This was a quarterfinal match in the 2011 King of Trios tournament.
Good and simple storytelling. Harada and Kotoge (yes, they were Osaka Pro before they were NOAH!) impressed on their CHIKARA trips in 2010, making it all the way to the semi finals in the 2010 King of Trios, along with fellow Osaka -> NOAH traveler Tadasuke, before losing to FIST rivals The Colony. On their way there, they embarrassed the then FIST trio of Icarus, Taylor, and Gran Akuma. Months later, Akuma would be ex-communicated and replaced by John Boy here.
The match doesn’t exactly do an expert job of working to that, outside of Ultimate Spider Jr. being worked over for a long period. It’s more of a pure spotfest, but that fits in with the skillsets of two-thirds of the match, Icarus and Big Dust notwithstanding. Everyone’s pretty great at that though, and the match could have been far worse than it was, if say, they allowed Johnny Gargano to do more than a few things. He’s pretty terrible in this, easily outworked by Spider Jr. and just about everyone else in the match and on the show, but he’s not allowed to affect this much, and the match carries him up with it like a small boat.
They get into a really delightful fireworks show at the end, before one of CHIKARA’s strongest attributes rears its head for the finish. Companies with less respect for details might use a match like this to try and legitimize John Boy with a clean win at the end of it all, to send everyone away happy, no matter that a heel team was winning. Instead, Chuck Taylor cuts off the flashing lights and loud noises by slingshotting through the ropes and rolling up Spider with a handful of tights to steal it. Great stuff. Tease out something everyone can be happy with it, and rip it away. This isn’t about cool stuff, this is about good and evil, and this particular sort of lower tier hatefully banal brand of evil has only grown stronger since the last meeting. Nu FIST, like Team FIST before them, are not to be admired or legitimized in any way. Actual skill is secondary to the fact that they are a rotten group of young men. They cheat because it’s easy, and do harm when they can, solely because they can.
You’ll get everything you want some day, but it’s not coming in the quarterfinals.
A great little match, and more importantly, a really great display of tournament wrestling.
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HANDWERK 