Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Brian Streleckis gives some brief thoughts on Chikara’s season premiere held in Philadelphia over the weekend. It’s now Tuesday, he’s been busy with other non-wrestling activities, and stayed up after this live show to watch the Royal Rumble immediately after getting home, but he still wants to talk about some hot and eventful action on a cold day. How cold was it?

So cold that I’m glad my unit didn’t come into close contact with the urinal when I took a piss, in fear that it might stick to it. Seriously, it was pretty fucking cold inside the building. Apparently, when the boxing people that worked and trained in the New Alhambra Arena moved to a new location (causing many people a brief scare of this historic little hall may close down and no longer house wrestling events), they apparently took all heating equipment with them. There wasn’t even hot water in the bathroom sinks. Horrible, and I hope things warm up by the end of March, when the 2009 King of Trios tournament is held in the building (which I just purchased my tickets for and excites me as much as it did last year). At least the wrestlers can work up a sweat and try to stay warm.

So anyway, onto the wrestling. I’ll go through things a little quicker here, but now I’ll give some background on the current storylines up front:

- Having earned a record seven points (four from the Tag World Grand Prix, two in an elimination tag match in November, and one last month at the previous show), Fire Ant & Soldier Ant of the Colony were allowed to determine the stipulation for their long awaited shot at Los Campeones de Parejas, Amasis & Ophidian of the Osirian Portal. They decided that their title match be one fall to a finish as opposed to the traditional two out of three falls, as well as the Portal’s newest addition, Escorpion Egipcio, be banned from the building.

- With the issue with the UnStable dying down following a big victory over them on the last show and Jigsaw returning to his side, Mike Quackenbush is on a mission to find out why the technique and reversal of the Chikara Special was revealed. It was UltraMantis Black who retrieved these secrets from Shane Storm (now STIGMA) and turned them over to Chris Hero. Through some promos cut for the December shows’ DVDs and since made available through YouTube, Mantis wanted the secrets for his friend in evil, Dr. Cube, and apparently has something to do with something called the Eye of Tyr. A somewhat normal wrestling storyline has now taken a turn into comic book villainy, but I’m loving how much mileage they continue to get out of a storyline that began two years ago. This is why I’m so happy that Chikara and its booking got some love in the Observer Awards this year.

- Brodie Lee started an issue with Hallowicked in November, and it continued on this show.

- As mentioned previously, King of Trios is a go and coming up soon, with 16 trios vying for victory (down from the 28 last year, but the same size as the first King of Trios in 2007). Announced so far are regular Chikara trios Incoherence, The Osirian Portal, and the recently-formed trio named The Future Is Now (more fitting as a name for an ROH DVD): Lince Dorado, Helios, and Jimmy “Equinox” Olsen. Also announced so far, making myself and others very happy, are a team representing PWG – El Generico and the Young Bucks of Matt & Nick Jackson – and a team consisting of Quackenbush, Jorge “Skayde” Rivera, and (making his debut in the United States) British wrestling legend Johnny Saint. John Philapavage has recently gotten on a Saint kick, he sent me a DVD of some of his World of Sport matches, and… yeah, this is sounding pretty damn awesome.

As for the live show, we were told right off the bat that the Canadian talent scheduled for the day’s show won’t be showing up due to some issues at the border. Therefore, no Super Smash Bros., no Buck Hawke, and no sign of female wrestler LuFisto, a regular in CZW and elsewhere, originally set to make her Chikara debut.

1. F.I.S.T. (Icarus & Gran Akuma) defeated The Future Is Now (Lince Dorado & Helios) when Icarus pinned Helios with a German suplex following a fight over the advantage. Dorado and Helios acted like your typical exciting young indy babyface team, running around the ring, to the back, and then back to the ring. They made for a spotty but pretty fun team, with Helios a a nice guy to have back more often. A decent opener that was better than the opener on the previous show, which featured three of the four guys here. (8:30)

2. Incoherence (Hallowicked & Frightmare) defeated Brodie Lee & Grizzly Redwood when Frightmare caught Grizzly with a rollup. Frightmare is a really small dude (about Grizzly’s size) who acts all crazy and is led to the ring by Hallowicked on a chain. Some friends believe it’s the long-absent Pelle Primeau under the mask, but I think I actually saw Primeau in person attending this show. It could just as easily be another really small dude who can fly around the ring, and Frightmare was certainly flying, doing a big springboard dive to the floor early and doing a bunch of lucha armdrags throughout the match. Shortly before the finish inside the ring, Brodie clotheslined Hallowicked with his own chain on the outside and then chucked him into the ring steps, knocking him out. Shortest match of the show, decent enough, and it forwards the fresh feud (as a nice tie-in to a previous Hallowicked feud, Brodie is also palling around with Eddie Kingston). (6:06)

3. Daizee Haze defeated Sara Del Rey with a pinning combination. Del Rey was originally set to face LuFisto here, but with her not available, Daizee took her place for a match seen in Chikara countless times before. Daizee has played heel in most of her previous Chikara appearances, but she was more of a face here, as was the Del Rey. A lot of nice mat work between the two. Biggest spot, about midway through the match, was Daizee going for a dive to the floor, only to be sidestepped, picked up, and dropped onto the guardrail. Match was fine. Some got into it, many didn’t care and were still peeved that LuFisto was absent, and a lot were surprised by the outcome. Del Rey, the corwd favorite, expressed some mild frustration. (8:50)

4. Mike Quackenbush & Jigsaw defeated The Order of the Neo Solar Temple (UltraMantis Black & Crossbones) after Jigsaw pinned Mantis with the Jig n’ Tonic. Right off the bat, Quack went looking for answers from Mantis. He locked up with Mantis, asked him why he and/or Dr. Cube wanted to know about the Chikara Special, and cranked in the pressure on an armbar when Mantis wouldn’t admit to anything. They continued this on the outside on the opposite side away from me; I didn’t hear anything, but I according to the report on Chikarafans.com, Mantis admitted to Bob Saget (the Full House star, previously the Commissioner of Chikara before the mysterious scandal of “SagetGate” that led him to be replaced by one David L. Coulier) was behind it all. Weird weird stuff, but if it leads to another Saget cameo in Chikara, I’m all for it. Another solid match, with the penultimate spot seeing Quack knock Mantis onto the shoulders of the Crossbones on the outside, then doing a tope onto both of them. (10:28)

- Louden Noxious (who has oddly cut his trademark wild hair but still had it done up a bit) promises a big announcement following the next match.

5. The UnStable (Colin Delaney & STIGMA) defeated Cheech Hernandez & KC “Cloudy” Day following a spiked tombstone piledriver on Cloudy. The UnStable have music now! Very fun match, with Cheech & Cloudy (still billed from The Beach and doing the surfer gimmicks, which may not be so smart in this weather) looking good and going fast, and Colin sticking with them every step of the way. Nice sprint towards the end, including Colin hitting Cheech with (don’t call it) the FU before the doubleteam finish on Cloudy. Best match of the first half. (13:07)

- Louden Noxious asks everyone for some quiet as he prepares to give his big announcement. The announcement being: it’s intermission time! Out comes Hydra, dancing around with a giant sign reading INTERMISSION in big black letters to the sounds of the Richard Cheese’s version of “Baby Got Back.” The equivalent to the cartoon movie refreshments singing “Let’s All Go To The Lobby.” This was hilarious, though it may not make the DVD. Hydra then stuck around during the intermission to take pictures with people in the crowd.

- After intermission, out came Larry Sweeney & Mitch Ryder, the Fabulous Two. Sweeney goes on to run down the crowd and run down Claudio Castagnoli for being such fools to buy their ruse (the explanation behind the ruse that I was initially clueless about was simply the Fabulous Three’s revenge on Claudio for breaking up the Kings of Wrestling stable). Ryder calls out Claudio to confront them in the ring, but Leonard F. Chikarason comes out instead, saying they know full well that Claudio is currently in Japan for NOAH. Then he drops a bombshell. This show was originally scheduled to have a King of Trios qualifying match between the Fabulous Three and the tandem of the Super Smash Bros. & Create-A-Wrestler. Seeing how both the SSB and Buck Hawke are absent, Chikarason declares that both teams are out of contention for the tournament. Seeing how Ryder & Sweeney were already dressed to compete however (“I dress like this all the time,” remarked Sweeney to laughs), Chikarason lined up some new opponents for them…

6. Larry Sweeney & Mitch Ryder defeated Los Ice Creams (El Hijo del Ice Cream y Ice Cream, Jr.) after Jr. took a piledriver from Ryder and finished off with the 12-Large Elbow of Sweeney. The match started off innocent enough, but nothing all that special. Then El Hijo del Ice Cream began pinching Ryder’s ass, resulting in Ryder retaliating with chops to the chest. El Hijo oversold each single chop to great comedic effect, crumpling to the ground and crying. This happened a couple times, and the fans played into it by booing the hell out of Ryder and chanting stuff like “You’re a bully!” and “Say you’re sorry.” Awesome. El Hijo got down to business when Ryder let his guard down, but the heels prevailed. Fine stuff. (11:03)

7. Eddie Kingston defeated Delirious with a backfist quickly followed by a backdrop driver. Pretty good stuff here. I was expecting more maybe, but they didn’t detract from the two bigger matches that would follow. Delirious began a small chant of “King of Queens” at Kingston, then title-dropped “Murphy’s Law” a few minutes later. The trend of shouting out random sitcom titles did not continue beyond this sadly, but there was some good wrestling to follow, including a good dose of matwork and countering. Delirious gave Kingston a 20-count set of the Neverending Story clotheslines, but Kingston answered back with 20 Kobashi chops. He also (kind of) pulled out the Sliding D he used last month on Drake Younger. (11:43)

8. The Osirian Portal (Amasis & Ophidian) defeated The Colony (Fire Ant & Soldier Ant) to retain the Campeonatos de Parejas when Ophidian countered an attempted top rope Beach Break from Fire Ant into a flipping piledriver off the top rope, then made him pass out to the Cobra Clutch Death Grip. An amazing finish – which also saw Amasis give Soldier Ant and STO to prevent the breakup – to a fantastic match. The Portal tried a couple of dirty tricks, including jumping the Colony during the traditional pre-championship match photo opportunity and Amasis pretending that his ankle injury was re-aggravated, only to jump the the ants again when their guard was down. This played into a great spot towards the end: The Portal attempted their snake charmer spot on Soldier Ant, but Soldier fought against it and grabbed Ophidian, allowing Fire Ant to come off the top for a version of their Ant Hill finisher. Amasis, frozen in front of them without a partner, immediately faked his injury again, but took a saluting forearm for his troubles. He rolled to the outside and ate a suicide dive from Soldier Ant, who flew through the corner ropes to deliver it. Other notable spots included The Portal hitting stereo 450 splashes for a double two count, then missing the Osirian Sacrament, leading the Colony to hit their singles finishers in unison for another double two count. Another Beach Break and I think a Chikara Special almost resulted in the babyface title win. Top-notch stuff with the Portal retaining to my surprise, but the Colony got a standing ovation for their efforts. Best match on the show. (18:52)

9. Jimmy “Equinox” Olsen defeated Vin Gerard in Chikara’s first ever Ladder Match to win the vacant Young Lions Cup. Not a typical crazy spot fest like other ladder matches, which in turn made the match even better. It relied more on drama. Not the Cup, but a Young Lions medallion was the prize hanging above the ring that would lead to the victory upon its retrieval. They started brawling in and out of the ring, and teased some big spots early by setting up the lone, yellow-lined ladder between the ring apron and the guard rail. Nothing happened yet. A lot of the match was made up of Gerard working over Equinox’s left leg with a variety of holds, which began when he either hit his leg with a chair or Pillmanized on the outside (I didn’t have a good vantage point). A couple ladder shots were thrown in here and there, but it was mostly Gerard on the leg and getting some major heat from the crowd for it. A couple people shouted “Boring!” but I’m sure that’s what Gerard was hoping for. Many began chanting that he sucked, which was even better. Equinox got a brief advantage following a huricanrana on a kneeling Gerard that drove his head into the ladder, but it was all for naught following a hanging DDT by Gerard onto the ring steps. Gerard then took off Equinox’s mask and showed it off like a trophy. Gerard then got back in the ring and began climbing the ladder, but the unmasked Jimmy Olsen got back up and shouted out to Gerard that he was still standing. Gerard climbed back down to finish him off, and the two fought on the apron, where a second, aluminum-looking ladder was set up. Olsen then kicked Gerard in the groin to make up for a nut shot from Gerard earlier, and gave him a Death Valley Driver through the second ladder, turning it into a heap of twisted metal and Gerard into just a heap. A short but dramatic climb up the the original ladder (with Gerard still hot in pursuit) and Olsen became your new Young Lions Cup Champion. Olsen celebrated with the Cup and even put his mask back on, while Gerard cried in the ring. Great match. (21:35)

Overall: The top two matches are definitely worth checking out, while the rest of the card was pretty fun, though not stellar. Looking forward to how the little storylines play out, how Gerard reacts to being bested by the guy using his old gimmick, and how the rest of King of Trios shapes out. Nothing really huge storyline-wise stands out right now as preparations take place for this annual mega-tourney. The next two shows in February will have some King of Trios qualifying matches that hopefully will occur as scheduled. Reading on 2/20 will see either The Colony or F.I.S.T. advance, while either the team of Kingston & Brodie & Grizzly or the combination of Sami Callihan & The Order of the Neo Solar Temple will qualify on 2/21 in Easton. A lot more information on all upcoming shows, as well as the 2nd Annual Chikara Fan Conclave during King of Trios weekend (missed the first one, but I hope to make it this year) can be found on Chikara’s official site. I just recently bought tickets for the tournament, so I’m bound to share some thoughts on what goes down when it roles around in March.