NWO, 2001 Ah, yes, Darren Zirado. I think we all remember the kinds of juvenile promos that he put out match after match. And the reason being... because the handler was, in fact, a juvenile. As the past has shown, youngsters aren't exactly helpful to the NWO. Neil Stylez was about 13 when the federation chastized him, igniting am flurry of backstage problems with him. The Hardy Boyz' handler was about 10, and couldn't rp worth a lick. With the exception of Neil Stylez (since he actually showed talent) and Darren Zirado, youngsters get booted pretty quickly. So if Zirado stunk so much, why was he kept in? The answer is because of his relations with Gene Simmons/Michael Graves. Though never concretely said, every president after Shawn Bishop (Who hired Zirado... surprise, surprise) worried that if Zirado left, Simmons would follow. So Zirado's plague of anti-talent spread across the NWO like a wildfire. As a plus (even though I won't cover this in the tribute), Zirado proved to be a backstage terror like none other. He would try to contact you relentlessly, no matter how many hints you drop that you don't want to sift through his psychobabble. With a record amount of AIM screen names, Darren Zirado raised the bar in terms of annoyance. But like I said, the outside of character Zirado is a story for another time. He has a lot of trash on him as it is. First of all, you need to understand Darren Zirado's writing style. It was always my assumption that what Zirado would do with his promo is write it exeptionally, toss it through a language translator back and forth from Portuguese and English, and ta-da! A Zirado promo is born! Perhaps the only impressive thing about the roleplay is the backdrop, which is admittedly nice. And since Shawn Bishop was more angular than any other leader, he just glanced at an rp, and decided which one looked prettier. That's most likely how Darren Zirado would win his matches, eventually "earning" two reigns as Extreme Champion. As a character, Zirado was always under construction. In his first promo in the NWO, he was a gothic Edge-type wrestler. By the next day, Zirado had turned into a happy go-lucky guy with a figure like Scott Steiner. Sounds like a case of Vitamin S to me... Upon immediate arrival, Darren began receiving a number of different title shots. In each and every case, he blew it somehow. Labelled (at one point in time) as the "Undeniable Champion", he sure was denied championship for quite some time. After a while (specifically, once Shawn Bishop stepped down), Darren Zirado began to get depushed. He climbed down lower and lower from the ladder of success until he was nothing more than a jobber to the jobbers to the stars. It eventually got so bad that the NWO leaders began jobbing him out until he'd quit. This tactic was used often to not make the guy in charge look bad. Darren Zirado characteristically didn't get the hint, and just tried different approaches to roleplaying. Each one about the same quality as before (bad), and each one ending up with the same result (lose). In fact, Darren Zirado's win-loss record was so poor, he didn't even bother updating it on his promos. Trust me, every attempt Darren made to win was a really painful thing to see. Darren's last match in the Net World Order was near the end of its life, on a Friday Night Breakdown where he was to fight Rey Mysterio, Jr. Note that by this time, Shawn Bishop was back in power alongside Jordan O'Neil. Zirado gave this promo with Shawn Hall and him in a Wendy's. While not the best roleplay in the world, it was better than nothing, right?   Actually, no. It was worse than nothing, which is what Rey Mysterio, Jr. gave. Not only did Darren Zirado lose, but he was abruptly fired by Jordan O'Neil. This was probably the wisest thing Jordan had ever done in his life, but it was about 4 months too late. The NWO closed a short while later, making Jordan look like the worst leader in NWO history. Of course, I could think of someone a bit worse. You see, the difference between Jordan O'Neil and Shawn Bishop is that Jordan is the type of person who would fire a load of people at the expense of the roster. Shawn is the type of person who would hire someone as bad as Darren Zirado in the first place. So here's the lesson in all this, in case you aren't clear: If you're a youngster and want to e-fed REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAALLLL badly, wait a few years until you learn the english language. If you can't decide on what kind of character to use, don't metamorphicize him severely and by magic. Finally, if your promos look anything like this, just quit. Want to help Wrestlecrap? Register with PayPal or eBay Today!!