The Board

[winner3]

The following is a collection of characters that are given the power to book/influence matches and careers at LAW. Their decisions can be overturned by CEO/General Manager Dan DeFranco, but each member of the board functionally serves as a General Manager in his absence at LAW matches and events. Full details here.

Author's note: These characters can serve as authority figures of LAW for stories/threads. Unlike the LAW Magazine Writers Page, this page is not open to everyone. I think logistics and canonicity would get kinda hectic if it was. I tried hard to think of some rule set that would work for people being able to add characters that could work in a managerial capacity but I ultimately couldn't hash out anything that I thought was fair to everyone. If you're passionate about creating such a character, I guess message/talk to me about it and I'll let you know if I can approve them and let you add them here.

[winner3]

Occupation: Founder, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Board, and General Manager of LAW

Basic Info:
Age: 39
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Blonde
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 182 lbs
Alignment: Face-leaning
Entrance Music:

Appearance



Personality: Dan makes his best effort to be reserved, composed, and professional. But he's firm when he feels the need to speak up and take action. Dan is a man most would describe as insightful and observant. He takes care to play things close to the chest and to maintain his civility and professionalism wherever possible. Because of this, Dan is difficult to read at times. The truth is that DeFranco is a fan at heart. He genuinely wants the best for his company, for the people that work there, and for the fans.

As General Manager, DeFranco does what he can to remain impartial and behind the scenes. Contrary to other head honchos in other promotions, he only involves himself on-screen where and when he feels it's necessary, or if he feels his hand is forced. Dan commits himself to the growth and prosperity of LAW as a brand and as a frontier for wrestling in pretty much all forms. And his decisions, hirings, and events tend to reflect this.


History: Dan comes from a long line of successful business folks. With a well-off family and a natural affinity for finances and logistics, he finished university a few years early. DeFranco was able to get a lot of firsthand experience shadowing executives in the family and receiving their mentorship. His family was big on the idea that whatever line of business one pursues, it should be something they're invested in on more than just a material level. Dan had been a wrestling fan for as long as he could remember. His father and some of his relatives were casual fans themselves. When it came to light that the young man genuinely wanted to create a successful wrestling brand and promotion, much of his family chuckled and scratched their heads but they were all very supportive.

Throughout his late twenties, Dan leaned on his family connections and finances to get the inside scoop on the inner working of many wrestling promotions all around the world. He was able to make contact with various promoters, managers, wrestlers, and so on. Dan took his time studying the wrestling industry and honing his vision for the company he would bring to life someday. After years of amassing the resources, the staff, and the skills he needed to make sure that all the overhead was accounted for the red tape would be dealt with, DeFranco launched LAW with its headquarters based in Japan. And even he couldn't have imagined that it would have blown up into the success that it is in the present day

After years of operating LAW and signing deals with various business partners (arenas, apparel, fitness, other wrestling promotions, etc.), LAW had finally grown to the point where the company's reach would extend far beyond Japan. Though the company's headquarters is still based there, LAW now works with gyms, community/convention centers, arenas, and more all around the world. DeFranco credits this to the wealth of talent and role models on the roster, as well as the quality wrestling content the company has put out for years. But the truth is, without his spearheading and without his delegation and decision-making behind the scenes, LAW would never have become the global sensation that it is today.

He has pledged time and time again to continue doing his utmost to see to it that LAW continues to soar to new heights and cement itself as the greatest wrestling company of this era or any other.


Public Statement on his Vision for LAW: "The mission statement is a simple one: cement LAW in history as the best wrestling company with the best wrestlers, and grow the love of various types and styles of wrestling across any and all borders and mediums."

"I'm not interested in pushing myself out there. All I'm here to do is facilitate the great matches that our talent puts on, and to try and ensure that the integrity of the sport is preserved where it can be."

Major Contributions LAW

• The handling/booking of every major LAW PPV to date and the main events therein, including LAW Apex, We Are LAW's 1-6, Fight The LAW's 1 & 2, LAW Of The Jungle, Martial LAW, Queen of The Ring, and the Inaugural Championship Tourneys for all 3 weight classes

• The introduction/handling of the Openweight, Heavyweight, Middleweight, Lightweight, and Tag Team Championships

• It is thanks to his efforts that LAW has expanded far beyond Japan and is now recognized as the premiere wrestling promotion in major cities all around the world

• The creation of "The Board" and the delegation of their roles and responsibilities as managers at LAW

• Has had a hand in signing most upper-card and midcard LAW talent

• The introduction of The Young Lioness Program

• Makes every effort to ensure the physical and financial safety of his talent between their matches


Trivia:
- Despite his fair judgment and his professionalism, DeFranco absolutely does have favorites and tends to root for the faces behind the scenes

- Though DeFranco worked quite hard in the early days of LAW, in the present day things are so prosperous that he's delegated all the overhead to other company officials. These days, when he's not working on securing the next PPV or event venue or booking matches, he's mostly just loafing in one of his offices. This makes him hard to find because his usual whereabouts and business schedule are not public knowledge

- Despite the above point, he does work behind the scenes at big events and big matches to keep things running smoothly and on the off chance he may need to make a public appearance

- DeFranco actually hates menial tasks like paperwork and data entry, but he acknowledges that such things must be taken care of. He's always ready to offload these tasks onto assistants, employees, or anyone really.

[winner3]

Occupation: Head of Talent Relations and Assistant General Manager of LAW

Basic Info:
Age: 44
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Blonde
Height: 5’7”
Weight: 169 lbs
Alignment: Heel
Entrance Music:
Appearance (Business Attire)



Appearance (Match Attires)





Personality: Angie is a very calculating and very perceptive businesswoman. She owes this to having worked several years as both a wrestler and a general manager in her own wrestling promotion years back. While Angie does ultimately work for the benefit of the company, she is almost always pushing her own agenda, and she will not hesitate to ally with, or even use others to do so.

While Angie conducts herself like a professional when she's out and about, the truth is that she longs to be in control. Of her own life, of those around her, of LAW. If she can find a way to get someone or something to work as a means toward her ends, she absolutely will. Preferably without them knowing. This trait stems from her missing her glory days running/wrestling in her own promotion.

History - Spoilered for long

Angie was raised by a middle-class family in The States. As a child, she aspired to succeed in life financially so that she could retire wealthy and establish her family and future generations as a part of high society. While Angie excelled in her studies throughout her childhood and young adulthood, she found little success in the way of relationships.

She graduated with a master's degree in business administration and communications, and worked her way up the corporate ladder. But as she did, she earned a reputation for romantic exploits. She regularly made moves on men and women higher up the ladder, and to great effect. Angie saw more promotions at her fortune 500 employers in just a few short years than most women in her line of work would see in a decade or two, and quite a few more romantic partners and scandals as well.

By her late 20's, all of this had finally caught up to her. Before she could close in on a position as Executive Vice President and join the Board of Directors Proper, one of her scorned ex-lovers retaliated. Somehow, some way, one of her exes managed to find a sole straight man on the board, and after gathering accounts from many an employee, Angie was laid off without warning. Lawsuits ensued and as a result. Despite coming out of them many of the cases virtually unscathed, Angie was quickly blacklisted by several employers. Word had spread quickly. She was now unable to find work and unable to make progress toward her goal of getting rich and living lavishly.

Soured and depressed by the whole ordeal, Angie skipped town and moved to the midwest. In her efforts to find work, she happened upon a job listing for an administrative position that needed filling at a wrestling company: Pewter Wrestling Association. It was a mid-sized indie company with a surprisingly long history, run by an older gentleman by the name of Elliot Pewter. Having picked up the job at 28 years of age, it was the first time Angie was able to leverage her business skills to influence the marketing and the success of something like an athlete wrestling career. Defoe was surprised and how much influence and control she could exert here. When she was first hired, it was simple things that her decisions affected. How wrestlers and the PWA were depicted in ads, merchandise, how their target audience's perception was affected by their business strategies, how she could affect ticket sales, and in turn, wrestlers' paydays.

Angie fell deeply in love with the inner workings of the business. She took her time learning what makes a wrestling company successful and what makes a wrestler the complete package. By watching talent come and go, by seeing who had the makings of a star able to carry the promotion forward and who didn't, she became an expert in assessing prospective talent. This knowledge combined with her experience and talents in business operations saw her take over as head of both the marketing departments and the head of talent relations. A year or so after this promotion, the commissioner, Elliot Pewter, stepped down and retired, leaving his responsibilities to Angie Defoe, naming her his most capable employee.

This decision marked an age of racketeering and scheming for PWA. Now that she was the number one woman in charge, she began training. Not just as a wrestler, but also as a mastermind. She used bribes, blackmail, and every trick she learned to dateto rig things in her favor and push anyone willing to ally with her to the top. At age 31, she chose to enter the world of wrestling for the first time as a wrestler.

Despite getting such a late start in wrestling, Defoe was surprisingly quite capable for a woman of her age. Being skilled at assessing other wrestlers meant that she knew how to play to her own strengths better than anyone. But more importantly, she was quite capable of zeroing in on her foe's weaknesses. She worked her way up the lower card and even the mid-card easily. The entire time, the attraction of a GM that turned wrestler helped her become the most popular star in PWA and helped the company see more financial success than it ever had before. Angie was now richer than she ever had been in the past. But there was a problem: she hit a wall.

Wrestlers who either really came into their own or were naturally physically capable and fantastic wrestlers at a young age would come in and out of her indie promotion. Big fish often left small ponds. And Angie knew better than to tango with them. Instead, she relied on her other talents and on her connections. Angie greased palms and stabbed backs wherever and however she needed to in order to arrange victories in main events and matches at the top of the card. Angie knew she didn't have the raw skill, toughness, and ability to beat the very best wrestlers coming into and out of PWA. She masterminded her way to becoming champion of PWA at age 35 and went on to have a "reign of terror" spanning many years. She had a small cult following in the midwest. For fans that followed PWA, there was a novelty and a sense of intrigue behind this turn of events. The sight of a General Manager/businesswoman becoming a wrestling champion was very well-received at first. She exclusively employed underhanded tactics, cheating, outside interference, weapons, etc to retain and overcome match after match, month after month, year after year. After 5 straight years of dominance, PWA saw its first-ever meaningful decline in profits and viewership in its 6th year with Defoe as champion. In her own way, Angie loved her promotion, but even she acknowledged that her time in the sun there had run its course. She gave a public speech and retired as both wrestler and General Manager, citing that the growth and success of the promotion and younger stars was more important than her desire to be the center of attention. Angie's body of work and her contributions were acknowledged in many corners of the world. After seeing her retirement announcement, an entrepreneur by the name of Dan DeFranco contacted her with the promise of a lucrative work opportunity in an up-and-coming wrestling promotion: LAW.

At LAW, Angie's ability to garner the approvals, ordinances, permits, and means needed to get all the resources needed to keep things running has been invaluable. General Manager DeFranco values her for her skill set but detests her attitude toward booking wrestlers. While Angie is tremendous when it comes to appraising prospective talent and identifying progress in contracted talent, she believes that weaker wrestlers exist to be crushed under the strong. Behind the scenes, she works tirelessly to ensure that hapless wrestlers with jobber-level talent maintain their jobber status by being booked against wrestlers that can and will defeat them. Even with mid-card and upper-card talent, Angie exerts her influence. While Angie believes that the public will never tire of seeing jobbers squashed, she has an agenda to see certain successful face wreslters brought to heel. She's pitched many ideas, match-ups, and business decisions pushing this agenda to DeFranco, but she's consistently shot down. It's said that less than 10 percent of her proposals have earned his blessing - a testament to how much more she's longed to do in the public eye. But with LAW's rapid expansion and with the introduction of "The Board", Angie longs no longer.

During her time at LAW, Angie had lamented Dan's policy of keeping management as far from the action and the cameras as possible. But now that she can assert power in his absence, she can enact her many plans. If Angie can no longer be the focal point of her promotion...maybe she can control who is...

Public Statement on her Vision for LAW: "You know, DeFranco does love to tout those big, blockbuster matches, doesn't he? The five-star matches, the career-defining moments, the star-making performances. The main events...haha"

"Tell me, has this thought ever crossed your mind? If you look at the rest of the contests and the content we normally put out at this company, the taped shows, the dark matches, the weekly, regularly scheduled shows...for every single one of those highly-anticipated showdowns on pay-per-view or on the big events, you'll find two, maybe even three total mismatches in your typical LAW booking. Have you ever wondered why that might be? It's because of me~"

"It's because there's money in seeing these cute boys and girls worked over...laid out...put in rather..."compromising" positions as they take their lumps and suffer their defeats."

"You might not like what I'm saying, but that doesn't make it any less true. A lot of you wrestlers didn't get hired because you're good at this. Some of you were offered LAW contracts because you look good getting squashed inside and outside of the ring."

"Some of you get hired because you look good doing the squashing. Some of you are lucky enough to look good on either side of it. And it's my job to give the people what they want."

Major Contributions LAW

• Credited as the one to make the pitch behind the scenes for the introduction of the Loser Title

• Credited with the handling/booking/organizing of the Wildcard Tag Events (as well as the punishments for losing/refusing to work with the tag partner in these events)

• Has had a hand in signing a great deal of lower-card LAW talent and actively works to book them in matches to see them lose

• She has the most rejected ideas and proposals pitched to the board of directors by far


Trivia:
- Despite being willing to resort to less than savory means to get what she wants, Angie is a highly efficient office worker at all levels, and probably would have been very successful in the business world on her own merits if she was patient and didn't look for shortcuts

- Angie longs to indulge herself in wealth and riches, but she knows very little about how rich folks live and how they pass the time

- Unlike DeFranco, Angie is very open about who her favorites are (and about her not-so-favorites)

- In her mind, she can get the most mileage out of low-skilled/jobber wrestlers because people will always want to see them defeated. But fans can grow weary of established stars (some more than others)