Both\u00a0shows are available on iPPV<\/a>, though in the case of the Saturday show, I suspect a part of that is that they’ve got the equipment there anyway so they might as well use it as a tech\u00a0run.<\/p>\nLet’s start with\u00a0the Saturday show – Wrestling Is Fun’s “Tag World Grand Prix 2014 Night 3”. \u00a0This is the\u00a0conclusion of a 16-team tag tournament which normally runs in Chikara, but got loaned out to WIF this year,\u00a0bridging the gap\u00a0between seasons. \u00a0Wrestling Is Fun was the only satellite promotion to long pre-date the shutdown, and unsurprisingly it’s the only one to survive. \u00a0It serves a number of functions – a proving ground for rookies, a nostalgia venue for semi-retired Chikara guys of yesteryear, a promotion to run the home venue while Chikara itself is on tour, and a place\u00a0to run Chikara angles that need to take place outside the control of\u00a0the company’s storyline management. \u00a0It’s also largely a throwback to a simpler era of Chikara with more basic stories.<\/p>\n
1. \u00a0Tag World Grand Prix 2014, Semifinal A: The\u00a0Osirian Portal (Amasis & Ophidian) v The Devastation Corporation (Max Smashmaster & Blaster McMassive).<\/strong><\/p>\nThese are the\u00a0teams who qualified\u00a0from Night 1, and it’s a Chikara match in all but name. \u00a0The Portal\u00a0have been\u00a0in Chikara since 2007; Amasis is a breakdancing pharaoh, Ophidian is a snake, and they do hypnosis. \u00a0They were split up for most of\u00a0Season 12 but reunited over the course of the shutdown, though injuries rather stalled the momentum there. \u00a0Amasis is the Wrestling Is Fun champion; WIF being the sort of company it is (and having the sort of budget it does), there is no\u00a0title belt, but there is a banana.<\/p>\n
The Devastation Corporation are part of a stable of 80s-style monster heels managed\u00a0by\u00a0Sidney Bakabella, an 80s territorial manager (seemingly literally – he often seems\u00a0surprised\u00a0by modern technology). \u00a0The whole stable is part of the Flood, not because they hate Chikara, but because they’re getting paid. \u00a0Sidney likes getting paid, and his dimwitted charges are generally happy as long as they’re being pointed in the direction of something they can hit.\u00a0 DevCorp –\u00a0who also have a third member, Flex Rumblecrunch – were dominant in Chikara for much of Season 12, but we’re kind of past their imperial phase now. \u00a0As the only rudos\u00a0(heels) left in the competition,\u00a0I expect them to win here, but probably not to win the final, for reasons about to become obvious…<\/p>\n
2. \u00a0Tag World Grand Prix 2014, Semifinal B: The Throwbacks (Dasher Hatfield & “Mr Touchdown” Mark Angelosetti) v Knight Eye for the Pirate Guy (Jolly Roger & Lance Steel).<\/strong><\/p>\nThe Throwbacks used to be an odd couple team – gentlemanly 1920s baseball player Dasher\u00a0and his “step cousin in law”\u00a0Touchdown, a thuggish jock who Dasher\u00a0struggled to control. \u00a0In the course of Season 13,\u00a0Dasher won\u00a0Touchdown round to his way of thinking\u00a0– he’s still a jock, but no longer a bully – and\u00a0with the team finally on the same page, they’re\u00a0starting to\u00a0pick up\u00a0wins.<\/p>\n
Knight Eye\u00a0are two semi-retired Chikara veterans with self-explanatory gimmicks (the team name should tell you how long ago their heyday was) who’ve been floating around WIF for a while. \u00a0Lance is smitten with Princess Kimberlee, who is basically a five year old’s idea of a princess; she’s a rudo but the gullible gallant seems to be in denial about\u00a0this.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Roger tolerates her – barely – as a concession to his friend, and vice versa. \u00a0It’s a fairly straightforward angle for\u00a0a team who no longer work on the main roster.<\/p>\n
At Night 2, Kimberlee showed up with the Chikara tag belts – missing in action since last June when they were supposedly sold off as part of the stock liquidation – and\u00a0gave them to her team as bling. \u00a0This unexpected promotion of a Wrestling Is Fun team to a plainly significant role in a major Chikara angle\u00a0seems to pretty much guarantee that Knight Eye\u00a0aren’t getting knocked out in their first match of the night,\u00a0but their usual position on the card makes them pretty massive underdogs against any of the other three teams…<\/p>\n
3. \u00a0Tag World Grand Prix 2014 – Final.<\/strong> \u00a0See above.<\/p>\nWe can race through the undercard more quickly, as this\u00a0takes us outside Chikara to the wider Chikaraverse…<\/p>\n
4. \u00a0Shynron v Jaka.<\/strong> \u00a0Shynron’s a\u00a0high-flier with some impressive moves. \u00a0Jaka\u00a0is one of\u00a0Bakabella’s wrestlers, and\u00a0he’s basically\u00a0Umaga, following the stable’s retro\u00a0theme. \u00a0This could end up being pretty good.<\/p>\n5. \u00a0Oleg the Usurper v Eric Corvis.<\/strong>\u00a0 Oleg is another Bakabella guy – a befuddled medieval barbarian whose presence in modern day indie wrestling is as yet unexplained. \u00a0Corvis is a steampunk wrestler who has a\u00a0book full of wrestling secrets, which he\u00a0consults\u00a0during matches. \u00a0It’s a strange gimmick and\u00a0I wonder if\u00a0book spots are getting a bit too central to his matches.<\/p>\n6. \u00a0Los Ice Creams (El Hijo del Ice Cream & Ice Cream Jr) v The Submission Squad (? & ?).<\/strong>
\n7. \u00a0Joe Pittman v Gary the Barn Owl.<\/strong> \u00a0The Submission Squad – Gary the Barn Owl, Evan Gelistico, Pierre Abernathy and Davey Vega – had a notoriously\u00a0badly received\u00a0tag team match at King of Trios 2009 where they were representing a local indie promotion. \u00a0Since then, they’ve turned up in repeated sketches based on the idea of them attempting to work their way back into Chikara and redeem themselves, with\u00a0negligible success. \u00a0Season 13 saw them\u00a0turn out to defend Chikara against the Flood, but since they didn’t wait for anyone other heroes to show up,\u00a0they got\u00a0squashed flat in about ten seconds. \u00a0Still, they tried! \u00a0How well this translates into anyone wanting to see them actually wrestle will be an interesting question.<\/p>\nLos Ice Creams are a long-standing Chikara clown act, and that one will\u00a0be a comedy match. \u00a0Since the brothers haven’t won a match in ages, it’s conceivable the Squad might actually beat them. \u00a0Pittman is a refugee from\u00a0the satellite promotion Wrestling is\u00a0Heart, where he was their champion. \u00a0He’s a smug pretty-boy heel. \u00a0He’s yet to win a Chikaraverse match outside Heart, so he could use the win – I can’t see him losing\u00a0to somebody as far down the pecking order as Gary the Barn Owl unless it’s a losing streak gimmick.<\/p>\n
And with that, we turn to Chikara itself, and “You Only Live Twice”. \u00a0Show titles are themed in each season, and yes, this year’s shows are all Bond titles. \u00a0(Hey, they once did a run of shows named after Talking\u00a0Heads albums,\u00a0and that resulted in a show called “Brick”. \u00a0This is nothing.)<\/p>\n
1. \u00a0Chikara Grand Championship: Eddie Kingston\u00a0\u00a9 v Icarus.<\/strong> \u00a0A\u00a0rematch from\u00a0Aniversario: Never Compromise<\/em>, when it\u00a0was interrupted by\u00a0security guards\u00a0storming the ring and ejecting the audience. \u00a0The Grand Championship is Chikara’s singles title, introduced in 2011 during\u00a0Titor’s period of ownership. \u00a0(Previously, the tag belts\u00a0were treated as the major championship.) \u00a0Kingston was the first champion and has held it ever since – a task admittedly eased by the fact there hasn’t been a show in a year, but\u00a0impressive nonetheless.<\/p>\nThis feud is essentially a slow burn double-turn. \u00a0Kingston used to be an antihero babyface, but he became\u00a0more and more bitter and aggressive as his title reign went one, alienating both management\u00a0and<\/em> fans. \u00a0He is weirdly obsessive about his title belt, which he calls “her”. \u00a0There is a theory that something isn’t quite right with him. \u00a0Icarus, on the other hand,\u00a0is a Chikara founder who’s spent his whole career as a heel,\u00a0but whose\u00a0allies were deserting him at the end of Season 12. \u00a0During the shutdown, Icarus rallied the troops and became the beloved symbol of Chikara. \u00a0Kingston went into a kind of tailspin, refused to participate in any of Icarus’\u00a0efforts, didn’t show up for the big fight with the Flood, and instead turned up at assorted shows throwing tantrums, picking fights with members of the crowd, and taking offence at the idea that the fans thought they had some kind of stake in\u00a0his<\/em> promotion.<\/p>\nBut\u00a0he’s still the champion for all that, and it was a good match last time. \u00a0Obviously,\u00a0I wouldn’t be surprised\u00a0to see Icarus\u00a0win here – completing his turn to become the official face of the company, while Kingston finds that the return of his company costs him the title he was clinging to all this time. \u00a0(One plausible explanation for his failure to join Icarus’ movement is that\u00a0he knew that if there were no more Chikara shows, he could keep her forever.)<\/p>\n
2. \u00a0The Colony (Green Ant, Fire Ant\u00a0& Worker Ant) v The Colony Xtreme Force (Arctic Rescue Ant, Missile Assault Ant & Orbit Adventure Ant).<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Ah, ants. \u00a0Let’s recap. \u00a0In 2011, the Colony – then consisting of Green Ant, Fire Ant and Soldier Ant – won the King of Trios tournament. \u00a0Soon after, the GEKIDO\u00a0faction appeared, consisting of\u00a0“dark” versions of\u00a0existing Chikara wrestlers, and supposed trying to expose the dark side of Chikara and destroy the company. \u00a0They\u00a0had their own Colony, the Swarm – deviANT, combatANT and assailANT. \u00a0As part of a wider storyline,\u00a0the former management screwed with the Colony by swapping\u00a0Soldier\u00a0Ant and assailANT between the groups. \u00a0Soldier refused to co-operate with GEKIDO and\u00a0so eventually\u00a0management offered to give him his own Colony –\u00a0supposedly\u00a0a cool and\u00a0exciting new spin-off team. \u00a0That was the Colony Xtreme Force, a travesty of the Colony who can<\/em> wrestle, but generally seem more interested in screwing with people’s minds and yelling their\u00a0own names. \u00a0Soon after, Soldier\u00a0walked out. \u00a0Management then decided to retroactively make CXF\u00a0the 2011 King of Trios, despite the fact that they’d never won a match and didn’t even exist at the time. \u00a0That’s why CXF have\u00a0the Colony’s 2011 King of Trios medals. \u00a0(I suppose logically the new management could just order them to give the medals back, but the spirit of pro wrestling is\u00a0that babyface promoters order such things to be settled in the ring\u2026)<\/p>\nMeanwhile,\u00a0assailANT unexpectedly\u00a0embraced his role in the\u00a0Colony,\u00a0eventually winning over the fans and\u00a0(finally) his understandably sceptical teammates. \u00a0He is the only GEKIDO member not to join the re-formed team and align with the Flood. \u00a0At the end of Season 13\u00a0the Colony give him the costume of their former colleague Worker Ant to reflect his full acceptance as a Colony member. \u00a0This will be his debut under that identity (we assume).<\/p>\n
That’s the broad strokes of two years of plot. \u00a0But bear in mind that if that all seems horribly convoluted, it really boils down to the Colony taking on their impostors, who are now aligned with the Flood. \u00a0For the complete novice viewer, that ought to be clear enough. \u00a0And if you can’t see\u00a0what’s awesome about Arctic Rescue Ant – an impostor ant in a fur-lined lucha costume carrying a snowboard –\u00a0you may not be on Chikara’s wavelength. \u00a0I\u00a0expect this one to be pretty great;\u00a0Colony matches are usually good and\u00a0while the Xtreme Force are relative rookies\u00a0they’ve had good big-show matches in the past.<\/p>\n
3. \u00a0Four-corner elimination tag team match: 3.0 (Scott Parker & Shane Matthews) v GEKIDO (17 &\u00a0deviANT) v\u00a0Pieces of Hate (Jigsaw & Shard) v winners of Tag World Grand Prix.<\/strong><\/p>\nWelcome to the tag division. \u00a0To earn a shot at the\u00a0tag\u00a0titles – the Campeonatos De Parejas – you need to earn three points. \u00a0You score points by winning a fall. \u00a0You\u00a0drop back to zero if you lose a fall. \u00a0So in theory, if somebody wins this match and eliminates all the other teams, they get three points and can challenge for the titles. \u00a0This\u00a0system has the happy\u00a0advantages of (i) making every tag match matter, and (ii) explaining why anyone in their right mind would bother tagging in for the first fall of an elimination match. \u00a0Currently, nobody has three points (since virtually everyone got re-set to zero in the\u00a0Tag World Grand Prix 2013 elimination tournament just before the shutdown).<\/p>\n
3.0 were the first team to sign up for this; they’re\u00a0the babyfaces. \u00a0They were the\u00a0champions going into\u00a0Aniversario<\/em>,\u00a0where they were beaten by Pieces of Hate – who are thus notionally the reigning champions, even though\u00a0they have never been called upon to defend the titles, and the physical belts have been sold off.<\/p>\nBut wait, there’s more. \u00a0GEKIDO are a Flood team; 17 is the counterpart of\u00a0Mike Quackenbush, Chikara’s exiled founder. \u00a0This is his\u00a0first match since he was written out with\u00a0an injury angle back in 2012, the plot at that point being that Quackenbush himself had descended to GEKIDO’s tactics to get rid of them. \u00a0Quackenbush did succeed in breaking up GEKIDO, but alienated his longtime partner Jigsaw to the point where\u00a0Jigsaw<\/em> turned heel, and then aligned himself with his own GEKIDO clone, Shard. \u00a0Shard has shown up with the rest of GEKIDO as a Flood member; Jigsaw has not, but has continued to team with Shard. \u00a0Jigsaw’s attitude to the whole situation remains obscure; he isn’t talking. \u00a0Obviously, that’s a big plot point here.<\/p>\nAt National Pro Wrestling Day, 17 was dragged backstage during the big brawl, apparently by Quackenbush himself. \u00a0What happened to him isn’t clear and there’s\u00a0an obvious\u00a0possibility that he’s been replaced.<\/p>\n
Loads of\u00a0storyline issues going on\u00a0here. \u00a0A very interesting match.<\/p>\n
4. \u00a0Archibald Peck v Jimmy Jacobs.<\/strong> \u00a0Archibald Peck is a time travelling marching band leader, because this is Chikara and that sort of thing happens. \u00a0He\u00a0and 3.0 showed up at the end of National Pro Wrestling Day to\u00a0tip the balance in favour of the heroes against the Flood. \u00a0This involved building a time machine so that they could get there in\u00a0time. \u00a0Again, this is Chikara, and that sort of thing happens. \u00a0He also wrestles\u00a0elsewhere as RD Evans; in Chikara continuity, Evans also exists, but is a separate character.<\/p>\nJacobs was the leader of the Flood at NPWD,\u00a0but quite why remains a mystery. \u00a0Unlike everyone else in the Flood, he has no real previous history with Chikara; he’s principally a Ring of Honor wrestler. \u00a0His cryptic promo for this match broadly hints at some higher agenda which he\u00a0can’t or won’t properly explain, and seems to\u00a0indicate that while the other Flood members have been recruited as an alliance of convenience, there’s more to it than just anti-Chikara feeling.<\/p>\n
Since Peck is massively over anyway, and Jacobs is the leader of the heel faction and new to Chikara, I’d kind of expect Jacobs to win. \u00a0I’ve not seen much of Jacobs, but Peck’s matches are almost invariably hugely entertaining.<\/p>\n
5. \u00a0The Batiri (Kobald, Kodama & Obariyon) v Sinn Bodhi & His Odditorium (Oliver Grimsley & Qefka The Quiet).<\/strong>\u00a0 A goblin and two demons versus\u00a0two circus\u00a0guys and a mime. \u00a0The Batiri are Chikara mainstays; technically rudos, they\u00a0effectively turned by siding with Chikara against the Flood. \u00a0Since then,\u00a0they’ve been getting cheered (and are obviously intended to be),\u00a0though interestingly the commentators on Wrestling Is Fun continue to treat them as heels. \u00a0Originally, the Batiri were introduced as henchmen of Sinn Bodhi,\u00a0who more or less abandoned them (i.e., left the promotion). \u00a0Bodhi has now resurfaced as a member of the Flood with two different\u00a0henchmen – we’ve seen Grimsley once before in\u00a0a guest appearance (and he was fine), while Qefka is new. \u00a0The Batiri – or at least Kobald, who’s the only one who speaks – take offence at being abandoned by him, hence the pairing off. \u00a0Obviously, in terms of the in-ring product, the interesting thing here will be how well the Odditorium guys perform.<\/p>\n6. \u00a0The Spectral Envoy (Ultramantis Black, Hallowicked & Frightmare) v The BDK (Ares, Nokken & Milo Schnitzler).<\/strong>\u00a0 Again, the Envoy are Chikara mainstays. \u00a0Hallowicked and Frightmare are clear tecnicos; their leader Ultramantis is a bit more, shall we say, morally ambiguous. \u00a0Another Chikara founder, he was a heel for years, and continues to bill himself as\u00a0something of a megalomaniacal super villain. \u00a0He\u00a0turned by siding with Chikara against the original BDK invasion, but\u00a0there’s room for debate about whether he’s ever been truly a good guy, as opposed to a bad guy who was fighting other bad guys. \u00a0The fans love him, though.<\/p>\nThe original BDK were a sort of German mystical cult who dominated Chikara for a while (partly by infiltrating the management). \u00a0BDK stands for Bruderschaft des Kreuzes – Brotherhood of the Cross. \u00a0This new version are part of the Flood alliance. \u00a0Only Ares is a member of the original group,\u00a0and Milo and Nokken are pretty much unknown quantities, so there’s obviously some serious work to be done in building up their credibility to be comparable with their forerunners – if indeed that’s the plan. \u00a0This is the first time\u00a0we’ve seen the two newbies in the ring, so\u00a0heaven only knows how they’ll be portrayed. \u00a0But\u00a0Envoy matches are usually good.<\/p>\n
7. \u00a0Jervis Cottonbelly v Juan Francisco de Coronado.<\/strong>\u00a0 Main roster debuts for two\u00a0Wrestling Is Fun mainstays (i.e., guys who would plainly have been on the main roster a year ago, but for Chikara’s temporary non-existence problem). \u00a0Cottonbelly is\u00a0a painstakingly polite English gentleman (in a mask). \u00a0This works out\u00a0about as well as you’d expect, but he does win here and there. \u00a0Juan Francisco is an Ecuadorean aristocrat\u00a0– essentially an indie Alberto Del Rio – the gimmick being helped by the fact that there was no attempt whatsoever to disguise the fact that\u00a0he was a rebranding of an existing roster member. \u00a0He’s hugely over as a heel, his matches are generally solid, and Chikara could use a few bad guys who aren’t associated with the Flood. \u00a0I imagine he’s probably winning here.<\/p>\nWorth getting?<\/strong> Well, I’ll be buying them. \u00a0Probably not on PPV, since\u00a0I don’t think I’m going to have time to watch them both this week, but certainly when they show up as video downloads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We’ve done a couple of previous posts about the\u00a0Chikara indie promotion, which spent much of 2013\u00a0pursuing a\u00a0remarkably audacious storyline\u00a0in which the company itself closed down, and storylines were\u00a0carried on through a mixture of micro-indie shows, social media,\u00a0ARGs, and\u00a0even a film. \u00a0With\u00a0the company now about to run its first official show in almost a year, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2547,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions\/2547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}