It’s another one of the Black Friday Sale commissions, this time from Eamonn. You too can pay me to write about wrestling matches and/or other media I suppose over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. That’s $5 per match, and a discussion in the DMs on anything more (or less?) than that.
(for the record — I feel less gross about this as while Icarus was named in Speaking Out, CHIKARA is dead, and nobody is still booking him and either acting like it never happened or is something that can be moved on from with a quarter-hearted apology post. Even before that, it’s a career that wasn’t going anywhere at all. It’s not the same as the last match with these sorts of problems that I was paid to review.)
This was a Masks vs. Hair match.
It’s the end of a great little few month feud for CHIKARA and the highlight of one of their best years ever. Team FIST of Taylor, Gran Akuma, and Icarus had previously ended the career of poor Worker Ant in February in a match that kept The Colony out of King of Trios, won said King of Trios the next month with a stunning Taylor submission victory over Bryan Danielson, and then spent April in a series of altercations between the teams in which they tried to also unmask the two remaining Colony members. It’s a feud that easily probably could have lasted another few months, but CHIKARA in 2009 was experimenting in a lot of ways and one of them was trying to end a feud like this while it was white hot.
Given how enduringly great this is, it’s hard to fault the decision.
There’s a certain sort of CHIKARA match that I think many of you know if if you’ve watched the promotion for any length of time, or even paid attention to it in a tertiary sort of a way. Matches fought between less experienced wrestlers and colorful characters, typically full of weird little choices and errors both in execution and construction. However, what they lack in a mechanical sense is made up for by an overwhelming sense of heart. For all the weaknesses, they’re still matches with such a strong emotional core, often paying off long running themes and stories in wholly satisfying ways. It’s commonly seen in big matches like the Icarus/Shane Storm 2005 YLC final or apuestas matches like Jigsaw/Icarus, Akuma/Shane Storm, and Tim Donst/Hydra, to name a few. The best and perhaps most widely heralded match of this genre is the famous Fire Ant vs. Vin Gerard match from 2008 Young Lions Cup, in which an unbelievable emotional climax happened, but not without some mechanical faults and real Choices (a Burning Hammer no-sell) thrown in there as well.
This is one of those matches.
I didn’t remember it being like that, but there’s a lot to not love here. Icarus and Soldier Ant opening the match doing fighting spirit spots off of German Suplexes, Icarus like in general, execution throughout that’s hardly perfect outside of all-time great Fire Ant, and a somewhat odd ending as Fire Ant simply repeats the Beach Break again after a kick out to win. There’s also a big piledriver spot off the apron through the table that someone comes back from, which is handled JUST well enough to be fine, but is also the sort of thing I’m just never going to love. Couple that with a CHIKARA crowd that’s always on the border between neat and unbearable landing more on the latter here with the “HOLY POOP” chant (see, they can’t swear!) and rooting on Fire Ant with a cutesy “HE’S ON FIRE” chant.
However, there’s still something about this that still works.
It would be an easy match to dismiss if it wasn’t also so great.
Of course, they play those old CHIKARA hits, and they have very rarely been played as triumphantly as they are here.
To echo the injury to Worker Ant months prior, Taylor takes Soldier Ant out of the match early on with an Awful Waffle off the apron through the table. Fire Ant survives a lot without it ever quite reaching a point of parody, including the low blow that won one of their previous matches as well and Chuck’s Cross Crab that made even the greatest of all time surrender. Soldier Ant is able to come back and just barely make a few key saves, and take out the interfering Akuma. While not my favorite thing, his comeback is largely limited to a few moves and then cutting off Icarus outside with maybe his best dive ever, this absolutely furious saluting elbow suicida. The new Green Ant is joined by a debuting Carpenter Ant to keep Akuma back, and Fire Ant is able to go on yet another roll in the end. Taylor survives one Beach Break, but Fire lands a sliding kick, and hits a second for the win.
Taylor and Icarus sit while they’re shaved bald, and they look like the angriest and most humiliated people in the world in that moment.
It’s perfect.
Independent of any of the wonderful story elements or emotionally satisfying payoffs/developments, they also do a lot right mechanically to enhance what works about it on paper. It’s a match wrestled at a fairly blistering pace and with very few missteps. It’s one of those stunningly confident matches that mostly makes that confidence look earned. There’s very little time wasted at all getting right into it and it’s not a match that ever feels as though they’re trying to fill time until [x]. Fire Ant is particularly great and, you guessed it, a real house of his first name when he’s able to come back. Even before that, there’s a real urgency to the offense of the Team FIST duo, particularly with some of the Taylor vs. Fire Ant exchanges. Their run against each other at the end is particularly urgent and desperate and in spite of the issue with the finishing choice itself, they’re really really tremendous together. (There’s not too much point praising Icarus, but he’s a very capable participant in this and shows why, once upon a time, it was very fun to troll people on a message board by claiming Icarus was better than their favorite wrestler(s).) In general when one looks at this from a little farther back, everyone in this is the best versions of themselves that exists. Two real dirtbags playing it perfectly and making their downfall feel all the more thrilling, and yet another killer performance from all-time great babyface Fire Ant.
Despite all the flaws, like always, it’s one of those matches that just sort of comes together in a perfect moment, creating the best version of itself that could ever exist.
The CHIKARA Magic, in action.
Sometimes you do, in fact, have to hand it to them.
***1/2`
HANDWERK 