Wrestling / CAW Leagues

CAW is like the Bastard of No DQ. A bastard illegitimate child, the red-headed step child always getting slapped and bitch slapped.
—Wade Needham, NODQ & SNJ commentator

CAWs are characters you can make in Wrestling Games^note Stands for "Create A Wrestler", CAW Leagues are when Wrestling Video Game fans with too much time on their hands decide that they'll make their own wrestling shows, with some leagues that will either follow close to core structure of Professional Wrestling, or will have the greatest Crossover ever inside a wrestling ring. What results is a strange mixture of Professional Wrestling, Let's Play and a Fan Fic.

Notable CAW Leagues:

• Begins and ends with No DQ CAW
• Slam 'n' Jam
• SMF
• HVF — Hogan Vs. Flair
• The Vivianverse — A group of leagues who operate under the same continuity as each other.
  • WEDF
  • New-TNA'
  • New-WWE
  • Jeri-MAX
  • NAW
  • IWT
  • NESE
• NGW
• XGWL
• ICCW
• ICWO — One of the more controversial leagues due to its rivalry with SMF and its related CAW leagues. However, it does have many followers, although hasn't been updated since 2010.
• SCAW Superstars Of CAW
• RXW: Reviewtopia Xtreme Wrestling
• DWA — SCAW's Friendly Rival fed.
• ACWL
• Anime Championship Wrestling
• Video Game Championship Wrestling — A live-streamed CAW League that has the distinction of being one of the few original shows on Twitch that is neither an eSports broadcast nor a Let's Play series.
• OCWF — Olympus Championship Wrestling Federation*
• Extreme Manga Wrestling

Tropes that apply to CAW Leagues:

• Author Appeal: While most fed owners tend to push their personal favorites, Mercurius of NGW/VWF takes this to a new level with Ami Mizuno from Sailor Moon. Not only does he regularly push her to the moon, he makes it obvious the reason is because he's sexually attracted to her. It's gotten to the point where he has made several unintentionally hilarious (and now infamous) NGW segments featuring himself having romantic encounters with a text-to-speech voiced Ami.
• Author Avatar: In all honestly, its harder to find leagues that don't have this going.
  • Xtreme Tony in XGWL
  • Oshujax/Joshua Bishop in New-TNA
    • And technically WEDF, as his creator is a writer for the show..
  • Baz McMahon in VGCW
    • Bryn McMahon in its Female Division.

• Cloudcuckoolander: The Suspect.
• Death Is Cheap: Some storylines in CAW have wrestlers dying, only to be resurrected by winning a regular old match.
  • And sometimes both historical figures and wrestlers who are dead in real life just happen to show up in leagues.
• Expy: Oh so many. Considering most if not all of these CAW Leagues rely on WWE games, it comes as no surprise that a lot of characters' gimmicks are based off of WWE Superstars. Some are so blatant that they tread into Captain Ersatz territory.
  • If not gimmicks or characters, some leagues will also just copy recent storylines seen on TV.
  • Mafia Superstar from the defunct ICWO deserves a special mention as he's outright intended as a Captain Ersatz for Toni Cipriani and is part of GTA's Leone Crime Family in kayfabe and was even billed from Liberty City.
• Follow the Leader: After the success of the Vivianverse, many other leagues attempted to create their own shared continuity with each other.
  • Being one of the first, and most popular feds out there, ideas and characters from No DQ CAW are frequently used in imitation leagues.
  • In recent years, WEDF has been a major recipient of knockoff leagues, as far the original CAWs on its roster goes. While some leagues, like New-WWE and NAW, feature many of the same CAWs as WEDF, those leagues got permission from (or were requested to be used by) the owners of the CAWs. Most WEDF imitation leagues will typically use characters like Danny Jackpot, Zach Starr, and Matt Eichorn without getting permission from their respective owners.
• Fountain of Expies: Danny Jackpot.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Wanna see Spider-Man take on Mario? Or perhaps Guile take on Shelton Benjamin? All is welcome!
• More Dakka: Wrestling Mpire leagues (of MDickie fame) make up for the lack of decent gameplay by optimizing the deathmatch options in-game. It does help when you only have to press one button to create random explosions.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Many parodies of known CAWs in New-WWE.
• One-Winged Angel: A fairly regular occurrence in fantasy feds. SMF is especially infamous for this, having had several of its wrestlers turn into Incredible Hulk-esque monsters or Super Saiyans.
• Series Mascot: Jason Voorhees for NODQ CAW, Ami Mizuno for NGW/VWF, Ronald McDonald for SMF, Spider-Man for SCAW, Danny Jackpot for everything...
• Serious Business: Oh, where to begin?
• Small Name, Big Ego: Too many to count.
• Take That!: XGWL's owner had been given abuse by a YouTube user called Dratsab over the Internet. His response was to put Dratsab in his league and have his Author Avatar character buried him into the ground, completely destroying him in every match.
  • Happens fairly often in CAW, usually when a CAW fed owner has legitimate issues with another fed owner/fan/community member. The oldest example would be ACWL's owner putting the administrator of the No DQ forum on the roster as an ultra heel who frequently received overly long beatdowns.
• Took a Level in Badass: Connor Wine started out in the camcorder league ACW, being one of many mocked in UMAD. Then he got picked up by New-WWE in Season 3 during a talent initiative and would later became a New-WWE Triple Crown champion.
• Trolling Creator: Several have played with this trope, but its mostly seen at the Something Cawful end of the community.

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