This was for Nu FIST/Ronin’s CHIKARA Campeonatos Des Parejas.
Fauxhawk era John Boy is particularly upsetting, but FIST vs. Colony delivers in spite of him. Chuck’s practiced with these guys to the point that everything they do together has a little extra polish to it. Chuck’s better against Fire and Soldier than he is against most other wrestlers.
Still, Johnny Gargano is in this match, so it’s got quite the floor on it. CHIKARA had a way of getting the best out of some bad wrestlers though, and this is streamlined as effectively as possible. Dustin also takes most of the load on his shoulders, leaving Gargano with the job of only hitting his little bits and then getting out of there and letting the professionals work.
The match is interesting too because it takes the idea of a match splitting up traditionally into thirds (shine or back and forth or whatever/control work/finishing run) and divides the falls up along those lines. Fake/Nu FIST takes the first fall early through pure chicanery, and it’s a transition to control. That work in command of Soldier Ant lasts for the entire second fall and the second fall only. Soldier Ant cradles Big Dust to even the match up, and Fire Ant’s entry to start the final fall is the start of the finishing run. That’s not the best work they can do (and this is where John Boy kind of hamstrings everyone else around him, because he is clearly not as good as the others), but it picks up in the final moments when Fire Ant makes it a leg selling match. It’s the sort of thing that could have added a lot to the entire match if it was introduced earlier, but it’s still magnificent work.
Big Dust beats the third greatest babyface of all time with the Killer Crab that beat the second once upon a time.
Nothing anybody needs to see, but full transparency, I watched this solely to help with Fire Ant’s top 25 WOTY case so it was entirely worth my time. He’s gonna make it, especially when he can almost single handedly make a John Gargano match outside of a 2013-16 peak (by peak, i mean “not bad actually somehow wtf???”) not total dogshit. The most underrated wrestler of the decade.
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HANDWERK 