, was never going to work. I’d burnt bridges, I’d made myself look stupid, and it was all catching up with me. I made a reply to this person and was going to leave it at that, until I realized I was beginning a vicious negative cycle again. So, I did it. I closed EWZine. I redirected forum members to more obvious sites they should be visiting. eWrestler.net, PRJKT10, eW Blog, RK, FWrestling all of the stuff out there better than EWZine. Maybe this person was right? Maybe I’m just not cut out for running a community, I don’t know, nor do I care at this point in my life. I’m over it. I have my blog I can contribute to the hobby here and I am a mod at eWrestler.net, I’m happy.


Do I feel bad for just shutting it down and not giving members a chance to talk? No. I’ll tell you why too. Why beat a dead horse? EWZine under me not going to work, I have a bad name there. So many other places, that I stated above, are where eWrestling is and should be right now. Does this mean EWZine is gone for good? No. I actually approached a member, a highly respected member, of the eWrestling community today and shot them the idea that their site would fit better under the EWZine banner and they agreed. Ina few months, if they are still willing and wanting to, EWZine will thrive on in the form it really should be seen as and under a person who can do it’s legacy right.


Am I making any profit off of this? Nope. I’m handing everything but the forums over to them, the better person for the job, and my plan is still to use the forums as I see fit elsewhere. I paid for the forums, not for the site, if that makes any sense? As for me? I’ll be here, I’ll be working with PRJKT10, and I’ll be working with eWrestler.net. Do I hope someday the few left who see me in a negative light will have a different outlook? Yea, it’d be nice, but it is what it is. All I can do is hope that some of you enjoy what I contribute. To those who have made it full this entire article, thank you for your time. It means a lot you visit my site much less read my stuff. Please, feel free to comment. Good, bad, whatever.

SOURCE: http://www.ew-blog.com/?p=850
 

User Poets

The Shadow Pope
Joined
Jan 6, 1995
Messages
2,192
Points
36
Age
44
Location
Top of the Pile
Website
www.valeriansgarden.com
I'm leaving this thread open because I think there's some constructive conversation possible from its existence, but Ben and Scott - take the sniping at each other to PMs, or even better, away from FWC.
 

Zezu

League Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2004
Messages
166
Points
0
do we really need two sets of forums for fundementally what should be the same group of people?
 

BenHalkum

Reverend Asshole
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
516
Points
0
Age
40
Website
www.wrestleuta.com
I agree fully Ben. Once of the reasons I thought shutting the EWZine forums down was a good idea. Too many forum sets, when people should focus on working together. Doesn't matter any more, I went ahead and worked a deal out with Dusty and he now has EWZine again.

I'll continue delivering OOC content such as tutorials and guides on my blog.
 

Aidan

League Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2009
Messages
20
Points
0
Location
Katz's sock drawer
From their, W316 shut down after popularity plummeted


I agree to a point. You had a major hand in that debacle. All things said though Ben, good piece and best of luck in your future endeavors. I didn't know all of that stuff about you and it's easier to reconcile now that it's all out there.

Happy Halloween!
A
 

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