War Hawks Universe Mode

The War Hawks Entertainment Inc. Universe Mode is a WWE Universe Mode in WWE Video Games run by The War Hawks. In this Universe Mode the WWE is seperated into 3 Brands, each run by a War Hawks Member. The first brand is based on WWE's Monday Night Raw brand and is run by the Juggernaut. The second is based on WWE's SmackDown brand, which in real life is now on Tuesdays, but was moved to Fridays so fans could have a day off between shows. It is run by The Ironman. The third and final brand is run by Sherania, is run on Wednesdays, and is a brand of her own design called Leathal Wrestling Legends or LWL for short.

The Universe mode was concieved when, while playing the WWE 2K16 video game, Elliot had an idea to start one and live stream it. As opposed to running it all by himself like most streamers would, he turned to his wife Steph and his best friend TJ to run it with him. After deciding who would run which brand, the three of them decided to hold a draft to determine which of them would get what superstars. With them being able to trade later if one brand had a superstar one of the others wanted. Initially, it was not known what LWL would stand for as Steph had not come up with a definitive solution at the time. This was changed when a friend of Elliot's came up with the name they use now.

Establishment And Draft
It was decided that each brand would have a pay per view once a month to allow the superstars of each brand a chance to shine on their own, execpt for Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series. All of which would be tri-branded, much like WWE had done in real life during the initial brand split. Elliot and TJ decided to go with real life Pay Per View names for theirs, while Steph came up with unique names for hers to establish herself as different from the other two brands. To further this distinction, her arena was given it's own unique look rather than the HD setup WWE was using for all its programming at the time, as well as her own unique Championships.

The three officially established their Universe mode on December 13, 2015 with a draft. To determine which brand would get the first pick, as well as the order of the draft, they set up a series of Triple Threat Matches (a standard wrestling match invloving 3 people). Elliot's representative won, allowing him to get first pick and go first in each round. Due to her representative taking the fall in both matches, Steph went last in the draft order. Of course as they were the General Managers (on air authority figures responsible for making matches and settling disputes) for their respective shows, their own created characters were automatically drafted to the show they were in charge of.

For the first round of picks, Elliot's SmackDown chose Cactus Jack, TJ's Raw chose Simon Gotch, and LWL chose Savio Vega. This led to much ribbing between the three for the choices as they were all randomly selected and none of them had control over who went where. TJ in particular was annoyed that he had chosen Simon Gotch, while Steph found it highly amusing despite getting someone who was a midcarder for much of his career while Elliot's first pick was a WWE Hall Of Famer.

For the second round SmackDown chose Jimmy Uso, leading to speculation that TJ would get Jey Uso because the game liked to fuck with them. Meanwhile Raw selected Jake "the Snake" Roberts, and LWL selected the current version of Triple H in the game. To save space we won't get into all of the draft picks here but only a couple of tag teams were split up, the others remained together surprisingly.

Stages and Championships
While Raw and SmackDown retained their current (at the time) stage setups for simplicity's sake LWL was given its own unique stage and arena to give it its own feel. The ring skirts were Red on one half of the ring and blue on the other. They also put the LWL logo on one half, with a cool design selected by Steph on the other. The ring canvas was kept white but with blood splattered all over the place, and a dragon in the middle. This was a reference to Steph's nickname of Shenron, and she regularly demanded "blood sacrifices" from her superstars. The turnbuckles were designed to look like Dragon Balls to keep with the theme. While the ring steps were made steel, and painted glass. Fans really seem to enjoy this setup, and it was updated with the next game when LWL was given a name to accompany the acronym

The Championships, on the other hand, were a different story, as they wanted to keep their brands seperate except for tri-branded pay per views. With Steph deciding she would be creating her own Championships for her brand, Elliot and TJ decided to devide up some of the pre-existing Championships for their shows. The first Titles they decided on were their respective brands' World Championships. TJ took the WWE World Heavyweight Championship (Big gold belt) as his while Elliot decided on the WWE Championship, specifically the design used from 2013 until the next year when the two World Titles were unified.

For their secondary Championships TJ elected to use the WWE Intercontinental Championship with the yellow strap. Elliot on the other hand, elected to use the WWE United States Championship feeling a European Championship wouldn't make much sense. For the Tag Team Titles, the decision was made to un-unify them, as they had been unified since 2009 in real life and they wanted to keep the brands seperate. TJ took the WWE World Tag Team Championship design used from 2002 to 2010 when the titles were unified and started using one belt. While Elliot elected to use the original design of the WWE Tag Team Championship introduced in 2002. Finally for their Women's Championships, TJ decided to forego the new WWE Women's Championship design introduced at WrestleMania 32 and instead went with the design used from 1997 to 2010 when it was retired. While Elliot went with the WWE Diva's Championship as the WWE SmackDown Women's Championship had yet to be introduced and he didn't want the two being confused.

For her own brand, Stephanie handpicked the names, and designs of each Championship. For her main Championship she decided to keep it simple, with just the ''LWL World Heavyweight Championship. ''The design was simple, a crown shaped centerplate with the LWL logo and globe with World Heavyweight Champion in the middle while the side plates were given their own unique look as well. For her secondary Championship she decided to call it the LWL Zodiac Championship with the centerplate and side plates resembling the United States Championship but with the LWL logo and the word Zodiac in the middle with a reflected version of the word under it and Champion under that. The side plates had different images representing both the western and Chinese zodiacs on them to show that it wasn't in name only. For her Tag Team Title she again kept it simple with the LWL World Tag Team Championship. The design was similar to the current tag team titles in WWE but again with her own touches added. This design was later updated to the centerplate being the winged eagle WWE Championship belt with four rectangular side plates. For her women's division Steph decided to give it a unique name, calling it the Leading Lady division and the Championship the LWL Leading Lady Championship. The design was a heart shaped centerplate and side plates with a pink strap with the usual signature Steph touch. The Championships and their histories will be covered on different places.