2001 - The Region Develops

Things didn't look too bright for the Scandinavian region at the start of 2001. Granted, we had couple of more achieved managers, but the general talent pool was somewhat slim. Some of the early successful managers, such as Flermoen and foxxx had retired and PityPart was the only active WT winner. Site of Scandinavia had started late 2000 and things were getting better but the results just weren't there. We saw some light at the end of the tunnel when Micsture won his first wt with Herrman Okej January 12th, but that was pretty much it for the first couple of months.

Scandinavian rankings looked like this at the start of the year, and yes, that is total earnings in both regionals and contenders combined.

The introduction of SoS brought a lot of life to our region. Many of the veterans of today were newbies back then and we started to discuss about tactics and the state of our region in general. Some of the discussions seem hilarious given the current situation. For example we discussed about what goals we had in the game and here are some pearls:

Anfield: I myself have recently completed my first to goals: To reach the top 50 (region) before the end of 2000 and have a regional champ.

Flat Out: I would also like to get a world title shot for one
of my better contenders.. dream on..

Les Miserables: My first goal at the moment is to get 10 regional
champs.

We also started the now famous Scandinavian awards during January. The first committee consisted of HRulez, punch, USBG (Mythology), Les Miserables, Anfield Road and Copenhagen Pro Boxing. There was some discussion about the awards we should hand, Manager, Fighter and Up'n'commer of the month were the first ones, followed by Smack talker award after couple of months. We also thought about upset of the month award, but it never realized.

The first tournament in Scandinavia was the Finnkampen between Finland (Flat Out, Gazza's Gang and Mixu's Punchline) and Sweden (Anfield Road, Les Miserables and Jerry Springer's Draftshow, who didn't actually fight a single fight..;)) during February and March. The tournament was very tight, Finland leading marginally before the final week, only to be annihilated by the Sweden's strong finish. The final score was 38-28 to Sweden.

After a couple of month Scandinavia really started to show its strength. First there was the bizarre incident of March 10th. Blizzard's Ruby Blizzard was fighting Ramteid for the world title. Blizzard won the fight with a brilliant performance, but there had been something wrong with the simulator and Bruce ran the fights again about an hour later. The fight went pretty much the same way, although this time it finished a draw. Then there was some discussion that people had ran their simulations with the screwed up engine and Bruce decided to run the fights for the third time, this time leaving people time to prepare again. Blizzard announced that he won't be changing his fp and Ramteid took advantage of that and won the third fight.

After that things started to happen rapidly. PityPart returned to the world scene by winning 9 world titles with Fender Bender and Cesky Dub during late march to may. I, Flat Out, won my first wt with Peo -61, after losing my first wt shot two weeks earlier, at May the 5th, also losing 5 wt fights with Ragga Onepack in weeks 74-81. Slap Me Hard challenged Prodigal for the jr.fly title at week 75 but lost at a hefty ap disadvantage. Les Miserables also had two wt shots with Tally Hoo, but didn't manage to win the big one.

There had been ongoing argument about which regions were the toughest ones pretty much from the beginning of WeBL. The WeBL bad boy, Trafford, came up with the idea to settle the dispute once and for all with having a regional tournament with the best managers representing their regions. This tournament was to be known as WeBL Olympics. Dave Black pretty soon finalized the format and the discussion of the teams started in each region. Anfield Road had been actively involved in the discussion from day one was the obvious choice for our captain. The organizing process wasn't very structured back then, we discussed about the possible team for couple of weeks and Anfield finalized the team without too much arguing. The final team was: Anfield Road, PityPart, Slaughterhouse, Les Miserables, foxxx, punch, Umea West Side and Flat Out.

We weren't given too much chance in the tournament, we were rated well at the bottom half of the team. At the time US Pac with names such as Prodigal, Whiskeycrow and Jock's was considered a huge favourite with most opposition coming from Canada East. We had a very young and hungry team and we felt that we could really make our mark. The tournament started very well with 6 out of 8 winning their first fights and continued well with 4 making it into the final four and 3 to the finals. The tournament was a huge success story, we certainly surprised everyone else and possibly even ourselves. The infamous Walla Walla Hoo cheer was born and at the end Les Miserables and Slaughterhouse won a silver and foxxx got the gold in feathers. That tournament finally changed the way Scandinavia was considered in the world of WeBL, we had evolved from a common laughingstock to a true powerhouse.

There were also many notable new gyms starting at about that time. First there was the Aggerud trio, DRoA, AZE and AFC, closely followed by Vinterviken and Hands of Vecna. These guys improved very fast and started to really bother the old guys during the summer months. But, there was this certain newbie who seemed to be even more talented with his fp writing, though maybe a bit predictable at times. He was this mega-gym called Mr. Roboto. He puzzled us for quite a while, until he was finally revealed to be no-one else than the king of virtual boxing himself, Peekaboo, who had been running his fighters on autopilot, still racking up a formidable record with win% of about 80.

Another great success-story of the first half of the year was Umea West Side. He had been one of the best managers of Scandinavia during 2000, but really developed into class of his own during the first few months of 2001. He won his first wt's with Herb Reichert at weeks 81,82,83, but retired very soon after that. The fact that people even outside of Scandinavia still rate him as one of the best managers of all time tells something about his skills even when he had under 100 contender fights all together. However, there is still a little bit more to this story later on.

The world of WeBL experienced the biggest change of its history as of yet at the start of July. The engine was changed radically, the punches landed formula was changed with the so-called speed hack and the introduction of jabbing bonus making tactics with agg > pow viable really for the first time. This made a huge difference to the way the game was played, dancers got a massive boost and the old-school sluggers got the raw end of the deal. This rule change instantly mad an impact to the rankings with a lot of dancer managers moving up in the pecking order. Danceholic from Flat Out instantly took advantage of the rule chances and went on to win 8 world titles from mid-July to the end of September. The other guy instantly gaining from the changes was St Andrews from Gazza's Gang, arguably the most unfortunate fighter in Scandinavian history. He fought for the world title 8 times during the latter part of 2001 and once in early 2002. In 7 of these occasions he was fighting at ap disadvantage, his opponents being African Monk before the rule changes and after that Jock's and Peekaboo. Finally he managed to get 3 draws and 5 losses and never actually got the title.

During late summer a new gym emerged whose fighters seemed to be perfectly designed for the new rules, Black Gate. His fighters were really tall, annoying sissies, who still possessed just enough power to prevent his opponents being too reckless with allout. In couple of months he managed to rack up a record of 378-27-8 and unveiling himself as Umea West Side.

The autumn months were good time for Scandinavia. First off foxxx's Black Knight I challenged the famous Scandinavian killer Ray Tarded from Jock's for the welterweight title at week 93, but sadly lost. Then another Flat Out dancer took advantage of the new rules and won the middleweight world title at week 96 and defended his title in arguably Scandinavian fight of the year against the future lengend David Ellis from Anfield Road. It had been over a year since two Scandinavian fighters faced each others in world title fight, in fact this was the first time since the beginning of the region. Ellis was much younger of the two and was considered a favourite by many. The fight itself was minor disappointment, Badass winning the fight by a close decision after furious jabbing war. This fight also marked the beginning of the now infamous Badass family.

David Ellis had fought for the title couple of times already, and people started to get sceptical about his chances to win the big one. Some people thought he might've had flaws in his design and encouraged Anfield to scrap him. Luckily Anfield kept fighting with him and finally won his first world title against Swinging Saints at week 103, and kept going winning total of 6 titles during the year. As we all know, this wasn't the end of Ellis and he went on to become the most successful fighter Scandinavia has produced until very recently.

The other notable world title winner of latter part of the year was Sebastian Smart (Flat Out), who against all odds won the heavyweight world title against Belly Acres at week 100 becoming the first ever 30 rated fighter in the history. Smart was an oddity in the heavyweight scene weighing in at only 227 pounds and being fairly weak in the division ruled by 300 pound ko artists. Smart defended his title the following week before sliding into brutal losing streak and retiring shortly after. The other notable thing about Smart was that he managed to fight 63 times before getting knocked out by Affordable from Shooter.

By the end of the year Scandinavia had transformed from one of the weakest and smallest regions into a true powerhouse producing world title contenders in a weekly basis. The gyms who had started the year as newbies had developed into wolds class managers, and the new guys like DroA had just started to make their mark in contender rankings. Yet the was more to come, the late months of 2001 also marked the beginning of few future stars, first Martins Average Fighters, followed by No Leaf Clover and finally tnt in December.