Mike Quackenbush vs. Sara Del Rey, CHIKARA Small But Mighty (10/7/2011)

This was a Block A match in the 12 Large Summit, and effectively a block final.

The final 12 Large match I’m going to cover on here is a perfect match to show why this tournament was so cool. Beyond just being a first time match, it’s an incredibly fun styles clash that no other promotion probably would have ever thought to book. It’s two fully three dimensional characters being thrown at each other with something on the line, where the match once again feels less like two wrestlers plugged into a match and instead of like a match specifically that only these two could have had in this exact way. I would love to one day be able to sum up that sort of idea without it feeling clunky. Today is still not the day that that happens.

Very specifically though, this is a match that works because it feels exactly correct. Mike Quackenbush is a better technician than anyone left on the independent scene, but Del Rey is a Bryan student and experienced enough to make it really hard on him. She also knows Quackenbush well enough now after over a year and a half of BDK vs. CHIKARA tags that it’s very hard for Quack to wrestle the kind of match he usually does. Specifically to that point, Sara does not take Mike’s fancy shit initially and beats the crap out of him, forcing Quackenbush to get uncommonly rude (on screen) to take over. Quackenbush specifically kicks out Del Rey’s right knee and spends the match working on it. Del Rey fights him every step of the way, as stubborn as always, and it only makes Quack meaner and more aggressive in response. It’s perfect work from Quackenbush. He ties her up, kicks or blocks the knee out when it becomes too tough, and always gets just a little bit nastier. It’s a little weird to think of him as any kind of hero now, but he’s specifically very good here as walking that very thing tightrope. He’s never a bad guy in this match, but he does things in just the specifically correct sort of ways to ensure that you are getting behind Del Rey, while never losing what his character is. Perfect flagbearer/face of the company/measuring stick kind of work.

For her part, Sara Del Rey is wonderful. They’re both in a similar kind of spot as these more hard nosed veteran wrestlers and for as good as Quack is with all of the little touches to tell you that he’s still good, but that this is about Sara as a sympathetic figure, Del Rey is maybe even better about actually just being that sympathetic figure. For whatever reason, I have trouble sometimes cheering for a purely wholesome put-upon babyface, but because this match begins with Sara beating the hell out of Quack and because she’s always able to turn it around through superior striking, I’m able to much more easily buy into her as a sympathetic character when her knee is being attacked. Someone just getting owned does way less for me than someone being hindered like this, against someone they’ve shown they could handle otherwise. Being close enough to grab something only for someone to move it just out of reach is way more frustrating than something being wholly out of reach.

On a mechanical level, Del Rey is not perfect in this, but she is just great enough to keep the match afloat while Quackenbush tears up the leg. A little sell here and there, a big attention grabbing One Legged Bridge for all of you out there who like that sort of thing. The damage is always just enough to stop her from making the most of everything she can do to Quackenbush, and she can do pretty much anything to Quackenbush. For his part, everything he does goes back to the leg, without fail. Once Del Rey has missed her best shot because of the pain the Royal Butterfly Suplex put her bad leg in, Quack attacks with a little more ferocity than before. Del Rey survives the Lightning Lock, so Quackenbush adapts it into a Stretch Muffler too. After shaking up and down on the distorted and punished limb, Quackenbush finally makes Del Rey tap out.

Mike Quackenbush wins Block A and makes it to the finals of the 12 Large Summit. He does so through know-how and a more calculated application of science than he’s shown in some time. Most importantly, he does so while the Block B winner, Eddie Kingston, watches from commentary, resting up his own chronic knee injury. Quackenbush did this to someone with a perfectly healthy leg who made zero mistakes in the match. Imagine what happens against someone more prone to losing their cool and who already has a bad knee. A bad knee that’s existed for years, and that’s been the easiest way to break down Eddie Kingston in match after match after match since it started to bother him. It’s perfect. Not as fantastical or intricately plotted out as CHIKARA’s other greatest stories, but as well executed and interesting as any of them.

Watch this if you think you can.

It’s nothing all that complicated, a straight line from point A to point B. One competitor is stronger and younger, until something happens. Actions then have consequences. Incredibly tight and meaningful mechanical work. Cool stuff based around that, before finishing at the right time and with the best and biggest piece of offense in the match. It’s a formula, executed in such a way that makes it feel completely unformulaic. This was always going to be about science up against force, but they approach it from a totally different angle than I would have expected, and it’s even more interesting in reality than on paper as a result.

***1/2