I’ve sat down to write this at least 3 or 4 times so far, but I really haven’t been able to find the words because of the subject matter. I am going to try to sit here and write for a few until this is done, and hope that the words that I come up with are up to the high standard that Barron lived with when writing.
Barron Vangor Toth was someone who I met in 2001 when I was contacted by Lee Barker when I was running StevieRichards.com. Barron was a fan of Stevie’s, and a co-designer of WWF Raw Deal. We emailed back and forth a few times before we met in person at the first Questfest in Gardner, MA at Knight’s Quest. I brought a terrible Austin deck and Barron played me a few times with his fresh off the press Right to Censor deck. From that point I got very wrapped up in the game, and became very good friends with Barron.
I got a little better at the game and ended up playing a lot more. I made some close friends through the game as well. But Barron stood out as one of the closest beyond the game. I can recall countless hours spent talking the game, Ben Affleck, Comic and Kevin Smith movie talking with him.
Probably my greatest Raw Deal memory ever was at Gen Con 2002. I had been chosen to represent the USA vs the top players from the UK in a 4 on 4 match up. Barron had built this up for weeks that the UK would have a “Mystery” 4th man for the show. So it came down to revealing pairings and who was playing and he said, in true Vince McMahon revealing that he was the Undertaker’s higher power fashion, “It’s me, Robbie…. It’s me that you’re playing!!!” Then he pulled out a William Regal deck that had absolutely no shot of beating my Right to Censor deck and I remember as we drew and drew and drew cards to wait out me setting up the combo to win the game him saying “Robbie….. You’re not playing my game right, Robbie….” I won that game pretty quickly once I had exactly half my deck in my hand. We had a huge crowd watching us banter back and forth during the entire game since it came down to if I won the game, I won it for the US, so I was pretty much the Raw Deal version of Rocky vs my much larger opponent, ya know if Drago was from CN, but played for the UK, not Russian….
If you went to any big Raw Deal tournaments in 2001 through 2004 in the Northeast, you saw Barron Vangor Toth. You probably got his autograph, he signed so many cards that some people didn’t like getting cards signed by him in trades I remember. But for a lot of them you saw me right next to or playing Barron. I remember one of my proudest moments in the game was hitting Barron with not just the Fameasser, not the fameasser and the one and only, but the “Billy Gunn Press Slam, Fameasser, One and Only” combo in one game. I think he was using Hall and Nash. I remember him joking about Scott Hall taking the Fameasser, then Nash taking the one and only.
Barron wasn’t the games greatest player, but he did win the biggest tournament that weekend with the Brother’s of Destruction. I may have helped him with that deck, but he beat me that weekend I believe and some of the games greatest players, and some of the greatest people such as Darrian, Duff, All of Team BTY, and myself.
My success in the game could have been probably traced to one big thing, Right to Censor. In his excitement to get one of his all time favorite wrestlers in to the game, Barron may have made the character slightly over powered. I was ok with this, since it was my friend, and the main deck that I wanted to play when getting in to the game. Barron had been to many of the ECW shows around the country but since he wasn’t someone who went out after shows or hung around, he never met Stevie Richards. So I arranged for Barron, since he only lived around 30 minutes from Stevie, to meet up. I drove to the StevieCorp compound in Wallingford CT and we all hung out for a day. I remember Barron and I trying to teach Stevie how to play the game. One thing that I always remembered from that day was sitting in the back seat of Michael’s Neon and the two imposing figures in Barron and Michael sitting in the front and blocking any sort of view I had of anything in front of us. Michael told us different stories that day that we would joke about any time that we were together, and it led to the jokes I always made that Eric Bischoff was Barron’s co-creator on Raw Deal.
For the Summerslam set in Raw Deal, Barron really listened to me a lot. Overtime he had told me many of the abilities he had thought of for the game, and what not and I always had tried to think of ways to work them in. Which led to Hall and Nash, Al Snow, and at one time anyone who played Raw Deal’s favorite character, Ric Flair…… He listened to my explanation of that Flair was the storyline owner on TV at that time, and it would make sense for him to be able to remove cards from the board since he could just go “You lose your title, I’m the owner, I can take it” I will try to add a little more later about the explanations of the others if I can remember them.
One conversation I remember particularly was driving home one night I got a call from Barron that Billy and Chuck were going to be added in to Raw Deal and he needed titles for their cards. I drove home from Bridgewater for about 45 minutes and in that time we hammered out the titles for their cards. I do remember him trying to get some different titles that got denied or censored. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was still fairly recent, so we wanted to have Chuck’s Jungle Love Kick. Rico Enters was originally “Rico Enters from Behind” and somehow “I’ve had many partners, but you’re my favorite” and “Stretching is good for the groin” got through….
One thing anyone would remember about him if they knew Barron was him always having around his notebook. He would write down everything, I remember talking to him during Raw and anytime a new song would be played on WWE TV he would write the title down and go “We got a card there” His painstaking notes that went in to everything he did from going to a tournament, to just hanging out and wanting to document it online. I wish I had a notebook like that now to go back on and write this out because I am just going off the top of my head, and I know I am missing some important details to paint the picture of what Barron was, and that’s something he never did.
He worked so hard to promote and grow his game. He came down here to just meet my play group on Cape Cod and also to just hang out. He stayed at my house, and stayed in my room when he was here. The hallway to my room was weird at that time, I lived in an old house which the hall sort of was angled down from the ceiling. It was about a 4 foot wide opening to my door and the hall was about the same width. It also sloped down to match the ceiling so I had to duck down as to not hit my head when going in my door. If you know Barron, you know he was a great deal larger than I am. So it was pretty comical for he and I seeing him get in to my room even.
I have two stories to share from when he came down to the Cape. The first was when he was here coincided with a local indy wrestling show in Brockton, MA. There were actually some stars at this show, so Barron, myself and my friend Russ went to the show. I wish he had wrote something on BVT.com about this because he would do it much better justice than I, but we ridiculed a wrestler that looked like a broke version of New Jack, we marked out huge for Eddie Guerrero, and I remember guys blocking moves of Eddie’s that were “high risk” moves and Barron saying “That’s not possible yet” and we met Sgt. Slaughter and got him to sign our WWF Title belt cards. I remember Barron telling some story about Slaughter impacting his childhood that was hilarious, but sadly I don’t have a notebook from then, so can’t remember it.
The second was he came to town to see me in Guys and Dolls,You can read the review he wrote here. We met up around noon and got some lunch at 99 in Falmouth. You can read his account of that from BarronVangorToth.com here Barron made a few jokes about noticing that my town was lacking in “cultural diversity” I pointed out that we may have only had one black person growing up in school and his name was Chris. We walked in to 99, and well there was one black person there, and guess what? It was Chris. So we ate out meal, I said hi to Chris to prove to Barron that I wasn’t lying that it was actually Chris, and we headed down cape to play Mini Golf at Pirates Cove.
We had a great time at Mini Golf, I just recently found these pictures on a hard drive. I put a few more of them up on my photo’s on here, and will add the rest soon. I remember cracking jokes about the poor mom’s out there lugging their stroller around, and then there was Barron to help them out moving it from hole to hole.
We then drove back to Falmouth, and were heading to the theater and he goes “See, you do have more than one black person in this town” Granted he came from CN, where I didn’t even know they had civil rights yet, but he still ridiculed my town. But I was quick to point out the jacket, and backpack that we had seen earlier at 99 and that it was actually Chris again.
We all went out to Karaoke later that night, and if you never heard Barron Toth sing Patience by Guns and Roses at a dive karaoke bar in Falmouth, MA with a bunch of 70 year old patrons that were an average height of 5′1″, you haven’t lived. I know there are pictures somewhere of that, and wish I could find those now.
But I drifted away from the Raw Deal scene soon after, and didn’t stay in touch with Barron as much as I should have. I had no reason to grow apart, I wasn’t one of those people who let their views on the game or anything push me away from a true friend. I just didn’t talk as much with him as I should have. I would call him driving back and forth to broadcast school in 2004, just to catch up, we didn’t talk Raw Deal anymore cause I didn’t know much about heat moves or chair, I just knew how to wait once that first move was played by my opponent then RTI RTI RTI!!!!
But Barron was one of those wise friends that I would talk with when I needed someone to say something smart to me. He was one of the first people that I talked with at length after my grandfather passed in 2003, and one of the first people that I discussed Crash dying with a month after.
I visited Stevie in August and he brought up Barron and I realized it had been a while since I had talked to him, so I went home and emailed him right away. I probably should have called, he is one of maybe 3 or 4 people that I met after I got a cell phone that I memorized his number because I used to call him so much. I just checked in with him, and wanted to see how things were. He said that he had missed Gen Con due to personal issues, which people were making rumors about online, but to trust that they were legit personal reasons that he was working out. I know what those were now, and wish I had all along. I really wish that I had known what was going on and made more of an effort to be there for my friend.
Then last month I saw on January 30th that Raw Deal was no more and that the WWE had not renewed with Comic Images. I sent him an email right away to say how sorry I was to see it go, and said that I was sad to see it go, and didn’t say it to him, but did sa y to my friend Tom that regardless of the game being around, Barron was my friend and I would always have that.
Then last night it finally happened, HHH’s Sledge Hammer Shot got played on me even without “Game Over” being in the ring area. I didn’t have backlash, I didn’t have any red cards to play. I was done. I found out that the personal issues Barron had dealt with was that he had cancer and on a day that was already tough for me as it was my grandfather’s birthday, he left this plane. I’ve sat here for the last 24 hours trying to process this since Tom McKelvey told me it. I can’t still. I am however reassured by a few simple things. He was a man of faith, so I know he is in a better place. I was able to reach out to him less than 30 days before his passing to let him know that he was in my thoughts even without knowing what had befallen him. I know that someday I will see him again, and all of a sudden as I was writing this a memory came over me and sums up exactly what I am trying to say, and anyone that may have come across Barron and I playing Raw Deal or had played Raw Deal in a certain Era should get a chuckle out of this that sums up exactly what I will say to him when we meet again.
Hello my friend, we meet again
It’s been awhile, where should we begin?
Feels like forever
Within my heart are memories
Of perfect love that you gave to me
Oh, I remember
When you are with me, I’m free
I’m careless, I believe
Above all the others we’ll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
My sacrifice
We’ve seen our share of ups and downs
Oh how quickly life can turn around
In an instant
It feels so good to reunite
Within yourself and within your mind
Let’s find peace there
When you are with me, I’m free
I’m careless, I believe
Above all the others we’ll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
My sacrifice
I just want to say hello again
I just want to say hello again
When you are with me I’m free
I’m careless, I believe
Above all the others we’ll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
Cause when you are with me I am free
I’m careless, I believe
Above all the others we’ll fly
This brings tears to my eyes
My sacrifice, My sacrifice
I just want to say hello again
I just want to say hello again
My sacrifice.
In closing, I think I once had a small disagreement with Barron over the game, it never damaged our friendship, or anything since it was just about a game. But he was right, The Rock and The People’s Champ for diversity purposes should have been two different people.
I know I would have said something to him that wasn’t super serious had I known what he was going through. Probably “I’ll see you at the crossroads” or some other rap mixed with some sort of Ben Affleck referance.
Rob Zeida
Beautiful tribute Robbie.