A New Beginning
About 2 or 3 years had pasted since my M.U.S.C.L.E.'s darkest day. I was talking with a co-worker of mine Jason Laurel (we called him "Hardy"), when the subject of M.U.S.C.L.E. had popped up. He said he had about five at home and would bring them in to work the next day. That was the day my passion for M.U.S.C.L.E. was reignited. For the next 6 or 7 years I had re-adopted M.U.S.C.L.E. as a casual hobby, never going out of my way to get them, but asking my friends and co-workers from time to time and glancing around toy shows while searching for old Star Wars figures. Eventually my collection grew from 5 to about 170 (not counting doubles). Then I got access to the internet. After weeks of occasional M.U.S.C.L.E. searches, I finally came across Darrin Vindiola's "M.U.S.C.L.E. Preservation Society". After looking through the pics, history and links, I was immediately inspired to make my own M.U.S.C.L.E. website. With my knowledge of HTML, a box of paints, and a few steps into the back of my memory, "M.U.S.C.L.E. Championship Wrestling" was born.

Primitive Technology & Amateur Skills
There were only three other M.U.S.C.L.E. websites at the time. Like most websites today, they dealt with history, collecting and personal collections of the hobby. I knew I had something different to offer, something unique and wanted to show it off. So I busted out the paints and threw a few wrestlers together. Most were rehashes of old characters from the MMW days and a couple “stone” guys just to fill up the roster (they were a quick and easy paint job). My artistic skills were still intact, but my web and graphic skills were lacking quite a bit at this point. Though I had been dabbling in HTML for a while, MCW was actually the first real website I had posted. Like most amateur websites at the time, everything was just centered on a black background. My original logo wasn’t much to look at either. It was like a bad neon beer sign. Then there were the pics, they were horrendous! We weren’t quite in the age of digital cameras yet, so I had to use my 35mm… and it didn’t even have Macro mode. I took pictures of my little wrestlers, which showed up as mere specks in the photos. I didn’t have a scanner so I had to go to a friend’s house and use his. He scanned them but I needed them bigger. He sized them up… “Bigger” I said. He sized them up some more…”No, bigger Bill”. Once again, “BIGGER!!!”. He thought I was a dork. I didn’t even know I could have just placed the M.U.S.C.L.E. straight on the scanner with brilliant results till later on. So I took the scans home on a floppy disk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk - for those of you not familiar with ancient storage devices) and arranged them on my site. They were small, they were grainy… but it was enough. I only had about twelve painted M.U.S.C.L.E. at the time of launch. They were each listed with nothing more than a name and a brief background comment. A far cry from the detail, personalities and history they have now… but it was enough.

Lift Off into the World Wide Web
On October 18th, 1997 I launched M.U.S.C.L.E. Championship Wrestling. My site opened to rave reviews!…. from the owners of the other three sites at least. It took a while for MCW to catch on. Actually, it took a while before any of our sites caught on. At the time, the MPS was the center hub of very small hobby still in it’s infancy. Since the MPS topped the search engines for M.U.S.C.L.E., we pretty much relied on the MPS to send traffic to our sites via links, or I did at least. Over time our sites would work together and feed off each other. Each of us had our own unique contribution to M.U.S.C.L.E. on the web. Tim Drage had extensive information about the Japanese origins of M.U.S.C.L.E. at the time, Pat Gresham had an immense collection that really gave people hope and enthusiasm for collecting, Darrin Vindiola had the M.U.S.C.L.E. Preservation Society which over all gave history, collecting tips and even an on-line petition for the re-release of the toy line. The MPS name alone made you want to be a part of the action, and then MCW brought a splash of fun to the hobby. MCW would eventually be what many considered the best “looking” M.U.S.C.L.E. site. People were impressed with my HTML skills and even my graphics… that is till “Nathan’s MUSCLE Page” came along (more on that below). Collectively we would gather a good number of M.U.S.C.L.E. enthusiasts and few wrestling fans on my part. Darrin coined us M.U.S.C.L.E. collectors “M.U.S.C.L.E.-Heads”. It wasn’t long before my site grew more structured, had nice clean scans of the wrestlers and other sections such as weekly news reports, pay-per-view events and later on the infamous “Nasty Show”. MCW eventually grew quite a following… I’d like to think so at least.

Evolution
What started out as just twelve wrestlers with names to put to the faces grew to a roster of nearly a hundred wrestlers with complete backgrounds, MCW and pre-MCW history and on-going exploits in and outside of the ring. The main attraction of MCW was the roster of course. People loved seeing M.U.S.C.L.E. in a world of vibrant colors. I good paint job really brought them out into a 3-dimensional world. I’m not sure where my knack for painting miniatures came from, thought I did win a “Best Artist” award back in 2nd grade. I had painted some medieval style pewters a few years earlier so I’m familiar with all the fancy techniques of dry brush, washing etc.. But M.U.S.C.L.E., being as cartoony as they are, I thought best to skip those type of details for the most part and just let the colors stand out on there own. I knew the roster was the main reason people came to my site and I knew that announcing new wrestlers coming soon would keep them coming back. So I tried to have an average of at least 10 new painted M.U.S.C.L.E. to unveil every month.

Along with the roster updates, I started a section called “News & Rumors” where Mean Eugene would report the latest happenings in MCW from his news desk (see News & Rumors archive). This kept MCW’s few hardcore fans happy at least. It brought a lot more depth to the characters and helped fans of my site really get into the feel of my little wrestling promotion. That was my goal after all, to present MCW as a true wrestling promotion. There were a couple personal areas of my site, but whatever happened on stage was always presented as part of “the show”. I even incorporated myself into the story lines as the Vince McMahon of MCW and was always addressed as “Mr. Radniecki” or “President of MCW”. Though I was never actually seen, my character had to lay down the law once in a while, which was then delivered through Commissioner Bull who served as my on-screen counter part. Eugene didn’t report as much of the actual wrestling matches as he did the drama surrounding them. Most matches, let’s say that were promoted in my pay-per-views, usually stemmed from incidents that happened anywhere from in the ring, to the locker rooms, to the local Chuck E. Cheese down the street. Some stories were about SW26 filing lawsuits against MCW, while others where reported just to point out the fact that Hulk and Hooligan Hogan still live with their parents and even shared a bunk bed. Some of the stories got a little cuckoo as the months pasted. I just wanted to get all my characters into the mix. But what can you really write about an unpredictable island savage that enjoys sucking on coconuts? “Ooga Booga’s at it again! He’s running wild backstage sucking on people’s foreheads!”…. well, that was Eugene’s job and he was damn good at it!

Our first pay-per-view event was just three months after MCW’s launch and it’s was appropriately titled “M.U.S.C.L.E.-Mania”, after the grand daddy of wrestling pay-per-views “WrestleMania” of course. I wish I had the mad Photoshop skills that Nathan had to turn out some real wrestling poses, but the wrestlers basically just kind of leaned on each other and let your imagination to the rest. I did revert to some old special effects techniques from the M.U.S.C.L.E. movies 10 years prior using a reckless fishing line for some aerial maneuvers. Though my main concern was showing an actual audience, or in this case, hiding the audience. Rather then line up a few rows of unpainted M.U.S.C.L.E., I decided to go black and use lighting effects to simulate flashbulbs. That seems to hide the audience yet give a look as if they’re still there. Eh…it worked for me at least. I only got two of the four+ pay-per-views I had planned out. The fun part was hyping the pay-per-views. Letting the wrestlers trash talk to each other. It wasn’t too much fun actually putting the pay-per-views together and the pay-offs weren’t that satisfying to me personally. I guess it was just one of those things I wish I could have done better but couldn’t at the time. Even now I’m considering just offering Nathan some money to put a pay-per-view together for me.

“My” Little Creations
I decided on the name of my little M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling fed as a play on World Championship Wrestling (WCW), but only cause the M.U.S.C.L.E. Wrestling Federation had already been claimed by someone else, however I don’t think that guy ever had a website. But the MWF name had been claimed and as a fellow wrestling promoter, I had to respect that. Later on another guy would claim the MWF name and did put up a website of some sort, but not much of one at least and there was never any evidence of any M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling actually going on there. I later blasted him for it on my links page (it was all part of the show for those of you who might have thought I was just an uptight jerk for doing so).

Ten years have past since my friends and first put together Muscle Man Wrestling. It was 1997 and the days of The Ultimate Warrior and Hulkamania have long gone. Now wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, Degeneration X and the nWo ruled the wrestling world and of course I was going to capitalize on that. I love the theatrics and drama of pro-wrestling, but my true love of wrestling would lie in my respect and admiration of a no-nonsense, technically sound wrestler by the name of Bret Hart. M.U.S.C.L.E. #1 was my choice to my favorite wrestler and like Bret, he exuded the look of a champion… and a Championship belt around his waist didn’t hurt either. But he had the stance and outfit for Bret Hart as well. But M.U.S.C.L.E. #1 had a very defined history and characteristics back in MMW that I just couldn’t shake. His original name was “Ernest” of the Ernest & Julio Gallo tag-team. So I compromised and named him “Bret Gallo” and even built a “Gallo Foundation” around him and they are my pride and joy, the poster boys for MCW. One thing I did want to stay away from this time around was giving my M.U.S.C.L.E. parodies the actually names of pro-wrestlers, so I had guys like Bret Gallo, Stone Cold Beez, Bam Bam Bazooka, Hooligan Hogan etc.. Some were original, others like Beez (Sean came up with that one???) came from their old MMW names. Like I said, it’s just hard for me to shake their former characters off. Every M.U.S.C.L.E. that made an impact in MCW or MMW has been etched in my brain as that character and that character only. I know visitors to my site could care less, but it’s important to me to keep that continuity.

My Stone Cold parody went to M.U.S.C.L.E. #65 (the skinny stone guy) or, the MMW wrestler formerly known as Beez. He was a little scrawny to be mouthing off to everyone like Austin does, but he was bald, he kind of looked like Austin and most important, he was made of stone (though he is ice now). I know I had spent way too much time posting up interviews of Stone Cold Beez and Bret Gallo during there feud. People were probably bored to death of it, but I was completely immersed in it. I would literally sit in front of my computer and do the actual voices of Austin and Hart as I typed it (I’m pretty good at voices having played so much Star Wars as a kid. I’m hoping to post some MCW interviews on YouTube some day soon).

True to life, my nWo parody dubbed the “mWo: M.U.S.C.L.E. World Order” grew a life of it’s own. The mWo mimicked just about every move the real nWo made, from the initial Hogan/Outsiders invasion angle (done with Hooligan Hogan and the Blade Runners) to having there own mWo website. However, one thing they never took over (which was their prime directive) were the Championships, that was always reserved for the Gallos.

Maybe there wasn’t too much character originality in MCW on my part. With the exception of the Stone Cold, Hart Foundation and DX/nWo parodies above, which I felt were necessary to keep up with the current trend in wrestling at the time, most of the non-parodies were either straight ports of MMW originals, originals that were expanded upon or originals with a twist. For instance, Lamont the Homeless Pharaoh started out as Lamont the Homeless Pimp, Exotic Adrian now has a life partner and Duggan (modeled after the somewhat dopey Hacksaw Jim Duggan) became Dougy DuChamp. The few MCW originals consist of guys like Peck Peck, who was originally cast in MMW as Matilda the Mutt of the British Bulldogs, Ooga Booga who’s loosely based one a couple of actual people I’ve come across in life (human, not primate) and X-Calibur of which we were all just too intimidated to paint ten years earlier. Most of them clicked, some were duds. One time I even got hate-mail about Scaredy Bear. This guy just had to voice his opinion to me about how he hated the Scaredy Bear character… what a freakin’ weirdo right? Well, I didn’t take offense to it because Scaredy Bear was actually one of Greg’s creations. But give Greg a break! He was only 10 years old at the time!

The Nasty Show
I wasn't expecting to give Lester his own chapter in MCW history, but when I went on the forums upon rebuilding MCW for 2007, apparently Lester is what people remembered most about MCW... and I don't know if that's a good thing. The Lester character did originate back in 1987 in MMW, though he didn't have a name. Well, he did have a name, it was Elizabeth II, let me explain. Back in '87, M.U.S.C.L.E. #36 (the skinny skeletal guy) served many purposes in MMW. He was a M.U.S.C.L.E. version of The Mouth of the South Jimmy Hart, he was chopped up and strung together as a corpse in my Texas Chainsaw Massacre faction and he was most prominently portrayed as The Macho Man's manager Miss Elizabeth in a shiny gold dress. When we decided to do a M.U.S.C.L.E. version of the movie The Exorcist, #36: Miss Elizabeth version was cast in the title role of the innocent little girl who gets possessed by the Devil. Well, we did need someone to fill in for the little girl's demonic state, someone vile, disgusting, perverted... Lester more than fit the bill. Come to think of it, Lester (or Elizabeth II) was created before this by my friend Tim in his attempt to poke fun of my Miss Elizabeth M.U.S.C.L.E.. Tim gave him nipples on all three sets of "breasts" he apparently had and topped it off with a big ol' patch of pubic hair and named him Elizabeth II. So in essence, Lester started out as a woman. But it was the Exorcist movie that Lester truly shined. He swore a mouthful, threw up 1000 Island dressing, he even did the nasty with a crucifix. Lester was a bad man, he was a very bad man!

When MCW came around in '97, I knew I had to bring back that nasty naked M.U.S.C.L.E. in some form. I wanted to keep my site somewhat kid friendly, so I didn't think the six breasts and vagina would fly. I painted Lester just how he was 10 years before with the juicy red lips and minus a couple sets of nipples and the pubes. Maybe due to his past characteristics, in my mind he was always a perverse sicko. The name Lester was a natural fit as in "Lester the Molester" of course. The "Nasty Naked" part just popped in my head and the whole name just struck me funny. I immediately got the idea to paste a censor bar over his mid-region to go with the gimmick. Everyone new he was just built like a Ken doll down there but I still got plenty of email comments on him wondering what was under the censor. I knew I was on to something good so I got this wild idea. Well, it wasn't that wild cause he had already had female genitalia at one point. But it was something no one expected. With a snip of another M.U.S.C.L.E.'s finger and a pair of balls off someone's head I think, Lester was a man... Oh, he was a man baby! I began claiming that Lester really had a penis. Of course, no one believed me and thought I was just playing up the censor sign. So I really wanted to build this up. What better way then to have little Eugene with a flashlight, lead you through a dark alley to a hole in the wall. Inside were a few of my other questionable M.U.S.C.L.E. characters standing around leering at Lester, who seemed to be propped up on a pedestal as if he were on display. There he was in all his naked glory for the whole world to see. M.U.S.C.L.E. fans were shocked! And some of those who witnessed it are still haunted by the memory to this day.

Assault on Bandia
Contrary to what you may have read on the forums, I did not march into the Bandai corporate office and demand that they re-release the M.U.S.C.L.E. toy line (Thanks Kevin! Though I appreciate that I am the subject of such embellishment, that’s how legends are born). If Darrin were here to do that, I would have had his back. But I wasn’t one to come up with a convincing sales pitch and would feel completely out of place in a room full of suits and ties (at least that’s how I imagined it back then). Truth is, I was driving to my parent’s house in Cypress, CA one day when I noticed the Bandia building. I don’t know how long it had been there, but there it was! I think I went home and bragged about it that night to Darrin and Pat. So I got another crazy idea. I had a wrestling faction called the Dingo Pack. They were an extension of the mWo but were more a parody of DX, and just like DX tried to invade WCW, I did and angle where the Dingo Pack invaded Bandai. But all I did was take a few pictures of the Bandai building from afar and edited in my Dingo Pack as if they were heading over to the Bandia building to raise some hell. I really never got closer than 100 yards to it.

From the Inspired to the Inspiring
Like a lot of us at the time, it was Darrin and his MPS that first inspired me to put up a M.U.S.C.L.E. site of my own. So I was a little surprised at some of the feedback I got. I knew MCW had it’s niche in the M.U.S.C.L.E. world, but a few emails I had received took me by surprise. Actually, a lot of us had already exchanged physical addresses having traded M.U.S.C.L.E., so this first one came via postal mail. It was a large manila envelope from Kevin Mayle. Inside were three color illustrations of a few of my wrestlers, most notably, the Gallo Foundation. Kevin wasn’t just a little kid who drew stick figures on notebook paper (no offense to you little kids who draw stick figures on notebook paper), he was a true artist. Kevin went on to produce dozens if not hundreds of M.U.S.C.L.E. drawings and artwork for the MPS and other various M.U.S.C.L.E. collectors. I’m proud to say that MCW is what inspired Kevin to doodle down some M.U.S.C.L.E. in the first place.

Another artist by the name of Todd Huffman had also sent me a couple MCW inspired illustrations. The first was his vision of “Lamont the Homeless Pharaoh”. Now, what I really liked about Todd is that he took one of what some might consider a lesser creation of mine and ran with it. I always thought my Lamont idea was quite clever, but he really epitomized it with his drawing. He later sent me a graphic art piece of Lester getting his penis rung through The Wringer, clearly exploiting the taboos of MCW and I love it!

Then there was Chad Blackford and Dave Woodrum. These two clowns (I say that in a loving way) didn’t know each other, but they were on the same page. They both approached me with ideas of posting up their own painted M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling websites. Yes, Chad and Dave were truly inspired by my site. But I think their story of inspiration is more fitting in the following section….

The Competition
I never wanted to be competitive with my site. I offered something entirely unique and thought I’d never have to worry about that. The only sign of competitiveness that I ever really expressed was when I would compare MCW’s web counter to Darrin’s MPS web counter. I would check them on a weekly basis, sometimes nightly if I was bored, and noticed his site always got at least 20 more hits than mine. Not that I was an egomaniac and thought MCW was the new God of all M.U.S.C.L.E. sites, but MCW would occasionally top the search engines for M.U.S.C.L.E. and I just knew my site was pretty bad ass at the time. It took a while before I realized that the bulk of hits I was getting were all coming from my link on the MPS site…duh!

When “Nathan’s M.U.S.C.L.E. Page” hit the web, I was in awe. He basically took a M.U.S.C.L.E. 4-pack and designed a whole website around it. Although his first efforts pale in comparison to what you see now on his site, it was still head and shoulders above the rest. It was beautiful, original and just plain fun. My favorite feature on his site was the M.U.S.C.L.E. of the Week. He too brought his M.U.S.C.L.E. to life with character, color and animation. While many came to my site to get their M.U.S.C.L.E. entertainment fix, Nathan’s was the site I went to for fun. Some people asked if I felt threatened by Nathan’s site… no, I didn’t. Sure, maybe I lost the title of best looking M.U.S.C.L.E. site, but I was never that good at web design, just better than the rest of the amateurs at the time I guess. The heart of my site was painted M.U.S.C.L.E. and wrestling. Nathan never intruded on either of those. In fact, I would go on promote Nathan’s site as my favorite M.U.S.C.L.E. site on my home page. My only regret is that I think I may have hurt Darrin’s feeling in doing so. (Nothing personal Darrin, the MPS will always be first and foremost in my heart)

Then I got the email that made turned my heart to stone and drop to my stomach. I young, ambitious, aspiring M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling promoter by the name of Chad Blackford approached me with the idea of a rival M.U.S.C.L.E. wresting promotion. They say competition brings out the best in people, but honestly, my first instinct was to cower in fear. What if this guy had a steadier hand than I? What if he had legitimate skills in graphic design? What if he had more time and resources to apply to his site? Oh, I could only imagine the worst! So my immediate reaction was to chop this snake off at the head. I replied to Chad with something to the effect of… “Sorry, but I’m very protective of my site and wouldn’t want anyone else capitalizing on the originality of it blah blah blah…” Chad took it with understanding and that was that. Well, I sat on it for about a week. Chad didn’t have to ask permission from me. I knew a lot of other M.U.S.C.L.E.-Heads at the time who wouldn’t have given me that courtesy. Chad had given me that respect and I had basically just slammed the door in his face. So I contacted Chad and kind of got a feel for what he had in mind. But more importantly, I got a sense that he was not out to out-do me. Soon after he launched “Extreme M.U.S.C.L.E. Wrestling”, which was the M.U.S.C.L.E. version of ECW and like our real life counterparts, Chad’s EMW was to MCW as ECW was to the WWF/WCW. It was a second rate M.U.S.C.L.E. promotion and that’s the way Chad ran it, with pride. We had a friendly rivalry through words on our websites. We even did a little cross-promoting and he had sent one of his top wrestlers to MCW for a brief run. Chad and I had actually met on a couple of occasions because we only lived a couple hours away from each other. We even went to a live WWF event together at his invite. Chad became a good friend and in the end I had an absolute blast having EMW around.

A while later another guy by the name of Dave Woodrum brought to my attention of his plans for a M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling promotion called the M.U.S.C.L.E. Wrestling League or MWL. After the fun I had with EMW, I was open to anything. He didn’t have the same “rivalry” plans that Chad had, Dave just wanted to do his own thing. Again I didn’t consider the MWL a threat because Dave also promoted his site as a second rate promotion, or “more of your ‘backwater cable channel owned’ wrestling league" or “Something that you would see late at night while everyone else is asleep” as he called it. I’ve already spoke with Dave and he has no intentions of bringing the MWL back, though a portion of Dave’s old site still exists here: http://members.tripod.com/~DaveWoodrum/pager1.htm

The Fall of MCW
MCW had a good run over about a two year period, a damn good run. But all good things must come to an end and sometimes a new baby can drain the life out of you. My son, Cameron Jedi Radniecki, was born a couple years after I launched MCW so my priorities had to change. Gone were the weekly news reports, the monthly roster additions and the quarterly pay-per-views. In it’s place were sleepless nights and diapers full of crap. Not a very fair exchange for one of my favorite passions, but I love my son none the less. Maybe I should have left something up all these years, but I was in the midst of a major update and never followed through. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so MCW at anything less than 75% just drives me nuts. I chose to take MCW down in the end with the intent of bringing it back some day. Maybe it was a mistake and the fact that very few people that were around back then are still around now to talk about it, and even those memories have faded a bit, MCW had lost a legacy that should have sustained in the halls of internet M.U.S.C.L.E. fame. I do thank the MPS and the few older M.U.S.C.L.E. sites that left the old MCW link up with description of “…and hopefully it’ll be back some day”…and sometimes your hopes and dreams do come true (sorry, that was just plain corny).

Rising from the Ashes
Ten years to the day with some motivational help of resident M.U.S.C.L.E. artist Kevin Mayle and MPS founder Darrin Vindiola, I bring MCW back to the World Wide Web. Not so much in hopes of regaining the glory MCW once had back in the day, but just to reclaim our rightful place in M.U.S.C.L.E. history on the web. MCW was there in the beginning riding the coattails of the MPS and we definitely established our own little niche in the hobby. We also come back in hopes entertaining the new generation of M.U.S.C.L.E. enthusiasts as well as the old. MCW is a place to take a step away from the actual collection process of our hobby and look at our little friends as personalities rather than numbers. So buy your ticket, bring your Beez 3:16 sign, take a seat in the front row and have a good time!