So, then. \u00a0As trailed last month, we’re going to take a\u00a0crack at covering the\u00a02015 Chikara season. \u00a0We won’t be doing every show – probably just the main ones to check in on how they’re doing, and I might do them as reviews rather than previews, given that I suspect relatively few readers of this blog are actually watching. \u00a0\u00a0Obviously\u00a0we’re moving here into territory which\u00a0far fewer people will be familiar with here, but\u00a0quite aside from being a far more entertaining use of my time, I do think Chikara makes an interesting contrast with the dominant product.<\/p>\n
This is also going to be a very long post, since\u00a0there’s a lot to set up here – not just the show, but the promotion as a whole and many of the characters. \u00a0And I haven’t had as much time as I’d have liked to cut down the first draft, but hey, the show’s\u00a0on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Let’s start with a primer on how things work in Chikara.<\/p>\n
As a rule, they\u00a0run shows over one weekend each month. \u00a0Between shows, the main official source of\u00a0hype and promos is the weekly “Event Center” videos on their YouTube channel<\/a>, and the blog on their website<\/a>. \u00a0 The big shows tend to be iPPVs; all are filmed by Smart Mark Video<\/a> and are generally on sale as downloads\u00a0within a week or two. \u00a0Highlights eventually surface on the Podcast-a-Go-Go (which is also on their YouTube page<\/a>),\u00a0which is free. \u00a0Chikara generally structures its shows in year-long\u00a0seasons, and we’re\u00a0about to start Season 15.<\/p>\n Their home base is\u00a0Pennsylvania, where\u00a0they have ties to\u00a0their founder Mike Quackenbush’s Wrestle Factory<\/a> training school. \u00a0Quackenbush himself serves as the\u00a0Director of Fun (the GM figure). \u00a0The promotion tours quite extensively; it tends to do major shows in its\u00a0home base but\u00a0other shows wander around North America quite a bit, and we’re getting a four-show UK tour in April. \u00a0Attendance at first-time markets can be unpredictable.<\/p>\n The company bills itself as lucha, and that’s\u00a0certainly a dominant\u00a0influence, but far from the only one. \u00a0After all, its\u00a0two highest profile alumni are Cesaro and Luke Harper. \u00a0But it prefers\u00a0“tecnico” and “rudo” to “face” and “heel”, so I’ll follow suit. \u00a0It\u00a0also has a reputation for comedy matches, a superhero comics influence (which naturally hybridises into the\u00a0lucha masks), and\u00a0seriously complicated storylines (see also: superhero comics influence). \u00a0All this is true to an extent, but can easily get overstated; it’s\u00a0still first and foremost a wrestling company. This isn’t Kaiju<\/a>.<\/p>\n Granted, they\u00a0could<\/em> stand to\u00a0do more in terms of accessibility to new\u00a0viewers – their roster page is singularly uninformative to newbies, and recap videos for new viewers are sporadic at best.\u00a0 But it’s also\u00a0a promotion that rewards you for getting to grips with its multi-year storylines. \u00a0This alone is a jarring change from the WWE, which generally has only\u00a0a hazy idea of what’s happening next week. \u00a0Not that Chikara doesn’t have dropped plots and abandoned ideas too. \u00a0But they’re vastly less prevalent.<\/p>\n Chikara works on lucha rules, which basically means that you can make a tag by simply rolling to the outside; unmasking your opponent is a DQ; and you can also be disqualified for excessive punishment – i.e., if you keep beating up your opponent without trying for a pin or submission. \u00a0 Also, there’s a points system to determine\u00a0challengers for the Grand Championship\u00a0and the Campeonatos de Parejas (the tag titles). \u00a0Basically,\u00a0you get a point each time you win\u00a0a match (or a fall in an elimination tag match). \u00a0Lose a match\u00a0(or get eliminated) and you go back to zero.\u00a0If you have 3 or more points, you can challenge for the title on the next show (as long as someone else hasn’t got there first). \u00a0If you’re stuck in a queue, you need to hold on to your points meantime. \u00a0It’s a system which can have\u00a0faintly random effects, but it has the great advantage of\u00a0making every singles or tag match potentially meaningful.<\/p>\n Season 14 focussed on the invading Flood faction, an alliance of rudo\u00a0stables recruited\u00a0to\u00a0destroy Chikara, and ultimately answering to a raving lunatic called\u00a0Deucalion. \u00a0He was apparently out for revenge on behalf of the\u00a0evil former owners, Titor (who were driven out during the shutdown angle). \u00a0Taking both the concept of the monster heel and the convention that all wrestling angles must be resolved in the ring to their insane ultimate conclusion, Deucalion\u00a0would show up periodically to attack people\u00a0he was particularly annoyed with and, um, kill them with his finishing move. \u00a0Which is some finisher. \u00a0Being an angry fellow,\u00a0Deucalion also took out a couple of members of his own side. \u00a0On the previous show, this led to\u00a0the Flood abandoning Deucalion so that\u00a0Chikara champion Icarus could wipe him out using a magic hammer (don’t ask). \u00a0So Deucalion is apparently gone and\u00a0we’ve yet to find out whether the Flood alliance will continue in some form without him.<\/p>\n Oh yes\u2026 if you’re used to televised wrestling then you\u00a0are<\/em> going to have to make a major adjustment in your expectations of production values and crowd sizes here. \u00a0Larger shows will\u00a0have proper sets and lighting;\u00a0minor ones\u00a0will\u00a0often have a rudimentary entrance and lighting design that stopped at “whatever’s in the venue”, which often translates to “finding\u00a0the switch”. \u00a0Again, this is simply the reality of indie\u00a0wrestling.<\/p>\n Season 15 kicks off with “A New Start” (this year’s shows are all named after\u00a0Arrested Development<\/em> episodes), which is in\u00a0their home territory of Philadelphia on\u00a0Sunday afternoon. \u00a0It’s an afternoon show because the\u00a0Royal Rumble\u00a0<\/em>is on across town in the evening. \u00a0We’re in the ECW Arena,\u00a0which means\u00a0a reasonable effort on sets and so forth, by Chikara standards.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0CHIKARA Grand Championship: Icarus\u00a0\u00a9 v. Chuck Taylor.<\/strong>\u00a0 Nice and straightforward, as the reformed rudo defends the\u00a0title against his former running buddy. \u00a0In fact, there’s not much in the way of immediate story to this; it’s more a testimony to the fact that if you have properly defined characters, then putting them together can be\u00a0enough. \u00a0Icarus has been with the company since day 1, and was a rudo for almost the whole of that time. \u00a0With the shutdown angle, he turned tecnico by being the one wrestler who rallied everyone to save\u00a0the company. \u00a0This\u00a0leaves him as the\u00a0top tecnico\u00a0and face of the company, a role you wouldn’t have imagined for him before, but which he turns out to fit nicely.<\/p>\n In his rudo days, Icarus was\u00a0a long-running member of F.I.S.T. (Friends In Similar Tights), as was\u00a0Chuck Taylor. \u00a0Taylor is\u00a0a\u00a0very good wrestler and a very\u00a0entertaining comedian, which makes him perfect for Chikara. \u00a0He’s usually billed as\u00a0“the Kentucky Gentleman”, which makes rather more sense if you know that Kentucky Gentleman is a brand of Bourbon. \u00a0Or more accurately, a brand of something that is legally permitted to be described as such. \u00a0F.I.S.T. imploded shortly before the shutdown,\u00a0for reasons partly connected with the first seeds of Icarus’\u00a0turn. \u00a0Taylor didn’t get involved\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0campaign to save Chikara, but only because he thought it was a waste of time. \u00a0He returned to the company as a solo act when it relaunched,\u00a0quietly picked up three points without many people noticing (he got one of the points in a dark match, and a match he lost was struck from the record books), and\u00a0then sat on them\u00a0for a while before challenging, which is\u2026 interesting.<\/p>\n It should\u00a0be a good match. \u00a0It’s pretty much guaranteed to be entertaining on a personality level. \u00a0Taylor\u00a0always is, and\u00a0it’ll be nice\u00a0to see Icarus have a chance to break out of the role of Captain America\u00a0here – though the promos indicate that both guys are playing this one fairly straight. \u00a0In plot terms, its other function is to block\u00a0Eddie Kingston from cashing in\u00a0his<\/em>\u00a0title shot on this show – which we’ll come back to. \u00a0I don’t see a title change as particularly likely here; the Grand Championship has been around since 2011, it’s still only on its second title holder, and there are other stories which make more sense with a tecnico champion. \u00a0But it\u00a0is<\/em> the start of a new season,\u00a0so something newsworthy\u00a0could always happen.<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0The Colony (Fire Ant, Silver Ant &\u00a0Worker Ant) v. The BDK (Jakob Hammermeier & Pinkie Sanchez) &\u00a0Soldier Ant.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0You know the Winter Soldier? \u00a0Well, it’s basically that, only with ants.<\/p>\n The Colony are ant-themed masked guys who’ve been around for a while. \u00a0The current line-up is Fire (flyer), Silver (technician) and Worker (brawler). \u00a0Worker started off in the rudo stable GEKIDO, who posed as “dark” versions of other Chikara wrestlers in order to make a point about the company’s dark underbelly; he was\u00a0“assailANT”. \u00a0In 2012,\u00a0Titor embarked on some gratuitous meddling with various factions, seemingly in order to screw with people’s minds, and so\u00a0assailANT and Soldier Ant were swapped between their factions. \u00a0assailANT\u00a0 unexpectedly\u00a0turned tecnico for real, and eventually managed to get accepted by his teammates, who gave him the Worker Ant identity.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, after an extended stint barely tolerating\u00a0partners he hated, Soldier Ant gave up and quit. \u00a0Then he pretty much dropped off the face of the earth – the great thing about masked characters is you can do that sort of thing\u00a0when the plot calls for it. \u00a0When Chikara relaunched, he\u00a0resurfaced as an apparently brainwashed Flood member, making occasional\u00a0run-ins during Colony matches. \u00a0At the last show, Soldier finally returned to an actual match,\u00a0wrestling on the Flood team in the annual Torneo Cibernetico (basically an elimination tag match). \u00a0Soldier won, as the sole survivor on his team, but was acting a bit oddly. \u00a0He\u00a0was continuing to block and dodge attacks, but was unaffected by anything that actually connected. \u00a0And his team captain Jakob Hammermeier was desperately tagging him out every time it looked like he would have to fight the Colony – though he did briefly face them at the end in order to win. \u00a0Oh, and he’s a cyborg now<\/a>.<\/p>\n The BDK\u2026 suffice to say that five years ago,\u00a0they were\u00a0a large stable of dominant villains who subverted Chikara management and dominated the company for a year until they were finally driven out. \u00a0Today, they’re the\u00a0remnants of a once-dominant force. \u00a0New leader, Jakob Hammermeier, is an ex-flunky trying\u00a0a little too hard to prove himself as an alpha male. \u00a0Pinkie Sanchez, who recently rejoined the group, is\u00a0crazy. \u00a0(He also has a history with the Colony, having once infiltrated the group as\u00a0Carpenter Ant.) \u00a0Their third member, Nokken, is in a different match.<\/p>\n This sounds like storyline central, though\u00a0I imagine\u00a0Jakob will try to keep Soldier’s involvement to a minimum, allowing Sanchez to have a proper return match. \u00a0It’s been a good long-term storyline, and at least three of these guys are really good in the ring, so I’m looking forward to this a lot.<\/p>\n