The Banahan Experiment (Finally)

It took a little time.  It took more than a little time actually.  But this edition of Ready Fire Aim is one that is going to break all the rules.  We are breaking character; Jimbo Hoss is on the shelf for this one as I personally sit down to interview the man I regard as the best writer ever to play the game.  We break kayfabe.  The linguistic assassin is honest and direct.  He lays out criticism and praise for some managers.  He gives honest assessment of the game and its senior leaders.

This is a SHOOT. 

And I am damn proud to have been the one who gets to share it with everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you CHRIS BANAHAN.

************

Laptop on.

Facebook IM on.

Johnny Walker Black on the rocks in a high ball glass.

And Chris Banahan is online and willing to answer as many questions as I can throw at him. 

Let’s get it on!

 

JD: Chris, thank you for agreeing to share some time with me and the IWA manager community.  It really means a lot to me honestly.  For my money, you are the best character writer ever in the game. 

CB:  No problem.

 

JD: And it is a welcome shoot by the way. So feel free to kick my ass or anyone's who you think deserves it.

CB:  I try not to kick asses but I feel like I might anyway.

 

JD: If it is right, do it. No one has more right to kick me in the nads than you should you decide.

CB: Nah, I have absolutely no reason to kick you in the nads.

                 

JD: Well my personal stuff did kill our thing in MRL but thank you for your courtesy.

CB: Yeah, I file that under "Shit happens" also it seemed like every driving force behind the MRL dropped off at once, so there was that.  Cycle 93 was the MRL equivalent of 'The Day the Music Died'.

(Note to readers:  In 2010, I left the MRL and IWA abruptly without warning following a family tragedy.)

 

JD: Let’s get started.    Q1- What about the IWA drew you into its web in the first place?

CB:  In mid-91 I came upon an IWA advertisement in one of the Apter mags. I didn't quite understand how it worked, I just know I saw the opportunity to do the 'fake wrestling fed' thing for real. So I submitted my wrestler, who was the World Champion of my poster board league at the time, Cheif Longbow - yes "Cheif."  It took me almost a year to figure out that yes, I did spell it wrong. I don't think calling an American Indian Chieftan "Longbow" is exactly kosher either, but that's neither here nor there. So yeah, it took me over a month to get the preamble material (the rulebook, a list of the opening roster of the as-of-yet unopened TML, and if you can believe it an iron-on patch). I was amazed by the roster list.  It was like my poster board fed, only a bunch of people were contributing towards it. I spent over a week figuring out what my first matches would be. It took me so long I got my first bulletin before I sent the matches in. I was 2-0. I was the 3rd ranked wrestler IN THE WHOLE LEAGUE. It was awesome. Unfortunately it would take me awhile to get a hang of the whole strat thing so my success was short lived.  The next cycle I was 2-3 and crestfallen. But still, the IWA had its hooks in me hard. Bulletin day was like a monthly holiday. The results were life and death. I got my friends around the neighborhood to play. We all stacked matches on the same selection sheet so we wouldn't each have to chip in the $3 minimum (they actually let us get away with this for a little bit).

My TML bulletin #13 is creased from where my uncle's elbow buried itself while he was on my bed trying to console me after my grandmother died in our house. I figured out the flowchart thing when a mailing error caused my bulletin 14 matches to not get there in time so I took the time to try to figure the stats out while I was waiting an agonizing month for bulletin 15 to arrive. So yeah, the IWA was deep in my skin from bell one.

 

JD: What made you leave?

CB: I originally "retired" in 2003. I was 11 when I joined the IWA.  I was 23-24 when I left. The reason was really simple. The IWA was boring me. I didn't so much make a conscious decision to quit, I just kept missing deadlines and found that I had no desire to change the situation. So I just stopped playing. It was simple as that. I kept my ear to the ground and heard of the MRL.

I almost rejoined the IWA very early in the MRL's life cycle. Back when Bailey was the driving force and the standards of who was an acceptable participant and who wasn't was much more stringent.  That's fine if you managed to lock down Ric Flair cycle 1, but for the rest of us it was like picking through the garbage. I eventually realized I could technically get the Poffo family in based on jobber work they did in the mid-70's. I was going to bring in Randy, Lanny and even Angelo in a "First Family" type gimmick. I had the first promo written and everything. But I never had the traction to send it in.  I decided "If I'm not ready to get the ball rolling, I won't be ready to keep the ball rolling."  So I demurred. Probably for the best because I made another naming gaff. I almost named them the "Pollos".

I would eventually return to the CSL, and I would join the MRL for real. I left the MRL when I realized that the truly great writers I enjoyed reading (yes that includes you) probably weren't coming back and feeling like I was giving the league much more than I was getting. I had a brief return after that, but the situation didn't change, so I left for good.

 

 

JD: What if anything do you miss most about the game?

CB: MRL cycles 68-93. The high point of the game, for me and probably in general. Not much else to be said on this topic.

 

JD: What is your personal greatest accomplishment?

CB: Oddly, probably being responsible for naming the Metropolitan title. There was that big thread on the dungeon about what to name the title. I saw the offerings, they were ok but I had my own idea. I just slipped in, asked 'How about the Metropolitan Title' and slipped out. Next thing I know that was apparently the name that gained traction. Being considered a great writer by those in the know is also pretty flattering, but I always felt like I was a well-kept secret because I kept a pretty low profile so it never felt like that was a consensus opinion.

 

JD: What was your favorite and least favorite league?

CB: The MRL. It doesn't even feel like a fair question. When the MRL was at its peak I felt like there were IWA players and there were MRL players. It was the IWA's ivory tower.

But I feel like a few other leagues deserve honorable mentions:

HTL  

Where we first met obviously. Francis Guy got there first and I when first saw his bulletin I kind of thought it was a joke. Like I said earlier, my earliest exposure was to managers who just treated the IWA as a dick waving contest and threw aside the creative aspects for the most part. I just thought that was how the IWA worked. Then I see the HTL and I see a bunch of people I had never heard of writing 'in character' I initially laughed it off.

The thing is though; I'm an inherently creative person. So quickly I started thinking 'wait a minute, why the fuck aren't I doing this instead of the nonsense. So I moved to the league myself and since then I've been a character guy.

BRL

I would occasional take advantage of the IWA's offer to send people bulletins of leagues they weren't in for like $1 apiece. I would buy bulletins as a way to scout leagues. I bought the BRL bulletin and it was amazing. At the time it was the single best bulletin I had ever seen. The league was activate as fuck and Scott Olson and Brandon Bailey were killing it in the TT section. I wanted to go there, I'm not sure why I didn't. I think BRL was a closed league at the time.

QPL

Another great league and the hardest league I had been in at that point in time. It became my white whale. It kicked my ass. I won a regional title one cycle and went 1-20 the next cycle. I have never been so concerned about non-money numbers on a piece of paper before or since and I play fantasy football. That crushed me. I kind of slunk out of the league with my tail between my legs. I would come back in 2001ish and I wound up getting a plaque for getting 2 league titles in a row, so there's that.

DAL

Probably the best overall league I've been in aside from the MRL. Pat Patterson did great work as commissioner. The writing was great (or I considered it to be great at the time) and it was even harder than the QPL. I was a benchmark of inefficacy there I admit, and I was there awhile. But I didn't have my two oldest records there so I didn't care (that much). The problem was my guys there were two Road-Warrior rip-offs, and it's hard to be a road warrior rip-off if you lose all the time.

 

Worst league:

The JIL.  I've been in less creative leagues, I've been in less active leagues, but the culture in the JIL felt toxic. When I returned to the IWA in 05' I created my greatest non-MRL character; "The Legendary" C.S.Banahan. The idea is that it's basically me if I was the star of a Pro Wrestling Movie and also I was played by Will Ferrell.  More than that though it was designed to be a spoof of the hubris of the average IWA manager.

I think it's fair to say the IWA has a bit of a badass disorder. Let me put it this way. HHH would probably fit right in in the IWA manager culture. Everybody wants to be a hard ass. I created that character as a response to that.

My 2005 CSL run was when I finally reached the peak of my writing powers too. The CSL was kind of short-lived though so I moved to the JIL. The badass disease was in full swing there. It was as bad as I've ever seen in every league. It was so bad that it started affecting me. Nobody was willing to show ass, everybody needed the upper hand on everybody else. My promos got more serious to try to match the tone of the league. I came to realize it and when I did that's when I basically decided I was done with any non-MRL league. Because the secret genius of the MRL is that it forced people out of the comfort zone of creating their fan fiction self-insert. Most people were either kept away or played along.

 

JD: Who were your favorite partners and why?

CB: I have to say my old running mates in DW here. Eric Haberman, Dave Finnell, Solomon Shaw in particular. With Francis and me, we sort of coalesced in the RDL. It was a sort of super stable (not really in the grand scheme of things, but since it was a merging of 2-3 other stables the comparison is apt) and it was done entirely within the bulletins. No interpersonal communication. It's weird to call a stable 'personal' but that's what DW was. It was part of me at a time when the IWA was a huge part of my life.

Honorable mention goes to a stable few people have ever heard of. When I rejoined the IWA in 2005 I decided I was pretty much done with stables. They no longer seemed necessary or that they accomplished a point other than creating artificial bullshit drama. I would however occasionally think 'you know it would be kind of awesome if us creative types just formed our own little clique." I didn't think it was going to happen, but it happened. It was called Electric Beams. The group was myself, Matt Gamard, Jake Duvall, Jim Gabbard and (I think) Cody Schibi. Unfortunately it was short lived. It was doomed to be short lived as the thing with people with artistic temperaments is that we tend towards not playing well with others. That's what happened here. One of us decided that EB should be a conventional stable and arranged an alliance with another stable and attempted to become a 'power player' in the IWA. That's all it took. Basically the rest of us were just like 'nope' and left. It was simple as that. Kind of a shame, but c'est la vie.

 

JD: Who was you greatest opponent and why?

CB: Steve Bradshaw, particularly Armas Archuleta. I have no clue how Steve managed to make a lily-white face such a compelling character, but he managed. Fun Fact: You are of course aware of the Calamity Jake/Armas feud. But here's the thing; I legitimately did not intend it that way. My idea was to have Jake feud with Black Armas. That's how the schtick began, the idea being that the only person who believed that Black Armas was the real Armas is the guy trying to kill him. Jake of course being duped because Black Armas more accurately reflected the Armas that existed in his head. But Steve turned it around.

Usually in the IWA there is a concept called 'blocking'. It's unspoken, but the idea being you try not to write too much of your opponent's characters because you don't want to violate their characterization. Likewise you don't want to write things that contradict the narrative already in place. Steve broke that in the most magnificent manner possible. It could have failed. It could have blown up. The 'Jake was a huge Armas fan until he felt betrayed by him' was a tremendous twist, one that would probably make the real Mick Foley vomit mind you, but a great twist nonetheless. It could have failed had I not been =willing to roll with it, but I was and it made the feud great.

Of course, Armas should be the choice of everybody who ever feuded with him, but that's neither here nor there.

 

JD: Is there anyone that you just could not stand in your run?

CB: In my 'run'. Maybe, but I've tended to forget most of the names over time. I think the only thing that galled me in my run was when Nick Hill named his Strongbow analogues the Crossbows. I mean we went over the whole Cheif Longbow thing, but I was 11 and that was still closer than the frickin' crossbows. I could have let that slide. But the whole Iron Sheik/Dustin Roads versus Young Guns feud was a disaster. A major violation of blocking, insisting that the Culture Coterie were the heels despite being the ones that A: spit on Sheik’s attempt at reconciliation (after showing no interest in feuding with Sheik when that was the actual goal) and repeatedly calling him a towelhead. I felt like that gave me insight into who he was. In related news, despite not having much of what you'd call 'bad blood' towards anybody in the name I have effectively hidden 90% of my IWA Facebook friends from my wall.

 

JD:  Who is the best ever?

CB: I don't really give a crap about the accolades (well I do, but I don't y'know). I guess if you pressed me I'd say Howie Sandburg. I still remember how dominating he was in his heyday despite never being in a league with him and it being 20 or so years ago at this point. So yeah, fine there's that I guess.

 

JD: Who was the most overrated manager that you played against?

 

CB: Overrated? None I think. I guess the guys that had 100+ man rosters and got all their accolades by throwing shit at the wall and occasionally getting something to stick.

They know who they are. I don't. I just know they exist. I seldom went to the leagues they hung out in.

 

JD: Who was the most underrated manager that you faced?

CB: This is where I'll give the shout out to Solomon Shaw. When I saw him kick ass in the RDL I was like 'I gotta get this dude on board'. It was a driving force behind the creation of DW.

 

JD: Is there any urge to ever come back to the game?

CB: No. I think all the genuine creative talent has bailed at this point. There certainly isn't enough left to keep the lights on in the MRL. I never even bothered to put Mudo/Brady Raines or C.S. Banahan in the HoF until Troy (Matt Stryker) twisted my arm. I was just like 'fine, if it's that important to you I'll send the e-mail). So Raines is in.  My self-insert is not. Which is fine.  The HoF is just 'congratulations, you spend way too money on this game, here's a plaque.

(As far as the Mudo/Raines thing goes: I had a brief second run in the MRL. I renamed the Great Mudo Brady Raines (Brad Rheingans) and never changed it back. So his name is kind of 'wrong' in the HoF but I don't really care.

 

JD: Do you have any regrets from your time in the game?

CB: I regret being kind of stupid teenager who didn't understand the difference between an opponent and an enemy. I didn't understand that most of the feuding that went on wasn't actually personal and it was just people posturing. In that regard the 'managers' aspect of the IWA wasn't unlike real wrestling. I'd like to thank Eric Tackett for helping me figure out the difference.

 

JD: What is your biggest disappointment in your years of play?

CB: Not winning more. I know the IWA is a stupid bingo card but I have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with competition so I actually cared about winning more than I let on, but not enough to make a bunch of bullshit records and send them to bullshit leagues. I won the MRL World Title though, which I was thrilled with.  I was just sad it happened JUST as Gemil left so I didn't get to have Jake's name added to his sig.

 

JD:  If you had a choice to captain a Wargames team of five featuring one of your characters plus four others, who would comprise Team Banahan?

CB:  Team Captain: "The Legendary" C.S.Banahan

2) Armas Archuleta. We've been over this.

3) The Lord of Brutality (QPL).  Bailey had that shit on lockdown. It was kind of breathtaking.

4) Mr. Armbar (CSL).  Jake had an amazing balance between ridiculous and grounded with this guy. An awesome departure from the IWA norm.

5) Mr. Magnificent J. Montgomery (HTL).  Forgive me if I'm remembering dates/leagues wrong but I felt a nod to the league that really showed me how I wanted to play the IWA was in order.

 

 

JD: You're an artist at heart. How are you making a creative outlet outside of the IWA these days?

 

CB: I participated in NaNoWriMo (look it up if you don't know what it is) last November. I hit the 50,000 word goal and immediately stopped. Unfortunately I haven't had the gumption to continue.

 

But in terms of what I am presently doing. If you've ever heard of something awful, I am a member of the forums and I've been active in their Wrestling Sub forum. In that forum they are playing a game. What they're doing is they're using this game. http://www.greydogsoftware.com/tew2013/. They downloaded a 1996 mod for it, they've split into 3 teams WCW/WWF/ECW and they're basically rewriting the Monday Night Wars.

 

I've recently joined the WWF writing team. So far I haven't done much and a lot of what I have done has been first drafts which have since been fine-tuned and improved by other members of the writing staff.

 

But my thumbprint will become a little more visible in the ensuing episodes. (Unfortunately SA has a $10 sign-up fee but it's probably worth it. They've done some amazing work there. I really don't feel like the best writer on team, at all.)

                 

JD: One Last question for fun.  Last silly question – who is your dream diva and why?     

CB:  AJ Lee. I don't know if the geek chic stuff is legit, but I want to imagine it is. She is cute as a button and I want to do things to her that she...would probably laugh at.  Honorable mentions go to Becky Lynch and Blue Pants, because they are cosplaying in plain sight and nobody seems to notice.

 

JD: Would there be anything in parting that you would want to entail to the readers. I can assure you that Bailey, Bradshaw, Duvall, Tacket and many more will see this.

CB:  I think all of us left in this silly game know that it’s a sort of ridiculous antiquated bingo card and we're oddballs for sticking with it for so long. But on the overall I'm glad I did it and did it for so long. To all the people I shouted out to, well I already buttered you all up enough. To the people who take umbrage with my notes towards the overarching IWA culture; come on, you know I'm right. Beyond that, be well.

 

Also: I didn't take nearly enough time to butter up Matt Gamard/Muto/Milton. I seem to be a few people's choice for 'best writer ever' but personally, he's my choice.

                 

OMG I almost forgot a story that I could have included. So one last thing.

 

JD: Of course. 

 

CB:  I think one of the reasons I was done with IWA stables after my 2003 "retirement" was that I was a member of a sort of real-life stable. Team BTY (Better Than You).

Team BTY was formed with the advent of the WWE TCG Raw Deal. My friends and I took to that game right away and had it "solved" about a week after it came out. We were good. Not so much me, but my other friends. We had gotten into a bit of a (we thought at the time) friendly online tiff with the curators of the main Raw Deal fan page, Team Canada. So we had to come up with a name of our own.

We were clearly the heels in the arrangement. My friends are great assholes. I think Team BTY's motto was "we're your kind of assholes". So they eventually landed on Team Better Than You; a name that was just designed to piss off whomever read it.

Then they (not I) went to GenCon and literally won every tournament over the course of the weekend. Which at the time were the 3 biggest tournaments in Raw Deal history. One of us was the first ever Raw Deal world heavyweight champion. There is a picture of him with Chris Benoit out there somewhere. It's...a little chilling in hindsight.

I was sad that I couldn't bring that into the IWA....but not that sad.

To this day, BTY is still kind of our 'brand'. There was some chatter about 4 years ago of them opening a new LCS (local card store) named BTY Games. Nothing ever came of it but that's how ingrained it became.

*****

Epilogue: Chris Banahan was a genuine mensch in this process.  He was gracious with his time and thoughtful in crafting the answers to the questions that I submitted his way.  This interviewer wishes to “thank him” for participating in this exercise despite having no direct connection to the IWA any longer.