This is the first of a series of mini-shows\u00a0held in the Wrestle Factory, Chikara’s\u00a0training school in Philadelphia. \u00a0They more or less replaced the\u00a0local shows that Chikara used to run under the banner “Wrestling Is Fun”. \u00a0WIF was, at least in part, a device to let Chikara\u00a0run\u00a0shows\u00a0during the period when the company\u00a0itself was supposedly shut down (since it was supposedly a separate company),\u00a0and with that storyline completed, it’s served its purpose. \u00a0In 2015, with so many tournament matches to get through, pretty much everything had to be classified as an official show. \u00a0This one was chucked in as a bonus if you bought “Aniversario”, the major show that took place the next night. \u00a0It does have some material that’s important to storylines, though, which is why I’m not skipping past it.<\/p>\n
When and where:<\/em> It’s 23 May 2015. \u00a0 As mentioned, we’re in the Wrestle Factory – more accurately, the new Wrestle Factory, because they’ve just relocated. \u00a0It’s small, but there’s\u00a0lighting, there’s a proper entrance set, and the walls are lined with banners for the ten Challenge of the Immortals teams.<\/p>\n 1. \u00a0Amasis v. Missile Assault Ant<\/strong><\/p>\n The back story:<\/em>\u00a0Nothing in particular. \u00a0Missile Assault Ant walked\u00a0out on the rest of the Colony: Xtreme Force\u00a0at the start of the year, and he’s been in a slump ever since. \u00a0He’s still using their music and his Colony-parody gimmick, because he has nothing else, but the ring announcer confirms that he has indeed quit the group.<\/p>\n The match:<\/em>\u00a0 Amasis pins him clean with a 450 splash in a brisk 6:47, though Missile does control a fair part of the match. \u00a0Pretty basic, and a little awkward at moments. \u00a0Kevin\u00a0Condron (of whom more later) hassles Missile as he goes backstage.<\/p>\n The upshot:<\/em>\u00a0Amasis\u00a0now has two Grand Championship points, and can\u00a0earn\u00a0a title shot in his next singles match. \u00a0And\u00a0Missile starts being sucked into Condron’s orbit (of which, again, more later).<\/p>\n 2. \u00a0The Snake Pit (Ophidian & Argus) v The Colony (Fire Ant & Worker Ant).<\/strong><\/p>\n The back story:<\/em>\u00a0The rookie Argus was a surprise pick for Ophidian’s Snake Pit team in the Challenge of the Immortals tournament; but\u00a0since Ophidian is a trainer at the Wrestle Factory, presumably he knows what he’s doing. \u00a0All four wrestlers are tecnicos, and there’s no particular issue between them\u00a0(even though\u00a0the Ants\u00a0are members of the\u00a0Battle Hive, led\u00a0by\u00a0Ophidian’s longtime\u00a0partner Amasis).<\/p>\n The match:<\/em>\u00a0Argus holds his own in technical exchanges with the Colony,\u00a0but (presumably deliberately)\u00a0messes up a double team.\u00a0 Ophidian doesn’t handle that well, and yells at him, which leads to the Colony isolating him. \u00a0He\u00a0gets the hot tag to Ophidian… and it gets a bit shapeless for several minutes as the match just sort of keeps going. \u00a0Fire Ant escapes Argus’s ankle lock, but a couple of minutes later he lands badly on the ankle, and Argus rolls him up for the\u00a0clean pin in 19:00. \u00a0Upset win for the rookie. \u00a0The teams shake hands afterwards.<\/p>\n The upshot:<\/em>\u00a0A bit odd, even in hindsight. \u00a0Obviously it shows that\u00a0Argus\u00a0can hang with the top guys, but\u00a0since the Colony are so popular,\u00a0the match\u00a0seems calculated to get him respect rather than\u00a0full-blooded cheers. \u00a0But\u00a0Argus is an enigmatic, slightly distant character (he doesn’t speak, and when he writes online, he keeps making weird references to eyes and watching),\u00a0so maybe that’s\u00a0the reaction they wanted. \u00a0Even so, 19\u00a0minutes is a bit much.<\/p>\n 3. \u00a0Kevin Condron v. Mark Angelosetti<\/strong><\/p>\n The back story:\u00a0<\/em>Condron’s\u00a0back story is fairly complicated, and it actually matters for this segment, so let’s recap. \u00a0He started as Kid Cyclone, a Wrestle Factory trainees who enthusiastically joined the\u00a0fight against the Flood. \u00a0He\u00a0defied\u00a0orders\u00a0by leading a group of trainees against\u00a0the\u00a0Flood leader\u00a0Deucalion, and got them\u00a0killed. \u00a0(An unusual\u00a0feature of seasons 13 and 14 is that several characters\u00a0<\/i>are written out by\u00a0actually dying<\/em>, which is basically Chikara\u00a0rejecting any pretence of realism and laying down its own\u00a0rules for its own universe. \u00a0Mike Quackenbush is a firm believer that seeing professional wrestling solely through the lens of sport is limiting, and that you can do so much more with it once you embrace its complete lack of realism and are willing to do stories with magic and time travel and so on. \u00a0This is fine, but it’s also fair to say that there’s a\u00a0degree of\u00a0inconsistency in how\u00a0other characters respond to these deaths, with some – like Condron – treating them as actual deaths, and others seeming to respond as if they’d witnessed a particularly\u00a0serious\u00a0stretcher job.)<\/p>\n Ducking his own responsibility,\u00a0Condron decided that he was the victim of an uncaring promotion that drafted him as cannon fodder. \u00a0But there’s a\u00a0degree<\/em> of truth to that, because another\u00a0trainee was indeed killed by the Flood while helping Icarus. \u00a0At any rate, Condron is now very bitter about Chikara. \u00a0He unmasked as a show of disrespect for\u00a0Chikara’s lucha tradition, and is assembling\u00a0a stable of (what he sees as) kindred spirits – i.e., Flood cannon fodder like\u00a0Volgar and Missile Assault Ant.\u00a0 \u00a0Meanwhile, in his first two matches, he refused\u00a0to properly wrestle, and tried\u00a0to\u00a0win through cheap tricks. \u00a0It worked the first time, but it backfired badly the second. \u00a0Condron is also a rampant egomanic, and insists on being billed as “Killer” Kevin Condron, though his classmates in the Wrestle Factory\u00a0apparently called him “Snowflake”.<\/p>\n In a pre-match promo, Angelosetti\u00a0basically calls him a toothless keyboard warrior who can’t get it done in the ring. \u00a0He\u00a0also wheels out some of the nerd-baiting stuff from his original run as a jock bully heel,\u00a0and we’ll see some\u00a0more of those tendencies resurfacing as the year goes on – here, though, it’s a subtle aside while the focus is on\u00a0Condron’s story.<\/p>\n The match:<\/em> Condron has learned from his mistakes, and this time he’s come to wrestle properly. \u00a0Unexpectedly, he gets the upper hand, but spends too long posing for the crowd.\u00a0 Angelosetti makes a comeback, but\u00a0misses a\u00a0charge in the corner, and Condron pins him clean with a DDT in 7:59. \u00a0After Angelosetti is taken backstage, Condron\u00a0takes the mike and calls out Volgar. \u00a0He\u00a0gives Volgar\u00a0a parcel, which contains a microphone. \u00a0Volgar seems shaken. \u00a0Condron tells\u00a0him\u00a0that he’s supposed to be the much-loved “Juke Joint” Lucas Calhoun, and not a\u00a0generic henchman thug. \u00a0 Condron’s efforts over the last few shows have apparently succeeded in cracking Volgar’s brainwashing, as he unmasks and hugs Condron.<\/p>\n The upshot:<\/em>\u00a0An\u00a0upset win for Condron, and a solid match to boot, as it turns out that he really can hang with the established guys when he chooses to wrestle. \u00a0And his stable starts to build. \u00a0A very successful night for his character, all told. \u00a0As for\u00a0Volgar, he finally gets shot of his henchman gimmick, and we’ll see\u00a0him in his\u00a0new\/original persona on the next show. \u00a0(It’s a vast improvement.) \u00a0A very good segment\u00a0in terms of\u00a0advancing Condron’s long-term storyline in several dimensions.<\/p>\n 4. \u00a0Challenge of the Immortals: United Nations v Crown & Court.<\/strong><\/p>\n The back story:<\/em>\u00a0The only match on this show from the Challenge of the Immortals tournament. \u00a0The United Nations are on a middling two points, while Crown & Court languish in last place with zero –\u00a0largely because Princess Kimberlee\u00a0made the mistake of drafting the loveable, but perennially incompetent, Los Ice Creams. \u00a0This is a single match between\u00a0the team captains, Juan Francisco de Coronado and Princess Kimberlee.<\/p>\n The match:<\/em>\u00a0They do some comedy about who is more important, an Ecuadorian aristocrat or an American princess. \u00a0Kimber is still showing vestiges of her original arrogant heel gimmick, which she’ll quietly phase out during the\u00a0year. \u00a0Juan\u00a0takes control\u00a0with old-school heel trickery, and works on Kim’s\u00a0back. \u00a0But she kicks out of two Tiger Drivers, and reverses a third to the Alligator Clutch for the\u00a0clean pin in\u00a010:44. \u00a0Good stuff, both on the character level and the actual wrestling.<\/p>\n The upshot:<\/em>\u00a0Not entirely an upset win, since Kimber was already established as the strongest member of her team, but still a big victory\u00a0over an established rudo, finally getting\u00a0Crown & Court off the starting blocks. \u00a0They’re still in joint last place, but hey, baby steps. \u00a0Again, the growth of Kimber personally and Crown & Court in general is a year-long arc which will be coming the foreground by the winter, and this match plays into it perfectly; it was the time to throw them a win.<\/p>\n 5. \u00a0Blaster McMassive v. Dasher Hatfield<\/strong><\/p>\n The back story:<\/em>\u00a0Blaster is one of the current tag champions, and Dasher is one of the team they beat. \u00a0They haven’t\u00a0earned the points for\u00a0a\u00a0rematch yet. \u00a0At this point, a\u00a0Blaster singles match is a rarity, but they’re about to become more common. \u00a0Dasher has two points towards a Grand Championship shot, so a\u00a0win here will give him the third point that would normally allow him to challenge for the title… but\u00a0it’s not quite that simple, for reasons I’ll come to.<\/p>\n The match:<\/em>\u00a0Surprisingly, Dasher controls the first part of the match, as singles wrestling seems to have the big guy off his game. \u00a0Blaster resorts to hiding behind a\u00a0 The upshot:<\/em>\u00a0Dasher has the three points he needs for a title shot! \u00a0Except… he can’t claim the title shot tomorrow night, because both he and the champion are already booked in other matches.\u00a0 And\u00a0he can’t claim\u00a0it on the next show either, because he’s already\u00a0signed up to face the visiting Tommaso Ciampa. \u00a0A win over Ciampa will give him a redundant fourth point; a loss will send him back to square one before he ever gets the chance to\u00a0cash in\u00a0his points. \u00a0Obviously, all this is aiming to build up Dasher as a particularly strong challenger when he finally gets to the champion.<\/p>\n Worth getting?<\/strong> \u00a0It’s not exactly a starting point show, but then it’s not really intended as such. \u00a0The\u00a0second half of the card is\u00a0good stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the first of a series of mini-shows\u00a0held in the Wrestle Factory, Chikara’s\u00a0training school in Philadelphia. \u00a0They more or less replaced the\u00a0local shows that Chikara used to run under the banner “Wrestling Is Fun”. \u00a0WIF was, at least in part, a device to let Chikara\u00a0run\u00a0shows\u00a0during the period when the company\u00a0itself was supposedly shut down […]<\/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-3292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292","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=3292"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3309,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3292\/revisions\/3309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}plant<\/del> fan\u00a0to break Dasher’s momentum and take control. \u00a0(“Teamwork, fella!”, says Blaster appreciatively, before shoving the fan\u00a0to the ground.) \u00a0Dasher gets 2 from his Jackhammer, and Blaster decides to bail. \u00a0Dasher retrieves him and gives the fan a free shot along the way. \u00a0The referee decides to turn a blind eye. \u00a0Back in the ring, Dasher kicks out of the Black Hole Slam at 2, and reverses to a crucifix for the clean pin in\u00a015:50. \u00a0You could argue that Blaster is really deviating a bit far here from his normal monster heel persona, but I don’t really care, because he has a\u00a0ton of solo charisma as a smirking, overconfident bully, and\u00a0it’s a very good first outing for him in a main event singles match.<\/p>\n