I just had this incredible genius idea for a wrestling/fighting MMO game.
So, first you build a fighting game engine that is highly customizable and balanced, right? Easy peasy. Just adapt Mugen so as not be broken.
Then, you create your character. It can be a fighter, a promoter or a manager.
After that, the world is yours. Promoters start their companies and have to deal with both real people as fighters and managers to get a roster going. Fighter, obviously, just fight, it's a 2D fighting game, they just what they do, whatevs. Managers act as both agents and hype machines.
All in a kind of salty bets enviroment where people bet fake money on fake fights. This is the currency as the promoters get a cut of the bets. Ultimately the fake money is spent on buying stuff for the fighter, so the fake money go: betting -> promoters -> agents (if there is one, fighters can be their own agent of course) -> fighter -> customization store.
Now, some promotions will be legit. They will create balanced characters, will only allow a certain type of character and they will actually compete (or at least is what the marks will believe). Customization store may include super steroids to make absurd DBZ-like characters and legit promotions will want to weed that out, but smart players may try to increase stats and play around it, so people do not notice they are cheating (by, say, handicapping yourself mid-fight, as in pulling your punches, and pressing a "cheat blatantly" button to cause more damage and hope no one will notice)
Others will be just pure entertainment, creating absurd enviroments and swerves to bring people in via comedy. How they get hype is entirely up to them, want to make a promotion based on fighters extra juiced up on super steroids and having the format of penis while firing beams from the balls? Go ahead, if that's what it takes to make people spend their hard earned fake money, then do it!
And then everything in between. All the while, the backstage enviroment will just be organic; good characters (either good players, funny characters or both) will become valuable to agressive promotions and managers, gimmicks will fall flat, promoters and fighters will backstab managers to cut the middle man; managers will either become manipulated chumps or reliable bridges between new fighters and the top promotions.
I am a genius.