As with previous big CHIKARA event deep niche dream matches like Quackenbush/Kidd or, to a lesser extent, Quackenbush/Sabre Jr., this is another one of those matches that selects its audience before the bell even rings.
This is less one of those matches just because of the style, but also because of who they are. They get to that point in wildly different ways of course. Quackenbush having had a lot of exposure, but being a remarkably offputting weirdo of course, and Eagles simply being one of the most underrated professional wrestlers of the twenty first century, largely because her scene(s) often felt like they only occasionally had the opponents and situations to highlight her the way other all-world and all-decade level independent wrestling Ace figures in their primes had consistently.
So, to reiterate —
Barring those who are newer to both, or maybe like one or the other without too much exposure to the other half of the match, or who like grappling based matches in general but haven’t entirely branched out yet, you know ahead of time if this is going to be for you, probably.
For the most part, nobody is going to watch this match who isn’t already inclined to like it a whole lot. If you are some sort of boring water-brained weirdo who doesn’t like this sort of grappling-based riffing it out sort of pro wrestling for any number of shit headed reasons, this is not for you (and that includes this site too, probably). If you are going to disqualify a match because Quack is a big ol’ geek or because he’s a shithead in real life, or because CHIKARA hosts some real eye-rolling stuff at this point at other points on a show (including this one, look at the cagematch for it, I mean god damn), you know, you were probably never going to watch this to begin with.
I love that.
I love that for you, but way more importantly, I love that for me.
For seventeen or eighteen minutes, Quackenbush and Eagles wrestle the sort of match that primarily appeals to the sorts of people who will watch it sight unseen and for the people whose eyes lit up seeing it on a card or the people whose eyes will light up whenever and however they learn about it for the first time. Part of that is in terms of the science of the thing, as two masters of matches like this trade holds and bounce ideas off of each other, each of them cooler and a little meaner than the last in a display of a perfect sort of chain wrestling match that not only offers all of these wonderful displays (as well as a really great Quackenbush selling performance in the last third of the match), but that crafts something where they evolve and each one, and the match as a whole, builds on top of them.
The match, like those others, again strikes a light tone at first that becomes more and more serious, but also one that goes about it in a different way.
Eagles isn’t quite the secret villain that ZSJ was in 2017 or that Quackenbush is as a wrestler, and plays the match with a little more of an antagonistic approach as opposed to the SHIMMER Living Legend stuff of more recent years, but that fits into the framework just as well. The match comes off as Eagles being frustrated at a wrestler who is as good as her on the ground, but also too big to bully around with her size like she does whenever she winds up in that spot elsewhere, and eventually has to just find a way through it by being more careful and cautious, which appears to annoy her more than anything in a fascinating touch.
Madison finally gets get break when an especially mean STF seems to hurt Quackenbush’s leg, and he can never really get right again. It lets her begin throwing some bombs out there, and more than that, it both removes Quackenbush’s greatest defense, but also opens him up for Eagles on both ends of the matcch. He has trouble running, going up top takes just enough time that he never actually successfully hits anything off of the top rope, and more than anything else, Eagles has an easy point of attack that gives her the exact opening to win.
(Secretly, there’s a really fun kind of mirror of the Quackenbush match against another SHIMMER all-timer in Sara Del Rey from 2011 here, now seeing Quackenbush on the other end of an assault on the knee. I would never suggest this was intentional, of course. Quack/SDR was not exactly this ultra popular reference point, and as with anything in CHIKARA, if they meant to do it, they would have made it a point to mention it ten thousand times, but it’s a really neat little thing that happened.)
Robbed of his best skill, Quackenbush tries to evade, only for Madison Eagles to also figure that out too. She dives on his hurt leg when he tries to step around her, and goes back to the STF that started the entire thing. This time though, she’s in a much stronger position and yanks back even harder, resulting in a real satisfying tap out.
Quackenbush has yet another sensational weird little dream match, and in turn, Eagles gets to show for the second time this year that she’s one of the best wrestlers in the entire world. A match that thrills on a bunch of different levels, not only offering up a showcase of a bunch of inventive holds and neat ideas, but also getting to see the far more likeable wrestler solve a problem in real time, culminating with the joy of seeing someone not only get Quack, but to make him submit too.
It’s a success in every way that this match could possibly succeed.
One of the year’s best.
***1/3
HANDWERK 