This was another commissioned review from frequent contributor Eamonn, as the snake turns back around. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out.
Dirty little secret time.
Come in close, I’m gonna whisper in your ear through text.
I’ve never really loved this match.
Put the emphasis there on “loved”, because I like it a whole lot, but being in the middle on this one has always felt like a real solitary island to be on..
For reasons that escape me, this match has always seemed to have a special place in the hearts of people who started watching CHIKARA a few years after me, or some crossover appeal with people who never did but were highly susceptible to its many charms. As someone who was starting to get out of CHIKARA before the whole Marchie Archie thing really got going, it’s always been act I liked more than loved (Handsome and Mysterious Stranger aside). It’s cute, it’s funny sometimes, but it’s not like, Los Ice Creams or Hydra, or whatever. I’ve never felt for it like that. I watched it around when it happened, thought nothing of it until whenever it achieved this status or maybe whenever I noticed it had achieved that status, and that’s always sort of confused me. A post-peak CHIKARA thing through and through.
This match is sort of a great display of why I feel like that, as they have something with some promise in Archie being depressed all match following the breakup with band girl Veronica (a wonderful longer term story that does not affect this match too much), and Chuck playing with him to liven his spirits because it’s no fun beating him like this. Unfortunately, they forget that somewhere along the way and do other bits instead, and it kind of loses this narrative focus. You can chart it together if this is the sort of thing you want to spend your time fanwanking, but when I watch it, it just doesn’t really feel like that, as the match ends on a bit (albeit a stellar one) not really related to the other ones at all. The problem I have with it, or rather, the thing that stops me from LOVING this so much as appreciating it as a nice little thing, is more that it never really comes together as anything more than a collection of bits, and certainly as not some would-be contender for comedy match of the decade, as a different Chuck Taylor match will have wrapped up nearly four years after this.
Still, as far as collections of bits go, this is at least a collection of some pretty good bits.
Obviously, there is the painting stuff everybody knows about. They wander over to the lovely paintings on the wall of the venue, after Chuck throws Archie into the painting after shouting that he’s going to drown him, thinking the painting was a window to the outside, and pose for pictures in front of them. It’s cute and funny, they’re both real likeable guys with a certain charisma and it works, especially as the payoff is Big Dust obviously betraying Archie after they pose for one together.
What they go for with the finish is another one of the louder bits, so to speak, a big silly idea, as Archie stands up on the top rope but his head moves a ceiling tile up and he pretends that he’s stuck and can’t move, until Chuck shakes him loose by shoving Bryce into the ropes, setting up a hanging Sole Food to win. Like the painting thing, it’s big and broad, but it works because of the natural charm of the two, and because, admittedly, it is a very good little bit.
What I like so much more though are the less obvious and quieter bits here.
The real gems here are things like Peck crying in the corner or Big Dust’s arms to start the match, Dust taking pity and playing dead on a delayed shoulderblock bump or faking losing a test of strength, getting Bryce and Chuck to fight each other, or the way Chuck shouts “KARATE CHOP” or “THIS PLACE IS HAUNTED”, the latter after a failed Peck springboard, which comes back around to a success later in the match. Wrestlers shouting things to be funny and crowd work in the place of other wrestling is the sort of thing that sucks so much in most independent wrestling, but Chuck Taylor is one of the few to ever do it well (also Kevin Steen, Bryan Danielson when it turned vicious, probably a few others), and to make it into a manic kind of endearing sort of a thing. Archie’s thing is funny enough, but it’s the total commitment of Chuck Taylor in a match like this in moments big and small (but especially small) that makes this so much fun.
In these better moments, the match effectively becomes the BETTER OFF DEAD (1985) of professional wrestling, with Chuck Taylor as the hot foreign exchange student who knows how to fix cars and tries to bully a recently dumped loser protagonist into being better. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end in a ski race, but the movies are better for a reason.
HANDWERK 