The Future of Primetime Central

The following post stands to be a bit touchy, so I feel the need to preface it with a few words about my intent.

This is NOT intended as a slight to the people mentioned below. This is NOT intended to incite, enrage or aggravate. I like PTC, I have great respect for its history, and I have great respect for everyone involved in its operation over the years, from the big guy in charge down to the people who dedicated their time to judging PTC events.

I worry now that there will be no way to artfully avoid the potential pitfalls of writing this criticism. I do not wish to be seen as a malcontent, because I am quite pleased with the status of our game and the things we're able to accomplish in it. So please understand that this is not borne out of anger or resentment. This is merely a plead to all relevant parties to give all of us the chance to maximize our potential for fun.

That said, here comes the criticism:

PTC is not dead.

In fact, PTC is more alive than ever. We have a big interfed event coming up, IG is arguably more active than ever, we have a unified title division that is attracting great talent and interest, we have a concept competition that looks phenomenal, and GTT is going to run as usual. What, precisely, is "dead" about it?

Consider the actual physical and functional changes that have occurred since PTC "closed:"

-The Trash Talk board is now unmoderated.
-The stagnant PTC website is gone.
-Anyone may now recruit from the Free Agent board.

...And that's it. Only superficial changes were made. Now, before I continue on I think you can see the source of my concern. I won't dance around the issue: Ross (Argyle) and Pete (Pete) have been the guys in charge of PTC for some time and therefore this criticism of PTC will largely be viewed as a criticism of them.

Pete and I have worked closely together before. Pete was in GCW and that's how he got involved in PTC in the first place. He was my right-hand-man for some of our best times in 2002, and he actually ran GCW for me in the summer of 2006. I know Pete fairly well.

Ross is not a guy I know as well, though in what comparatively little interaction we've had I've been able to learn enough to know I like the guy. In fact, I like both guys. I'm excited to see Pete back out and handling again, even if Jason O'Neil has turned tail and run to FUSE.

While my criticisms of the decisions made regarding PTC's future may appear to be targeted at these guys, that's not the case. Because I feel that PTC should not be identified by its leaders alone, but by everyone active in the community. So in that respect, this criticism is aimed at myself every bit as much as it is at Ross and Pete.

Now that I've hedged a bit I can return to the point. And the point is this: PTC as it exists today is a fraud. Because it's not dead, it's absolutely thriving. The only change is that it is no longer a members-only club, and in that respect the decision to "kill" PTC was the best decision possible. The e-wrestling community at large is simply not big enough to exclude anyone. Back in 2002-3 when the game was thriving, e-wrestling had to organize itself into this sort of hierarchical structure to sort it all out. There were thousands of people in the game and visiting the communities, and the only way to make sense of it all was to put everyone in their place.

But that's not the case any more. For the most part the casual obnoxious teenage fanboy is gone, or at least stashed away quietly in the wealth of Geocities feds still running. The remaining members of the e-wrestling community are largely holdovers from the past era, and therefore there's no reason to turn anyone away.

I think the current status of PTC is a good thing, I just think it's got an unfortunate label. PTC should not be called "dead." The PTC splash page is a bit more diplomatic: PTC has "ceased trading." But why even go that far? PTC hasn't ceased trading anything. PTC is just trading on a broader scale.

The doors are open and that's a good thing. Now that the community has been restructured the way it has the rest of us have a chance to make things happen. It's happened already: Andy is very capably running the Infinite Gauntlet, my namesake is running the Unified Title division, and this allows Pete and Ross to run spot events when they have the time (see: Death Row Inc., GTT).

But what this really allows us to do is create a new reality for ourselves. The attitude that PTC is "dead" is dead wrong. PTC is dead in the same way Brittany Spears is dead. Sure, she may have lost her mind and put on some weight, but if she could just tighten up that flabby ass and find the energy again, we'd all be right back to lusting over her.

So here's the self-serving part of the column: I feel we're on the right track with this GCW vs. PRIME event. There are no hangups, no reasons why we can't just decide for ourselves to do this and do it. We decided to unite for one evening to see what happens, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Furthermore, the interest garnered from the event has led a large number of PRIME and even FUSE people to request to show up at Dangerous Games this weekend (you'll have to visit GCW on Saturday to see who). I really hope this leads to greater interaction among the PTC feds.

What needs to change is our own view of what PTC is. PTC is what we choose to make it now. My criticism of Ross and Pete here is that they chose to word the future of PTC poorly, but in reality what they've done is given us the chance to, as a community, create something altogether new. What I hope occurs here is to see PTC become a world very much like the one in which WWF and WCW operated in the late nineties. We're in competition with one another, we're the big promotions of the world, but from time to time we mix things up for the sake of seeing the matches we've always dreamed of seeing.

With PTC more a loose confederation of feds it's my hope that we use PTC itself to host events like Death Row and GTT, but that we use the feds themselves to host interfed events. GCW and PRIME are meeting under the same roof, each hosting its own event, but allowing the rosters to interact. If this is successful, and I feel it will be, I hope it provides the blueprint for the future of PTC. This will allow us to interact like never before as a community, get to know each others' feds much more intimately, and furthermore the increased cooperation stimulates the health of the feds; what's good for PRIME is good for GCW, because the better off both feds are, the bigger and better our joint show becomes.

So I hope this alters the perceptions of what PTC is right now. PTC should be the hub at which the PTC feds meet, but it's the PTC feds themselves that become the major players. We can accomplish whatever we want. PTC is NOT dead. Long live PTC.