Universal Wrestling League
| Type | Private corporation |
|---|---|
| Industry | Professional wrestling |
| Founded | 1923 (Radio Wrestling Company) 1940 (Universal Wrestling League) 1997 (bankruptcy reorganization) |
| Headquarters | Greater Ilarís, UFC |
Area served | Tavari Union |
Key people | Vínšt Makam Hanon (Founder) Vedra Makam Hanon (Chairwoman) Hendra Telan Havraštai (CEO) |
| Revenue | 1.31 billion TAN (2022) |
Number of employees | 640 (2022) |
| Website | uwu.zqd.ta uwu.uwl.com (Staynish-Codexian) |
The Universal Wrestling League, Inc. (Tavari: V.K. Žanotrašro Qólovrašt Danlõbi, lit. All-Realm Wrestling Fellowship) is a professional wrestling promotion in Tavaris. Established in 1923 as the Radio Wrestling Company (Tavari: V.K. Qólovrašt Releten), it initially broadcast tournaments of the sport of traditional Tavari wrestling over the radio, becoming a quick hit for its dramatic narrations and penchant for embellishment of the various wrestlers and their matches. The company assumed its current name in 1940 when it transitioned from radio to television, but the Tavari language term qólovrašt releten, (lit. "radio wrestling") has continued to be used in common parlance to refer to the scripted, dramatized entertainment productions of the Universal Wrestling League—what would be known in Staynish-Codexian as "professional wrestling"—in contrast to the amateur sport of traditional Tavari wrestling, which is an Aldanic discipline.
Despite the company's modern origins, its leaders have always characterized it as a continuation of an ancient Tavari tradition of highly dramatized accounts of wrestling matches, noting that the first recorded Tavari language novel (Žanotrašro Zubi, "the Fellowship of Zubi") is a fictional account of a wrestler who accomplishes supernatural feats in his matches and eventually wrestles the ocean itself into submission. The company used the word žanotrašro in its name specifically in reference to this work—instead of a more typical Tavari word, such as kraníkar ("league, conference"), usually used by sports bodies—which company founder Vínšt Makam Hanon stated was "a callback to the very first radio wrestlers, who knew even in ancient times that there was an art to telling the story about wrestling as well as the wrestling itself." (Others have speculated if this was done in an attempt to discourage government regulators from treating the company as a sports organization instead of an entertainment one, which would have raised questions about the predetermined nature of most matches.)
The Universal Wrestling League is enormously popular in the countries of the Tavari Union, where its programming regularly ranks among the most highly-watched shows in their time slots and where its average TV viewership numbers often exceed that of any sport. Scripted storylines involving individual wrestlers often stretch across multiple seasons—years of real time—and many viewers consider themselves fans of the drama over any purported athleticism. University of Nakaš media studies professor Eveda Takand Lomedlís has noted that the Universal Wrestling League "fits into the entertainment niche that 'dramas' or 'soap operas' often fill in other cultures."
Emperor Otan IV is known to be a fan of the Universal Wrestling League and is said to have snuck into several events held in Nuvrenon during his youth. Photos of what appears to be a young Prince Otan wearing sunglasses inside the Nuvrenon Events Center at 2004’s Qólovolo 37 (roughly ‘Wrestle-palooza 37’) are popularly circulated but have never been confirmed or denied by the Silver Court. His love of professional wrestling has sometimes put him at odds with his father, King Emeritus Zaram V, who as a former competitor in the Black Star Tournament has the distinction of being considered one of the greatest Tavari wrestlers alive and who, Otan has said, “would sooner watch paint dry than the Universal Wrestling League.”
History
Early History
The sport of wrestling itself predates written Tavari records. By the time the novel Žanotrašro Zubi was written (c. 940-970 CE, less than a century after the first Tavari writing appeared), wrestling was already considered an ancient art, said in the book to be "the fifth thing orcs ever learned" (after breathing, eating, sleeping, and mating, in that order.) Long associated with martial prowess and the good favor of the spirits (and thus good fortune), wrestling was considered to be the most popular sport in Tavaris until the modern era when sports such as rugby and football became popular. In 2019, a survey of Tavari households by Ranzalar Media Research ranked traditional Tavari wrestling as the second most popular sport in Tavaris, with 44% of respondents self-identifying as a fan of the sport. (Association football ranked first with 58% and rugby union in third with 40%. Respondents were permitted to identify as fans of multiple sports.) While professional wrestling was not counted among the sports, fandom of the UWL was counted in the survey as a "non-sport entertainment activity" and was first ranked in this category. With 61% of respondents identifying as fans of the UWL, its support exceeded that of any single sport.
By the 20th century, wrestling had begun to see a decline in comparison to newer sports brought in from foreign countries, especially team sports—Tavari wrestling has always been an individual sport—that, despite individual players moving, provided communities with more long-lasting institutions to support. UWL founder Vínšt Makam Hanon, himself a long time supporter of traditional Tavari wrestling, established the Radio Wrestling Company with the goal of reversing the slide in the sport's popularity, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Great War, which inspired a brief cultural moment in opposition to "foreign interference" in Tavari culture. His goal in broadcasting the traditional wrestling tournaments—especially the grandest of them all, the Black Star Tournament, established by King Utor I—over the radio was to, as he said in his autobiography, "restore a love of wrestling, the defining Tavari sport, to the heart of the common Tavari woman and man, not simply the elite and the Tavat Avati fanatics."
To a considerable degree, Makam Hanon was successful in this regard. The Radio Wrestling Company’s broadcast of the 1924 edition of Queen Melora’s Tournament was enormously popular, and played a major role in establishing radio’s popularity as a medium in Tavaris. The Universal Wrestling League also became popular in Metradan, Racatrazi, and Greater Ilarís, all jurisdictions who had relatively recently become politically independent from Tavaris, serving to maintain a Tavari cultural identity in these places even though they were no longer Tavari citizens. Makam Hanon would cite this as the greatest of his life’s work, writing in his memoir: “The Great War broke the Tavari, it shattered us, and left us drifting across the world without a common unifier. Tavari citizenship no longer brought us together, and it could have been that we all drifted apart. But to whatever extent that my programs, my tournaments, and so forth, have made it so people from Acruni and Racatrazi and Nuvrenon all still have a common love in their hearts for something that is fundamentally ours, fundamentally Tavari, then that is the greatest thing I have ever done.”
Vínšt Makam Hanon passed away in 1942, shortly after directing the company to transition from radio to television. After his death, it immediately became clear to family members going through his financial records to close out his estate that he had been involved in significant, numerous corrupt enterprises, some involving the Universal Wrestling League—such as openly accepting money from fans to have their preferred wrestlers win matches—but others entirely unrelated, such as several cannabis farms in Racatrazi of uncertain legality, and cocaine trafficking from Racatrazi to Metradan, which was flagrantly illegal. The more blatant criminality of the drug offenses insulated the Universal Wrestling League from much of the fallout, especially considering it was not technically illegal for the league to accept money to change the outcome of a tournament because they were not genuine tournaments but scripted entertainment. However, the league’s players successfully unionized in 1958 and secured a number of concessions from league management forcing the league to abandon the practice of accepting money to change match outcomes, among many others.
The transition to television only increased the Universal Wrestling League’s popularity, especially among the young. While traditional Tavari wrestling was considered a more sophisticated pastime for grown adults, professional wrestling was popular across all economic segments but especially the burgeoning Tavari middle class. While the prestigious traditional tournaments were held only once every few years and usually held in ancient, small venues that limited attendance, professional wrestling could be seen by just about anyone with a TV set and could be attended in person with much less difficulty. By 1950, there were major promotions every month, all across the Tavari speaking world. In 1956, Universal Wrestling League’s Grand Acruni Tournament V earned more viewers than the inaugural address of the first Metradani President after that year’s transition to republicanism.
Controversy and Decline
Fans of traditional wrestling often derided the Universal Wrestling League as being crass; “Tavari wrestlers are supposed to be noble, heroic icons of strength, but the so-called ‘professional’ wrestlers on TV nowadays are just buffoons clowning about,” Prime Minister Enedra Tovrož Qavõro was heard complaining in 1970; he lost re-election later that year. However, as time went on and the company went through multiple changes in leadership, complaints about the tone of the league’s productions began to gain traction, all the while its share of viewership entered into a persistent decline. The league’s staff of writers made the conscious decision throughout the 1960s and 1970s to concoct further and further outlandish or otherwise “attention-grabbing” storylines in order to gain and maintain market share, which did involve moving away from more traditional storylines grounded in references to ancient literature, as had been somewhat common until then.
By the 1980s, the league had lost much of its TV ratings share to other sports. Football had existed on the amateur and professional levels in Tavaris since the turn of the century and had slowly gained popularity due in large part to it becoming ubiquitous in schools. Football, in large part, had entirely replaced traditional Tavari wrestling as the primary sport offered for recreation and physical education in Tavari schools by 1960, though the transition occurred earlier and faster in the west. This, in turn, tended to result in children who were less interested in wrestling and thus in the Universal Wrestling League. The 1981 launch of the Tavari Rugby Cup was enormously popular and subsequent editions managed to retain much of the initial excitement. Rugby was seen by many Tavari as a more “grown-up” version of football and appealed especially to young adults—rugby clubs arose at almost every Tavari university by the end of the decade.
In 1994, in an attempt to regain market share, Universal Wrestling League, Inc. announced the Metropolitan Circuit, a new promotion involving “teams” of wrestlers based in major cities across Tavaris. These teams would face each other in matches throughout the year and then compete in a tournament, a direct answer to the popularity of team sports like football and rugby. The idea was that people in these cities would develop a fandom similar to those of other sports teams. Teams were launched in twelve cities, each consisting of between three and five wrestlers, many of whom were well known wrestlers who had already been with the league for many years and had established storylines. However, the league declared that the Metropolitan Circuit was a “separate universe” where previous storylines were no longer fixed. This proved immediately controversial, with many fans upset that favored storylines from their favorite wrestlers had been changed or deleted. Additionally, because every wrestler was associated with a team in a particular geographic location, fans of particular wrestlers began to complain that they could no longer view matches of their favorites unless they paid an extra fee on top of the pay-per-view fee to watch matches from other cities. Universal Wrestling League canceled the Metropolitan Circuit in 1997, but had spent so much money on the venture that it was nearing bankruptcy.
Happening almost concurrently, several league wrestlers were involved in steroid use scandals. Professional wrestler Vancor Talandra Neždaril, as a whistleblower, accused the league of pressuring wrestlers to use steroids to perform at higher and higher levels to draw back crowds. An investigation by Tavari authorities led to the arrest of three executives at the company and nearly a dozen employees across the country. The Nuvrenon-based, publicly traded Universal Wrestling League, Inc. declared bankruptcy in 1997 and reorganized later that year as a private company in Ilarís after a significant investment by an unknown investor based there. Greater Ilarís’ lax financial disclosure laws have generally shielded the identity of who provided the capital, but conspiracy theories abound that it may have been Toran Nuvo Ranzalar, the Tavari billionaire business executive, or even King Zaram V.
Modern History
After emerging from bankruptcy, the company was an early adopter and advocate of the Urth Wide Utility and other Internet-based technology, which proved to set the stage for its comeback. While video streaming technology was still undeveloped at this point, the company’s research and development paid off when, in 2005, the Universal Wrestling League offered pay-per-view streams of its major promotions through its website. This outraged the major Tavari television networks, all of whom had various deals with the company to air different league programs, and the league ceased the direct streams six months later. However, it sold its video streaming platform and associated technology, developed in-house, for $1 billion našdat in 2006, and would later slowly re-introduce direct-to-consumer streams over the next decade as licensing deals with the TV networks were renewed.
In 2007, the Universal Wrestling League launched its own pay television service, the Universal Wrestling Network. In 2010, it expanded the Universal Wrestling Network to include a streaming service and access to its entire library of historical programming, even including archival recordings of the first Radio Wrestling Company radio broadcasts in the early 1920s. However, there are still several programs that air on TV networks other than the league’s own, with broadcast deals between the league and other Tavari broadcasters worth in the billions of našdat. In addition to strictly wrestling, the Universal Wrestling Network has branched out into producing other kinds of TV shows, including documentaries, behind-the-scenes content, and even conventional dramas designed to compete with those of other streaming services.
The league has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity since the dawn of the streaming era. The dramatic element of its programming has adapted well to binge-watching, where now viewers can consecutively watch events that would have originally taken place months or years apart. Newly produced content tends to emphasize this, with new storylines written with a greater degree of complexity than in previous years, earning praise from critics.
Programming
In general, storylines in the Universal Wrestling League revolve around individual wrestlers who all seek to be crowned “Champion of the Universe” in the “Universal Wrestling Tournament,” a tournament that the league has never and will never hold, so as to allow it to be used as a storyline indefinitely into the future. The tournaments, events, and matches held by the league are, in the mythos of the league’s universe, considered to be qualifiers for this Universal Wrestling Tournament. In theory, each wrestler earns a number of points in each match they win, and at some undefined point in the future, the “qualifying period” will end and those with the highest number of points will receive invitations to the Universal Wrestling Tournament.
Nominally about fighting, in reality, Universal Wrestling League events are scripted with a focus on the competitors as individual characters. Many fans will have one or a few favorites who they follow across their careers in the league. The backstories of the wrestlers are always written to be outlandish, and the personalities are always exaggerated. Each wrestler will have a stated goal for why they seek to become the Champion of the Universe, usually a deliberately stereotypical trope such as fighting in honor of a dead loved one, to impress a romantic partner, or to seek revenge on some other wrestler who wronged them in some way. Every wrestler will also have a rival, with whom much of their scripted storyline will revolve. Additionally, while the style of outfits can vary between events (often according to the given event’s particular theme), each wrestler will always be assigned two or three particular shades of color that they always wear. The colors are usually bright, to the point of being garish, and is said to have been insisted upon by league executives during the transition to color TV in the 1960s.
It is almost never the case that a Universal Wrestling League performance proceeds as a standard wrestling match for its entire duration, with some unexpected or remarkable circumstance invariably occurring during the match that requires the competitors to take drastic actions. In the past, these have included events such as invasion by troops from Vaklori or Bana, a fire suppression system “malfunction” that flooded the ring, a simulated meteor impact, a scripted labor action by league staff, allegedly feral jaguars released into the ring, and in 1997, several matches were “halted” by “bankruptcy lawyers” against whom the competitors would always team up to defeat. Time travel, alien invasion, zombies, and various apocalyptic scenarios have also become popular storyline elements, especially in recent decades.
The league puts on various events in different formats, including major “flagship” promotions like Qólovolo and the Grand National series of annual tournaments (e.g. the Grand Acruni and Grand Nuvrenon tournaments) that are pay-per-view, weekly televised programs like Amethyst Warriors and Grand Ultimate Takedown filmed at the “UWL Arena” (a television studio) in Nuvrenon, and “matches” and “tournaments” held at venues all across the Tavari Union under many different names but largely all classified under the “Universal Wrestling Qualifying Circuit” label.
The league’s two primary brands, which form the bulk of their content, are Amethyst Warriors and Grand Ultimate Takedown. Over the years writers have taken all kinds of directions with these and the league’s other brands, but in general Amethyst Warriors content is considered to be more focused on “traditional” wrestling and dramatics, while Grand Ultimate Takedown focuses more on action and the fighting itself.
Conspiracy Theories
A prominent conspiracy theory says that Universal Wrestling League, Inc. is owned or partially owned by Line Nuvo, the Tavari royal family, as a way of generating income outside the country in contravention of laws controlling royal finances. In 1997, the company reorganized in Greater Ilarís, UFC after receiving an investment of $700 million SHD, approximately a third of its peak market capitalization, from an anonymous investor. The company’s refusal to identify this investor, permitted under local laws, has drawn significant attention and scrutiny. Greater Ilarís has always had a reputation for loose financial laws—unlike other areas settled by the Tavari, it was never formally incorporated as part of Tavari territory, and the Tavari monarch’s position as Lord Patron was considered to belong to them in a personal, not state, capacity—essentially, the Tavari government’s position was that Ilarís was a foreign polity in personal union with Tavaris but entirely unassociated with its government. This attracted Tavari-speaking entrepreneurs seeking a more advantageous regulatory environment, who pressured local political leaders to pass laws in their favor. Rumors that Tavari political elites, including the royal family, have taken advantage of these laws to protect their assets or shield them from attention have circulated for many years.
In 1882, the legal authority of the Tavari monarchs was severely curtailed after Queen Adra III interfered with military operations to disastrous results in the Gondwana Straits War. Part of the reforms included a law that the Tavari monarch could not keep any income, but that all royal income was to be forwarded directly to the state and, in exchange, the state would cover all the costs of the monarchy. The Supreme Constitutional Court ruled later that year that this mandated passing-over of income was absolute, meaning that “every single našdat that comes into the possession of the Tavari monarch, anywhere where Tavari law is in force, immediately becomes the lawful property of the Ministry of the Treasury the very precise moment the monarch gains possession of that našdat,” even in cases such as the monarch touching a coin on the ground with the intent to pick it up. This meant that the monarch could not lawfully hide any money within Tavaris, and that any money owned by the monarch outside the country could never be brought into the country. Almost immediately, rumors that the Tavari royal family had secret riches hidden in Ilarís that they could never again keep or spend in Tavaris began to circulate, but these remained largely irrelevant urban legends until the 1997 reorganization of the Universal Wrestling League brought the rumors into the public eye.
A Crystal Coast Free Press reporter raised the question of why the company had to relocate its offices to Ilarís and received a response from the company that the move had been “a condition of the financing offered by our primary investor.” This was enough for the paper’s editorial board, in an editorial opposing the move, to question whether “this mysterious investor might even be someone who lawfully cannot have funds in Tavaris, which might include criminal actors, or it could even include King Zaram V, and in either case, significant scrutiny is warranted.” Commentators began to openly wonder if the Tavari monarch was seeking either to diversify his portfolio or acting to preserve Tavari culture. The Silver Court declined to comment, and then-Prime Minister Mani Ovrošt Tanadar said “this government does not comment on outlandish conspiracy theories, and besides, the King can’t stand professional wrestling” but, as noted by proponents of the theory, declined to deny it outright.
Close looks at the company’s financial disclosures since 1997, limited as they are under Ilari law, indicate that the league has been earning income from the interest generated by untouched funds in an account marked “executive compensation.” Conspiracy proponents argue that these untouched funds represent a salary issued to the mystery investor who, for some reason, cannot or will not claim their income from the league. The Ilari law that allows a company to withhold the identity of its owners or directors only applies if that director is uncompensated, and if the director is paid by the company, their identity must be disclosed on public filings. This interest generated has steadily grown over the years, indicating the amount of untouched funds is growing. Proponents argue that any typical investor would, at some point, seek a return on their investment and to recoup their initial cash outlay by either accepting income from the company or selling their share. Especially since the company’s return to success and popularity after bankruptcy, many question whether there are any market-based rationales behind the refusal for the mystery investor to reveal their identity at significant financial cost.
Opponents of the theory, however, note that there is no direct evidence at all linking Line Nuvo to the purchase, or even that Line Nuvo holds any foreign assets at all. They also note that, with Ilarís’ history of lax finance law, there are certain to be many people there with particular or remarkable interest in anonymity, especially ones who are wealthy.
In 2022, Tavari law was amended to allow the monarch to keep up to 48 million našdat in a given year before passing the rest on to the Tavari government. The Silver Court has continued to decline comment regarding questions of foreign asset ownership.