[CRIMSON] Farewell for now.

As of March 17th, 2011 after nearly nine years I have no more plans to continue working on Pro-Wrestling CRIMSON. There are significant reasons, which I'll outline below but if you've been following CRIMSON you should have seen this coming. My output for about a year has been significantly lower then before. Does this mean I won't work on CRIMSON ever again? No. It means as of today, I have no plans to do so. This also doesn't mean I have no plans to venture back into E-Puro at some point. It's just for now, instead of keeping CRIMSON on my docket of "to-do", I'm scratching it off. To explain the situation, I'll list reasons below.

1) Story

On October 13th, 2009 Nobuyori Shimizu became the C-1 Heavyweight Champion. When I posted that show, I stated below the results that my "story" was complete. At the time, I didn't think I'd continue CRIMSON. For whatever reason, I forced myself to come back, and the result is the rather poor (IMO) last year of CRIMSON. Nobuyori Shimizu was the first rookie I made specifically for CRIMSON (then BETA) as "Nobu Shimizu". He was followed by Tenshin Komatsu, Razan Toyota & Yujiro Higuchi. I had no idea I was doing in 2002, but I always knew Shimizu was my favorite. But it took until my return to CRIMSON in 2007 (following almost two years off due to a knee injury) that I really defined Shimizu as he is now. I borrowed heavily from concepts that I remembered from ECW, as I defined Shimizu as the "Heart" or "Soul" of CRIMSON. That was what Tommy Dreamer was often described as in ECW. I developed Shimizu into the heavily undersized wrestler who would never give up no matter who he faced. Even when Akuma Toyota had his “god” reign with the C-1, it was Shimizu who was the hero and the draw to the loyal fans.

When Shimizu won the championship in 2009, the plan was for a short two/four month reign. When it came time to lose the title, in the heat of writing the show, I changed the result to Shimizu winning. This repeated itself *four more times*. I couldn't bring myself to have Shimizu lose the championship. A two month reign turned into a twelve month reign. Even when Hiroyuki Takano won the championship, I changed the result to Shimizu winning. It was only by sheer force of willpower did I revert the result. Even then, I couldn't bare to have Shimizu lose definitively. It had to be a referee stoppage. I couldn't bare to have Shimizu "beaten".

Why? Because Shimizu was my story. He came to define everything CRIMSON was for me. I consider his bout against Akuma Toyota at DUE TIME in '08 to be the greatest match I've ever personally wrote. When Shimizu won the championship, I had no where else to go. I'd completed my goal. I do CRIMSON for fun, to tell a story that I personally enjoy. If I was being compensated, I'm sure I could have justified continuing. But that isn't the case, and in my heart I couldn't find anywhere to go with CRIMSON. My booking is very elevation minded, but once I completed by "great work" with Shimizu, everything else was a retread. As a result, I lost interest and my participation and show quality suffered. I have nothing left to "strive" for with CRIMSON.

2) Lack of interest in Pro-Wrestling

When I relaunched CRIMSON in 2007, I made a conscious effort to "evolve". I didn't want to put out horrible work like I felt I had in the past. So I buried myself in studying Pro-Wrestling. I studied old booking, I studied the history of the sport, I studied match constructions, if there was a way to study an aspect of pro-wrestling without actively being in pro-wrestling I did it. I think my booking & writing skills increased exponentially as a result giving CRIMSON a run of work I'm fairly happy with.

That said, I dug too deep. As the saying goes sometimes it's better to be ignorant. By studying so much I discovered that *virtually every promoter in wrestling today is doing it wrong*. And I turned into a virtual Jim Cornette. I can't ignore stupidity and poor booking. The end result, is I can't just enjoy pro-wrestling anymore. I've turned into a movie critic, who can't help by dissect every logic hole or story gap. I can't turn it off no matter how hard I try. I don't know the last time I sat down and honestly enjoyed a pro-wrestling show or event from the bottom of my heart. It's been a long time.

On top of that, I've been a MMA fan for over a decade. But in the last two years or so, I've crossed that barrier into fanaticism. Everything I can get from Pro-Wrestling, I can get from MMA without feeling like an idiot for actually taking an interest. That isn't to say I hate pro-wrestling. A part of me will always love it (I was kind of raised that way with a family that loved watching the business), but my heart is with MMA now. God knows if I had actually gotten an MMA V-Fed to work the many times I've tried, I most likely have never stuck with CRIMSON to begin with.

3) Tsunami, Earthquake & Radiation

Japan has been crippled. Some places more then most, but all aspect of Japanese society are in danger right now. Not only from the aftereffects of the crisis and the ongoing nuclear reactor issues but from a cultural standpoint as well. Japanese society will change, no matter what the outcome ultimately is. The Tohoku region of Japan may never recover in our lifetime from what's happening there. It just so happens, that CRIMSON's region *is* the Tohoku region. Specifically Iwate, Miyagi, Akita & and the like.

Those prefectures have been leveled. The infrastructure of those regions will never be the same again, and we'll never know how many lives have been lost. This is where it becomes an issue with CRIMSON. I have always striven to try and be as realistic as possible with CRIMSON. How do I deal with this? My home office, and virtually all my wrestlers are in the Tohoku region. They live there. They have families. There is absolutely no way that an event like this wouldn't have done major damage to not only CRIMSON's offices in Iwate but to the families and lives of my wrestlers & management. Yuki Nomura, my top name and my president has three daughters and lives in the Iwate Prefecture. Did the Nomura family all escape harm? How unrealistic would be it if EVERYONE I employe escaped? And on the radiation front we have no idea how bad that could end up being, other then it's not good as it is and could get exponentially worse as time goes on.

But how do I deal with this while not trivializing or appearing to use this event for storyline purposes? As far as running events, I'm not even sure if my base arena the Miyako Tokuji 1000 Gymnasium is even STANDING now. There's no infrastructure to support running events in those regions. And even running Kanto is out of the question given how things are going there. Economically speaking, there's almost no way to continue running CRIMSON right now realistically.

Until I work out my own emotional qualms with running CRIMSON, and the sheer economics of it, there is absolutely no way I will be able to even think of running CRIMSON.

I want to stress that this doesn't mean I've "quit". I may launch a new project in a few months, I may not. I may come back to CRIMSON in six months and come up with a BS reason why I haven't been running. I don't know. It will all depend on where I'm at in a few months, and where Japan is at. I'm not a psychic, I can't predict the future, so I ultimately don't know where this will all end up.