Unified Wrestling Alliance

The Unified Wrestling Alliance is an umbrella organization of fantasy wrestling promotions. It currently houses three promotions: Fallout Championship Wrestling, the Global Wrestling Federation, and The Machine.

Organized in 2004, the UWA is actually a combination of the remnants of @Bay.International Wrestling and the Unified Wrestling Network. UWN owner James Greene purchased @IW and its intellectual copyrights from creator James Hunt in May 2003, and merged it with the UWN to create a new umbrella, the Global Wrestling Alliance. The name was changed in 2004 after a copyright issue was discovered.

History

James Hunt created and opened the World Championship Wrestling Federation in March 1999. Based in Thunder Bay, Hunt carefully recruited new handlers to his version of fantasy wrestling, which incorporated a professionally designed simulator with handlers sending in angles for their wrestlers. The idea was to give players an experience as realistic and as close as possible to what fans were watching on television at the time, either from WWE, WCW, or ECW.

The game underwent slow but steady growth throughout the rest of 1999. Headed into 2000, the game grew, adding new managers, including a few from a play-by-mail fantasy wrestling game, the Imaginary Wrestling Association.

In March 2000 at the WCWF's pay-per-view WrestleWar II, @IW chief executive officer Amy Huntington announced the company's expansion to include the Global Wrestling Federation. The GWF would act as a competitor and rival to the WCWF, and the two would engage in weekly television ratings battles and monthly pay-per-view buyrate contests. It was operated and overseen by Chad Van Norman, who for a good portion of the year had been acting as an on-screen foil to WCWF President Theodore MacMann. The GWF opened in May of that year.

@IW continue to grow until September, when James Hunt abruptly announced the company's indefinite closing. Many managers expressed their sadness at the decision, which led Hunt to hasten plans to reopen the site by the end of 2000. In the meantime, @IW hosted a tournament in November to crown their first @IW World Heavyweight Champion, won by The Love Doctor Dirk Diggler.

In December, both the WCWF and GWF reopened, but with two big changes. The first was @IW was entirely free-to-play, a change in philosophy which arguably hindered the quality of the company. Secondly, the WCWF and the GWF were reopened under the leadership of franchise owners, who were employed by Hunt to operate his leagues under the @IW banner. James Lysoby was tabbed to run the WCWF and Matthew Rossiter was installed as the chief of the GWF. Within a few months, the workload proved too much for Rossiter, who surrendered the GWF to Hunt. The league was shutdown a short time later.

James Lysoby was similarly struggling with the workload of the WCWF. Unable to effectively balance a real job with such a necessary dedication to his hobby, he too surrended the WCWF to Hunt, although the circumstances of which led to a falling out between the two men that lasted several months. Hunt essentially combined the GWF roster with that of the WCWF, which led to a huge title unification match between GWF Heavyweight Champion Armageddon and WCWF Heavyweight Champion Dangerous Doug Nichols at WrestleWar III in March 2001. It was also around this time that @IW returned to a pay-to-play format.

As 2001 wore on, Hunt employed manager James Greene to help him with some of the daily operations with the WCWF. By May, @IW expanded once again, introducing International Empire Wrestling, a free-to-play promotion designed to introduce new players to the game and entice them to try their luck in the pay-to-play "big league." Three months later, CWU joined IEW as a second free-to-play league, and also the GWF was once again reopened. Heading into 2002, all four were made pay-to-play, and @IW was at its largest and seemingly its strongest.

The Fissure

@IW was planning a huge pay-per-view event for late January 2002 at which several of the @IW champions would be crowned. Overflow went off without a hitch, although there were angles that transpired at the show which puzzled a handful of managers. Hunt and Chad Van Norman, who was @IW's second-in-command by this point, proposed the idea of a draft to populate a fifth league within the @IW structure that would house the promotion's company-wide titles. Few details were provided on the plans, even to the administrators that were operating @IW's four leagues.

James Greene, who had assumed total control over the WCWF in November 2001, also participated as JD Smith, one of the top journalistic characters of @IW's media division. In an audio report posted days after Overflow, he criticized the lack of communication between Hunt and his administrators, and suggested more dialogue was necessary before the idea could take shape. Not long after, an audio report was produced by Chad Van Norman, who vehemently supported the draft idea. Various comments were made in this report that offended Greene and made him feel as though perhaps the situation had turned personal. Fellow administrator Doug Nichols, who had been running IEW since its inception in May 2001, also posted audio comments critical of Van Norman and the draft.

Sometime during the night of January 31st and the morning of February 1st, 2002, an angry James Greene circulated an email to as many people as he could find. He suggested he was unhappy with @IW's current path and was specifically angered by Van Norman's comments. Saying he would "take the WCWF out of @IW and rebuild," Greene sent out the email and went to bed that night.

Later that day, Greene found his access to protected areas of @IW's website, both administrative and civilian, had been removed. An email followed shortly thereafter from Hunt, officially relieving Greene of his duties.

Over the course of the next few hours, as word circulated of Greene's removal, managers rioted. Some wrestlers threw down their titles in protest, and others flat out refused to continue participating unless Greene was reinstated. A chat was held that night on AIM between several managers, all of whom had unique opinions of what was happening and what would be the best course of action.

During a particularly heated portion of the chat room's conversation, James Hunt was pushed to his limit. Following comments that he deemed untrue and perhaps inappropriate, he shut down @IW, closing off the site and refunding managers any monies due.

A group of managers approached Greene the next day, February 2nd, asking him what should be done.

The Battle Ensues

Greene teamed up with a handful of former @IW managers and officially created the Unified Wrestling Network on February 7, 2002. Over the course of the next six weeks, the UWN organized itself and launched in late March. It wasn't long until Hunt and Van Norman had done the same with @IW.

While both companies attempted to build themselves from within, there were hard feelings on both sides, and the emotions rose to the surface every once in a while. Accusations of cheating were not uncommon, and there were times when managers would try to play both companies against themselves in order to boost their own value. On screen, backhanded comments were made referencing the other company. Behind the scenes in the "real world," relations between the two descended into a deep freeze.