So there have been a few times where I hit a wall and was close to walking away with Mikey. The first happened after my second RP. I had never been in an e-fed before. I'd never even heard of them until about a week before I signed up. I took a few days to craft a very rough version of Mikey that I applied with. There were a fair number of bumps in the road during this first few RPs. My biggest issue wasn't that I lost a quick match and then didn't get chosen for an open challenge at Lethal Lottery for the Mayhem Title, Ace Stevens who was great got the call and beat Justin Pooper that night, but I was absolutely afraid of reaching out to people for advice and stuff. Thankfully, Shotaro reached out to me and after a few days of getting to know each other Strikeforce was born and many debates were had by Prophet about their true place in tag team history.
The second time I hit a wall was at Gold Rush a few years back. It was my first exposure to the main event, and I was in over my head in the feud. Mikey was essentially a comedy sidekick being thrown into a feud with Ty Burna, Constantine, and Matt Tastic. Now Killjoy and I weren't officially Live Mas yet, but we had been working on some ideas. The decision to add me to that feud and the eventual Hell in a Cell at Gold Rush that year came very late. I was very unprepared and couldn't come up with much. We decided to go with an injury angle after Ty and Mikey recreated King of the Ring 1998 and Ty threw Mikey off the cell. I wanted to do it to build a bit of sympathy for Mikey to build for the future. He was still on TV, but he didn't wrestle for a couple of shows while I tried out my alternate character, Oleg Rasputin. He was awful, don't look him up. The problem I had was that Oleg was a serious character, a complete 180 from what Mikey was about to become. Dave and I formed a team with Oleg and his Russian character Victor Makarov, and we had a one off title match against Cerberus. Now Spidey really enjoyed the feud and expressed interest in continuing it, but I had planned on Mikey's return at the same PPV. I wrote the Oleg RP and just felt drained so I scrambled to come up with something for Miley's return RP. At the last minute I made the call to just go maximum goofy and have him wrestle a bear. Me and Spidey are buds so I didn't want to slight him, but there was no way I could write two characters at once. My own personal experiences writing two guys at once is why I pushed to limit guys to one character. Anyway, I debated if I should use Mikey to put over a new star and shelve him for a bit or to just walk away from the dumpster fire that was Oleg. In retrospect I made the right call dumping the big Russian, but it wasn't easy.
My last run before stepping away was honestly a real chore, which is odd because I ended up winning more often than not. A lot of guys who have been World Champ will tell you that capturing the title is easy, defending it is the hard part. They are 100% spot on. When I won the title the first time, I was over the moon. The problem was that Mikey's journey from comedic sidekick to legit Kingdom Come main eventer was basically complete. I was desperate for ideas, do in no small part to my declining mental health. I remember I had a match with Vee the round after I beat Constantine to win the title. I literally wrote Mikey going to the dentist to fix his teeth after Consty busted him up, having Mikey react badly to laughing gas, and ending the RP with Mikey taking a piss out a window. I should not have won that match. While I guess it's true I was still writing at a main event level with whatever stupid idea I decided to throw at the wall, the ideas were very very stupid. Jump forward a few cycles to KC and I literally had no idea what to write about. Prophet and I had been in constant contact the minute the Lethal Lottery results came in and we build a damn good feud. Prophet did a lot of the leg work though. I was just out of viable ideas. So in the end I came up with the RP idea for KC the day of the deadline. I don't even remember what I wrote about. I knew a character reboot was going to be coming soon, but I didn't know what to do. I knew what my post KC plans were going to be, but real life kicked my ass hard. I'm not going to give the plans away because they may still happen. Stay tuned.
As far as how I got over those, a lot of it was just trying really really hard to come up with fresh ideas. I think of a lot of ideas when I'm doing stuff away from the forums. Sometimes I'll jot down some notes on my phone and piece them together later.
As far as Xaitlyn goes, I'll be honest, it wasn't good. It was borderline awful. Xaitlyn had no clear character, she had motives that were all over the board, the no theme music made no sense, and her pairing with Tony was rather forced and had plenty of jagged edges. If I'm being honest I don't like what Milenko is doing. Tony was doing okay as a heel and building okay momentum. The mafia character makes no sense as a face and I stand by that. It feels like, for unknown reasons, Milenko is trying so desperately to get Tony over as a face, and build sympathy for him. Despite my steadfast belief that the mafia character has to be a heel, this is wrestling so there is a way to get everyone over as a face and heel. There is a redemption story that could be told, but I personally don't think it's being told well. I don't mean this as a slight to Milenko, because I'm not in his head and I don't know what his long term plans are, but I feel like he is trying to shoehorn his personal beliefs into his RPs, and it's all coming off as super heavy handed.
As far as the new character, it's an improvement over Xaitlyn. For one, it's an actual character. For two, she has theme music. For three, the RPs make some sense. Like I said, it's better. With the MMA/amateur star/legit athlete gimmick you have to eventually give them a personality or they will flounder. She is new, so no need to rush that.
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