Chikara King of Trios Night 2 Road Report

PAS: Tomk and I meet Childs at Greenbelt Metro and head down to Philly for a Chikara show we are as a group pretty hesitant about. Still seeing Johnny Saint live is a opportunity you don't want to miss, and all three of us are excited about that. After driving around Philly a bit we park at the world's most expensive parking meter (8 minutes for a quarter) and grab some damn tasty Cuban food at a chainish Cuban place. Childs wife is Cuban, but he still gives it a thumbs up, we also start drinking which we will figure will make the whimsy go down easier. Get to the Arena early and head off to a dive bar to drink more.

TKG: I drank some sort of embarrassingly fruity rum drink at Cuban place. Watched some college basketball and drank maybe three four or five Yeunglings at the bar. The jukebox plays the Tavares cover of “She’s gone” and I contemplate telling Childs and Phil to go to the show without me. But driving all this way to watch basketball in a bar seems ridiculous. “Everybody’s high on consolation/ Everybody’s trying to tell me what’s right for me/ I need a drink and quick decision/ Now it’s up to me what will be ooh what will be”

PAS: When we get to show we wander about looking at the truly impressive array of gimmick tables. While looking at the IWS table a developmentally disabled guy taps me on my shoulder and mumbles something to me and shakes my hand. I know that Chikara does some work with those kind of charities, and we end up sitting behind that guy and a group of his friends. I would assume they gave a bunch of tickets to a group home, seems like a really cool gesture by Chikara.

TKG: Yeah it’s a nice gesture and kind of adds some diversity to the crowd. It’s a weird crowd in that it is your typical Philly wrestling crowd: pudgy pony tailed guys. But it really is a crowd from one specific age bracket. Ring announcer Louden Noxious comes out doing an Ed Grimly impression. Well not really Ed Grimley since Louden is mohawked instead of being cowlicked and is totally self-aware. So not like Ed Grimley at all. Louden is essentially working the gimmick of being a Park Slope mod who uses Ed Grimley mannerisms as game to pick up hipster barflies or something. Which is an amusing gimmick kind of wasted on wrestling. Anyway, he comes out and announces that Chikara has the right to remove anyone from audience who uses foul language because this is a family friendly promotion. Which brings me back to my original point. He says this and you look around and notice “Family friendly? This audience doesn’t have the age diversity of a CZW show” CZW show will have pudgy ponytailed guys from 15-70 plus a bunch of future pudgy pony tailed guys in the 11-15 range. Chikara crowd is almost completely missing the 15-18 year olds that normally attend CZW shows (both as fans and well backyarders admiring fellow craftsmen), the older guys and fewer kids. Show dominated by one age bracket. It felt odd like I wasn’t actually at a family friendly show but at something along the lines of “The Real Live Brady bunch” shows. Not a show aimed at audience of families but aimed at audience of adults who fetishize youth. I think Chikara wants to be a “family friendly promotion” and not a promotion that solely attracts guys in their 20s-early 30s nostalgic for youth culture. So giving tickets to a group home, having Soldier Ant lead local schools in classes on conflict resolution through creative dramatics, etc, are smart moves that I stand behind.

Fire Ant v. Austin Aries v. Player Dos v. Matt Jackson

TKG: I never liked Gabe’s Austin Aries as “promotional Ace” gimmick. Thought it was a dumb gimmick and not something I ever really bought. But Austin Aries comes out and performed like an ace. He was an absolute ring general. Austin Aries struts to the ring blowing kisses to the crowd and just looks like a really polished wrestler. Aries has kind of spectacular ring presence. Even when he’s on the apron he’s worth watching. When he’s in the ring he’s holding the whole thing together. Everything he does just gets over effectively. And on some level that hurt this match. Rey de Voladores match is a four way spotfest type thing where everyone hits their stuff and that’s really all that’s needed of them. Aries came off as such a complete wrestler, that everyone else looks bad in comparison. Everyone else in this looked backyard compared to Aries. It felt like a mistake to have him in this match. If they replaced him with the other Young Buck, Bandido Jr, Chase Del Monte, etc the rest of participants wouldn’t have suffered as much in comparison.

PAS: Man does Chikara have some tiny guys, Austin Aries towers over Fire Ant. Austin Aries is the most physically intimidating guy in the match, Austin Aries wouldn't even be the most physically intimidating guy in a CMLL minis trios. He isn't as thick as Pierrothcito, he is shorter and less muscular then Mini Halloween, but compared to the other dudes here, he looked like Batista. The spots in this looked okay, but man was the in between spots stuff comic looking. There is a section of the match where Aries and Jackson were doing exchanges and Ant and Dos are taking it to the floor and brawling, and they exchange some of the crappiest forearms I have ever seen, they looked significantly worse then any of the CMT Celebrity wrestling strike exchange, Frank Stallone and the Ian Zierling ex-wife who was brought in to blow Beefcake laid it in more. Smartmark should just make sure Aries is in every camera shot, match would look good then.

F1RST Family v. Team Fist

PAS: This was really the match where the disconnect between me and audience was clear. This was objectively an awful match, execution was terrible, match layout was a total mess, just a travesty. Arik Cannon may have been even worse then he looked when he was stinking up IWA-MS four years ago, and the yutzes he was teaming with looked like green sloppy rookies. I think Jimmy Hart probably managed 50 guys as part of the First Family, and I have a hard time thinking about a worse hypothetical First Family trios team, maybe Man Mountain Link, Rocky Sortor and Jesse Ventura, but Sortor was better then any of the guys on that team, and Ventura and Link were comparable. This was a match where Chuck Taylor looked like the best guy in the match for fucks sake. About five minutes into this we abandoned our plans to go to night 3. I hated this. The crowd though ate it up, every lame comedy spot was treated like Richard Pryor was telling the Freebase story. The F1RST family got a big post match crowd chant. It is pretty clear Chikara is not for me. It actually reminded a lot of going to a College Improv show, the crowd is going to be full of their friends, and it doesn't matter how bad the Oprah impression is the crowd is going to laugh.

TKG: Maybe this is why I’m so uncomfortable reviewing this show. It feels like doing a serious critique of a College Musical. Something almost unfair about saying “The guy who played Nathan Detroit can’t sing and wasn’t believable.”. His suitemates and cousins were enjoying it after all. After the show was over Phil said “Lets not write a road report, people here seem to be having a good time and I don’t want to shit on their fun”. That felt like a real graceful idea and I'm going to try to find the positive and not shit on anyone else's good time here. I mean watching this live I just threw up my hands got some beers and gave up on this match. Came back for another couple minutes gave up again and got another beer. Wandered the arena found a group of actual kids in the audience who were using the match as excuse to make jokes at Icarus' expense, they liked the North Star Express double team where one guy springs the other into a backsplash, yeah that looked neat (there I found something positive), some more stuff happens they go back to mocking the wrestlers, I give up again, etc. Phil said “this is not for me” but the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum, what might be right for you may not be right for some.

LWA Offer Match: Pierre Abernathy and Evan Gelistico v Davy Vega and Gary the Barn Owl

TKG: These guys come out to a ridiculous hostile crowd response. I mean more hostile than I’ve ever seen a WWE crowd respond to unknown developmental guys in darkmatches. This wasn’t just “I want to see advertised stars and not you guys” , it was more hostile than that. Joey Matherws in early ROH hostile, Jeff Hardy v Krazy K in ROH hostile, Cena in ECW Arena hostile, Harlem Heat at WCW Road Wild hostile. But I understand those hostile crowd responses. Those all make sense. ROH and ECW fans were misogynists who hate anything that women like, and bikers are racists. But the Chikara response to the LWA match is inexplicable to me. Everyone in LWA is a good 6 inches taller than the average Chikara worker. Have we gotten to the point in indy wrestling where the crowd goes “You’re too tall for me to buy as a credible wrestler”? I think the heel team may have come out to the “Banana Splits” theme song. Is there some sort of nerd schism between adults who watch “Nickolodeon” and adults who watch “Boomerang”?; “Coming out to Pete and Pete theme is awesome, but Banana Splits…BOOO!” Gary the Barn Owl hoots a bunch and flaps his arms and the crowd boos his gimmick and calls it stupid. Two wrestlers that are the same wrestler taken in a time machine form two different time periods is cool, but guy who thinks he is a barn owl is stupid and deserves contempt? What the heck? Pierre Abernathy facially looks like an evil Tiny Tim, facially sells ok, and has an interesting looking reverse RKO type thing. Evan Gelistico is the less facially expressive heel. He eats a DDT really well fully planting his head and getting hole body upside down vertical on top of head before falling forward. Unfortunately he also has a move where he stands upside down on his head and falls forward in a hard splash.You can either have a really good looking bump or a really good looking piece of offense. You can’t do the same thing for both. Gelistico also shows some ring smarts as the crowd starts a “TAKE IT HOME” chant, he immediately puts opponent in a chinlock and announces “I CAN DO THIS ALL NIGHT”. Don’t get me wrong, this match stank. But I can’t for the life of me figure out why this match was met with such a hostile crowd. It wasn’t any worse than the match before it, execution was comparable if not better here, no one blew anything. On a show with Icarus, Arik Cannon, and Player Dos the LWA guys really didn't deserve this hostile response.I can’t figure out the intolerance.

PAS: Maybe this is the natural progression of all the people who complained about WCW burying their juniors. The Chikara fans didn't want these indy Kevin Nash's burying their indy Radicalz.

Osirian Portal v. Future Is Now

PAS: Show began a slow climb out of the muck with this match. Stylistically Chikara reminds me a lot of 2004 overkill IWA-MS. In IWA-MS you had a bunch of greenish guys who all had a crazy dangerous suplex or flippy finisher, and they all needed to get them in, so by the end it all just ran together. Here every guy has a wacky comedy spot they need to shoehorn into their match and it ends up the same. I actually find some of Ophidian's stuff amusing, but I was totally burned out on jollies by this point. I did like Lince's tope into the crowd, and his armdrags and ranas looked good too. He doesn't seem to have any gags so I can see why this crowd doesn't like him, he really should stick a whoopie cushion down his pants and do a senton or something.

TKG: The comedy line dancing Kid n Play handshake wrestling spot between Amasis and Helios was well done,funny set up and funny punchline, plus rolled out at the beginning of the match. Unfortunately Obsidian Portal aren’t as good at working heel as the Full Force. Amasis did the Abby scream sell that entertains. Ophidian still stinks but did the Elax the Exploited Child first wrestling bump as offense move that I dig. Escorpion Egiptico was supposedly a legit luchador but didn’t look roided up enough to be Rey Escorpion. Still this was a match built around a really good technico team. The last time I saw Lince he was wearing an ant costume and the antennas fucked up his ranas a bit. He looked a lot smoother with all his stuff here. And both Jimmy “Equinox” Olsen and Helios looked really solid. Nothing really great but nothing that made me want to stab out my eyes.

PAS: I think he was exactly roided up enough to be Rey Escorpion.

Kota Ibushi v. El Generico v. Nick Jackson v. Jigsaw

PAS: This was pretty much exactly what this match should be, all four guys went out a million miles an hour and hit all of their crazy spots. These kind of matches only really blow you away if you aren't familiar with the wrestlers. First Red/SAT's v. Storm/XL/Devine match was nuts, rematches weren't much, you had seen their stuff. I have seen Ibushi a fair amount before, he has some amazing spots, but he basically does the same five spots every match, I was calling them before they happened. I imagine if this was the first Ibushi match I had seen my jaw would be dropped, but I was underwhelmed a bit here. I also think it was a mistake to eliminate Generico first, the Ibushi v. Generico match up was what people wanted to see, and while I like Jigsaw way more then I like Generico, it was a mistake to have him be there at the end.

TKG: Yeah this was four guys hitting their stuff clean. Beyond his signature spots I thought Ibushi did an ok job of facially selling other guys stuff. It isn't needed for this type of match but a nice extra. Jigsaw is also a guy with a really expressive face but for some reason they remasked him. I don't get why they'd do that. They could have done the post match loss make up job like Halloween or Espectrito. But like I said this is a type of match where expressive faces is an extra. All you really need is the spots, and they hit them all.

Da Soul Touchaz v. UnStable

TKG: This was my first time seeing the “Urban American Dream” Willie “Da Bomb” Richardson. He makes really amusing almost disinterested facial expressions while his opponent fails to lift him, also similar expressions while doing his huge hanging suplex, had just a absolutely nasty running tackle that you didn’t believe anyone could get up from and a nasty second rope spinebuster. I want to see more Urban American Dream.

PAS: This was an actively good match. Richardson's facial expressions ruled, he really looked, reacted and kind of wrestled like Robin Harris and I want to see him react to the Kid and Play dancing in the earlier match. Really feels like they missed a great opportunity. Marshe Rocket looks like an actual athlete, tall really impressive ups, he has a ways to go before he is a good wrestler but he is impressive and super out of place at this show. The Unstable have this really complicated backstory with Gerard being a failed student who pretended to be a Mexican to get into Chikara (pretending to be a Mexican makes you a heel? In CHIKARA?) and then lost a mask match only to be ostracized. This kind of elaborate Graphic Novel booking is what Chikara gets praised for, and I do think Quack does it well, it was something that Gabe did too. All this elaborate backstory based on knowing all the twists and turns, you don't understand why Cyclops is so upset, unless you remember what Kitty Pride did 14 issues ago. It works for the audience, but it has turned wrestling into something aimed fully at a mid 20's to mid 30's ComiCon nerd audience. When Feinstien ran ROH he had a really good understanding of youth culture, Special K represented rave culture accurately, Rottweilers represented urban NYC hip hop culture (or at least how white kids wanted to see it), CM Punk nicely articulated straight edge culture. You got a sense that given a chance they could catch on with teenagers. Feinstien was a pederast, if you are trying to fuck 14 year boys you understand what 14 year old boys are into. When Gabe took over ROH they became divorced from that, you didn't get a sense that 2004-2005 ROH could catch on with youth, and as much as Chikara talks about family friendly wrestling, you don't get a sense of them catching on with the youth either.

TKG: I don’t know. I think the explanation of the comic book/ science fiction series booking approach of Gabe and Chikara is accurate. That said I thought Gabe did a nice job of appealing to nerd youth culture. I think Gabe understood the nerd comic culture that hooked into 16-20ish audience. Plus he managed to strongly push Cm Punk on top. Building a fed around appealing to a straight edge crowd means you have an audience of teens with extra discretionary income. I imagine if you’re not spending your teen years spending money on drinks, drugs and sex you can buy a lot more indy wrestling DVDs. While my impression is that the comicbook market today is dependant on maladjusted adults for its financial survival, I think there are still youth who get hooked in. You wont hook in youth with comics that are built on homages and jokes about Magnus Robot Fighter, Megaman and the laughing dog from Duckhunt.

Player Uno v. Twiggy

PAS: I initially thought that this was going to be 90's Jersey Indy mainstay and Harley Lewis tag partner Twiggy Ramierez, so I felt baited and switched when a third tier Kirby Marcos (way too short to be a third tier Kevin Dunn.) This was maybe the worst match on the show, my guess is that whoever your Chikara backstage agent was, told these guys that they needed to save the comedy spots for the main event, so instead you had a pair of sloppy Canadian comedy wrestlers trying to wrestle an epic title match full of 2.9 counts and dangerous suplexes. The match actually had a ton of heat, as the group of developmentally disabled fans in front of us were all wearing IWS gear and were super into the match. I am guessing giving free t-shirts to mentally challenged fans is the Chikara version of Lance Hoyt drinking beer with the Impact Zone

TKG: Until I saw people in IWS gear I thought the cheering for this match was ironic. Like people chanting five more minutes after a Loch Ness v Ron Reese match. Felt like an inside joke. Could this have possibly been a U.S. Doglegs match? Back in early nineties I went out with a girl who volunteered with the Best Buddies program. Her best buddy was a tall awkward guy who she told me was going to be in a play. I thought “Good for him” and went assuming he might have a walk on role in Hamlet or something. Instead it turned out to be an all developmentally disabled play. But not just a play with developmentally disabled cast, but rather a play with developmentally disabled cast written by said cast developed out of improv exercises. And not just a play with developmentally disabled cast written by said cast developed out of improv exercises, but a film noir parody built on ethnic dialogue humor and cross dressing with death scenes and torch singing etc. You can’t just clothes your eyes and look away, because you’re going to need to have a compliment ready at the end of the show: “Hey that scene where you were the Irish gangster moll singing ‘Danny Boy’, nice job with the heels”. I’m not a negative person I want to look for the good in everyone. Unfortunately, neither Player Dos nor Twiggy were working exotico so I got nothing. I’m not saying this would have been better if Player Uno was wearing a Princess Peach costume and Twiggy was wrestling as Twiggy. I don’t know if either guy is coordinated enough to pull off heels. But if they did I might have something to compliment. They announced this as being about 8 minutes long but I felt like I lost three years of my life watching it.

Team Uppercut v. Masters of 1000 Holds

TKG: This was awesome and worth putting up with the rest of the show to see. This match was really intended as a showcase for the old masters. A match built on letting them shine. But I left really impressed with the young guys, left impressed by backing band and how they highlighted the masters. Claudio is a guy who works especially well opposite Skyade. I mean the two just are completely in sync. Claudio also worked this awesome section opposite Saint built on tiny Saint climbing up and down Claudio’s back putting on all sorts of nutty octopus variations that felt almost carny ju jitsuish. Both Skyade and Saint are guys who work in mat traditions built around one upsmanship. A sportsmans game of proving that you have superior technique. Danielson is an LA Inoki dojo guy and never let you forget that Inoki/Fujiwara/Fujinami background. And you’d think Animal Hamaguchi would be out of place in a match built around sportsmanship. But Danielson totally makes it work. As he’s sporting to a degree but makes you believe that he’s being taken advantage of and won’t take it lightly. Last time I wrote about Quack I wrote about the way he’s had this career where he’s gotten to play backup for all these cult stars. Had me thinking about him in relationship to Harry Smith (Anthology of American Folk Music not the DBS son), The Cramps and the Wu-Tang Clan; guys who created a coherent aesthetic vision out of collections of ephemeral pop detritus. I’ve seen shitty bands open for the Cramps, guys who were so devoutly retro they had nothing to offer, and guys who were all ironic tongue n cheek. This show felt like Wu Tang Clan with openers of MC Frontalot and several College Acapella groups doing fake Lonely Island Raps about how goofy kung-fu movies and marvel comics are: “HA Ha epehemeral shit is ephemeral”. But you put up with that cause in the end you get the Wu Tang clan and they’re nothing to fuck with. Quack fits like a glove positioned between Skyade and Saint. And him as defenders of their aesthetic v Danielson were some of my favorite points in the match. I normally can’t stand the Danielson’s opponents hit him with his own signature move things, but Quack did it in such a demonstrative way that it really worked. The Quack sits out and crosses his legs opposite Danielson’s ankle to stop an Irish Whip was almost a holy shit moment. Saint was clearly the star of this but walked away really impressed with all the backup singers as well.

PAS: There are a ton of intriguing match ups in this match and we really got to see them all. Much of this match was an exhibition of the cool shit that Saint, Taylor and Skyade can do, and really that would have been enough for me. Danielson however really brought the match to a different level. His constant frustration at being shown up by Saint and Skyade led him to heel it up and he takes it right to Quackenbush and they end up doing some great looking brawling. Danielson even forearmed Saint on the ring apron, and chucked him over the top rope (yup Saint took an over the top bump to the floor.) You came out of this match clamoring for a Quack v. Dragon blood feud. Still as great as really everyone was in this match, this was a Johnny Saint show, lots of crazy counters, and insane submission holds (his octopus variations were especially great), it is such a trip to watch him twist and turn his way out of holds, he looked great against all three of team Uppercut, working each guy subtlety different. You have got to love Quackenbush for putting this kind of odd shit together, and as distasteful as I found most of the show, I imagine stuff like this could make me buy a ticket.