Fire Ant vs. Vin Gerard, CHIKARA Young Lions Cup VI Night Three (6/15/2008)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor Shaq. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was the finals of the Young Lions Cup VI tournament.

Generally speaking, I think I do a good job of avoiding obvious bias.

Not always a perfect job, because it is sometimes unavoidable in a medium like pro wrestling where some things, be they matches or wrestlers, are just going to speak to one person more than others, but in large part, I have done my best. Either, I try to acknowledge a certain bias with a personal story beforehand or do my best to look past it and approach a match critically, if not both at the same time. Pobody is nerfect, I won’t say that I have always gotten it totally right, but like anyone who is good at this, I think it’s both important to acknowledge this and to always try to do better.

There are a few matches, in the pursuit of that, that I have always been a little bit afraid of covering — or even just watching again — with this in mind, and this specific Fire Ant vs. Vin Gerard match is ight near the top of that list, if not number one with a bullet.

I cannot be impartial about this match.

From the spring of 2007 through, maybe the fall of 2009, but in terms of the real intense stuff, spring 2007 through fall 2008, I was an absolute CHIKARA freak.

It began innocently enough, checking out the 2007 King of Trios because of the names involved, then watching the April 2007 show as it offered the Hero vs. Claudio match that ROH was waiting far too long to run at the same time, but it very quickly turned into something else, and I began digging back in the archives. After Benoit — and at a point in my life that was genuinely not cool, suffering both my first real mean teenage breakup on the same say that one of my favorite wrestlers killed himself and his family — CHIKARA filled a perfect gap for me, wrestling that could still be good, but that because of how light and easy and comedic it often was, never made me feel weird at the time in the way that so much concussion and danger heavy wrestling, like a Bryan vs. Nigel match for example, did in the aftermath of all that.

The zenith of that is probably this angle.

After being unmasked as Equinox and revealed to have been a training school drop out who faked being a luchador to get booked — imagine that, a skinny stupid little lying white guy underneath a CHIKARA mask — Gerard went on a reign of terror through a mastery of bullshit. He cost The Colony the King of Trios, fucked with poor Jimmy Olsen, brought in Bull Pain to beat up his enemies, and earlier in the tournament had Worker Ant injured, only for Fire Ant to take his place and get this far.

Naturally, in the big spot, Fire Ant positively beats his ass and takes the cup, as that magical CHIKARA drama once again provides a wonderful payoff and a truly wonderful moment of triumph.

It’s perfect stuff, in theory.

There is also the actual wrestling match itself, somewhat less fortunately.

Objectively, there are things you can pick at. The striking is not the best. Vin Gerard is not an especially great wrestler, and as his failed PWG weekend a few months later would show, really only succeeds because of the ire he can draw from the ultra committed regular CHIKARA crowds. Many things are not ultra clean. And in a problem I had with this match even as a hardcore freak when it happened, I never liked Gerard no-selling Fire Ant’s Burning Hammer. Not just because it is the fucking Burning Hammer, but mostly because Gerard is a cheap shot opportunist coward heel, who should not ever even have an inkling of fighting spirit in his body. If I didn’t like the rest of the match as much as I do, truly, it would ruin the rest of it for being such a profound misunderstanding of the character, of the story, and most of all, of the moment.

Fortunately, I do like the rest of it a lot.

The match is your classic CHIKARA blowoff, paying off a bunch of little things, and at the same time, providing a huge payoff. From Gerard’s trick of throwing the mask he used to wear at an opponent at the start failing to Fire Ant fighting through every other piece of bullshit, the match nails it. Fire Ant is also the perfect choice, because as his later work without the mask will show, he’s a generationally great babyface wrestler who can get sympathy out of anything and who has these truly exceptional comebacks too. Combine it with a real hot crowd in Hellertown, PA, and you get some real special wrestling, with moments like the genuine outpouring of support during the near count out, or his comeback, or especially the reaction at the end.

Gerard’s bullshit no-sell aside, Fire Ant scoops his stupid ass right up and wins the Young Lions Cup with the Beach Break to provide a real and genuine moment.

It is not perfect, and if I have to be entirely objective, it is not some all-timer either.

Not just because of the problems detailed above, or the clear lack of experience, but also a little bit because years removed from it even existing anymore (although I also believe CHIKARA *actually* died in 2013), the idea of it feels weirder and weirder, given everything we know now. All the same, it is an incredibly hard thing to do to watch something you loved this much at a formative age and to ever totally divorce yourself from it, or the feeling — even though only a shadow of it might still exist today — that it gave you the first time or two that you ever saw it.

Years removed, it’s easy to like this for what it is. Wildly imperfect, but with one very good wrestler at the helm, and existing as, more than anything else, a true victory for the long term booking of this small little regional promotion.

Essentially, it is one of the best CWF Mid Atlantic matches of the 2000s.

Which is to say that, in spite of all of these problems, I simply have too hard of a time disconnecting from it. Call it nostalgia or call me a big dumb mark who easily buys into things that so freely open up their heart to the viewing public, but even while now recognizing the many mechanical, foundational, etc. flaws within the match, there is some part of me that is wholly incapable of doing anything but still liking it a whole lot.

The all time greatest example of CHIKARA magic.

if i rated this accurately, 2008 me might travel back in time and want to fight (***1/4) (things in parentheses are secrets)

Fire Ant/Jigsaw/Nick Jackson/Player Dos/Helios/Green Ant/Frightmare/Cloudy vs. Soldier Ant/Mike Quackenbush/Matt Jackson/Player Uno/Lince Dorado/Carpenter Ant/Hallowicked/Cheech, CHIKARA Cibernético Increible (10/18/2009)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent contributor YB. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was the annual Torneo Cibernetico match.

For the uninitiated or simply less initiated, this is an eight vs. eight tag team match with a set entry order or batting order to make it more easily understood, but since many of you are less American and/or big nerds, it means you can only tag out to the person next in line (or they have to come in next if, under lucha tag rules, you leave the ring). There are eliminations through the usual methods, and should one team have more than one man left at the very end, the will have to fight until one is left.

It can — in that it has in the past and will in the future — result in some of the better and more memorable CHIKARA matches ever, such as 2005’s one-hundred plus minute one (loved it at the time, plan on never ever watching it again so present me can never find what I’m sure are a thousand flaws), 2010’s all-time CHIKARA bullshit masterpiece of the CHIKARA team vs. the BDK which was one of the best of that year, and 2012’s similarly great CHIKARA vs. ROH edition.

That is not entirely the case here.

More often than not, these matches have some unifying story, if not tying together most of the major ones in the company. Usually team captains who are feuding and a month away from meeting in a blow-off match at the end of the season. It doesn’t always lead to the greatest combinations at the end or winners, CHIKARA being CHIKARA and all, but there’s usually a guiding concept and a focus behind everything.

Except in 2009, when — as CHIKARA seemed to do most of the year, likely sensing the chance afforded by the sudden change in Ring of Honor — the match became more about simply delivering a great match.

There were two major problems with this.

Firstly, a little less impactfully, was the choice to split eight tag teams up in a parejas increibles style, which is both a novelty that wears off after about half the match, and also something that doesn’t feel explored nearly enough (the two might be related). I’m not really sure how it would work with the batting order unless the got a little boring with it, at least at the start, but I think that might have solved some of the issues this had with repetition, if the company was always so inclined to make this edition of the match a lighter and faster fireworks-based display.

Secondly, and more obviously, it’s a little long and not everyone is all that great in it. There’s a longer Lince Dorado vs. Frightmare section in the middle that’s real real average where the match first begins to lose momentum, but in general, they go too fast from the start for a near fifty minute thing, eliminations or not. That first third or first half or so is a lot of fun, a million moving parts and them all mostly working crisply, but when nothing develops out of that and it never really escalates into a higher level fireworks show, combined with some more flubs and miscues coming later in the match, something gets lost. There’s a moment when the go to a mini dive train when the pace and intensity begins to mount, only to then go back to a lighter medium-grade back and forth, and it feels like it never totally finds its footing on such a high level again. The match, again in a CHIKARA Cibernetico, also misuses its assets, opting to showcase the Pinkie Sanchez in disguise fraud Carpenter Ant as its winner, and never quite becomes all it can be as a result of these choices.

Peak CHIKARA (07-11) being what it was though, something about it still works.

Between the pace, the gimmick always keeping things somewhat fresh, a line up this good (at the time), and a construction that at least keeps enough quality pieces around until the end even if a loser idea is the focal point, there’s something entertaining happening far more often than there isn’t. The combinations of guys like the original ants, Hallowicked, Quack, Jigsaw, the Bucks when they were just fun little flip dealers, the same for a masked Ricochet, etc., are all really good, and if underachieving, it’s a match that is almost always offering up good wrestling, and that very often drifts into great wrestling, as poorly organized as it all is.

Essentially, a fireworks show that never really builds and lacks the grand finale of the great ones, but that still offers up enough bright lights in enough interesting patterns to be worth my while.

The match isn’t perfect. Above all, it might be an example that in a match like this, you have to turn it up or go somewhere at some point. All the same, there are no major infuriating sins, it’s a forty to fifty minute long match that never becomes excruciatingly long, and there’s just too much breezy and good wrestling in it.

It’s just a little too much fun not to like.

***1/5

Mike Quackenbush vs. Madison Eagles, CHIKARA King of Trios 2018 Night Three (9/2/2018)

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

 

Chuck Taylor vs Archibald Peck, CHIKARA It’s How You Play The Game (3/25/2012)

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.

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Mike Quackenbush, CHIKARA Johnny Kidd Invitational (6/18/2017)

This was a 1st Round match in the Johnny Kidd Invitational.

Similar to their first match over WrestleMania Weekend, as well as the matches that both Zack and Quackenbush have had with Johnny Kidd himself in recent years, this is a match that once again has a way of choosing its own viewing audience. Not to do the entire thing again, you can read it in the reviews linked above, but for any number of reasons down to style or neither man being the best person, nobody is watching this who isn’t going to love this exact sort of a match, and it frees both Sabre Jr. and Quackenbush up to once again have a lovely sort of bullshit wrestling nerd ass grappling contest.

The first match between these two is still very much the superior match.

In that match, they told effectively the same story but with a little more depth (Quack doesn’t lose this time because of a desperate overreach, but simply because Zack catches him, which is hardly the worst thing in the world, but simply not as dynamic) and with a significant amount more time in eight more minutes, and in front of what felt like a livelier crowd with the Mania Weekend bunch compared to the Wrestle Factory faithful, which at this point, is maybe at least one-third of a government watchlist.

Still, this is a great match in its own right.

One thing I did love here was that, through sheer circumstance or some deeper planning, the cordial nature of the first match — or at least the masks both of these sociopaths put on for the world at the start — is far less present. That’s not to say it is totally gone, the conceit of both wrestlers lies with those masks and that false cordiality, but it seems like the level of patience is so so so much lower on the second go around. I loved that. Absolutely ate that shit up. It especially makes sense given that that’s mostly down to Zack’s reactions here, as he is the meaner of the two by far (Quack has always been presented more as an aloof weirdo who gets mad when pushed or challenged as a technician, whereas Zack has repeatedly shown to be kind of innately mean spirited and bitter no matter what) and has already done this, and seems increasingly annoyed when (a) Quack keeps the bit up like they didn’t end the last match pissed at each other & (b) when he already beat Quackenbush.

Besides that neat little wrinkle though, it’s nothing all that new with these two.

A faster and lighter version of the first match, down to way everything kind of unfolds. Quackenbush has Zack’s measure on the ground, so he picks up the pace and relies on his speed to take Quackenbush down. He can’t get him on a cradle this time, so he reels off a snap Half Nelson Suplex with a bridge and gets Quackenbush that way.

More of an encore or a reimagining of the original than a direct sequel, but with these two, it’s just so nice to see them do this sort of thing again that it’s hard to get too bent out of shape about that. Any time the masters get back to work at a thing like this, it’s one more match like this in the world than there was before the bell, in a scene that badly needs changes of pace like these matches provide.

***

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Mike Quackenbush, CHIKARA Bad Wolf (4/1/2017)

WrestleMania Weekend 2017 gets its grapplefuck classic and the best match of the weekend, and surprisingly, it comes out of CHIKARA, meaning that not only is it an impressive match for this weekend, but the best match this company has put forth in nearly four years.

Like other matches like this — both in terms of the people involved and the style it’s wrestled in — there is sort of a self-selection to who watches it, and so I will rephrase and say this once again. The people who watch this are almost guaranteed to at least like it, and like me, most of you will probably love it. If you are some sort of boring water-brained weirdo who doesn’t like this sort of wrestling, 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, you know, you were probably never going to watch this to begin with. Why hell, you’re probably not even reading this review to begin with!

I love that.

I love that for you, but way more importantly, I love that for me.

This is one just for us fellas.

Mechanically, it is a god damned DELIGHT.

Zack and Quackenbush are incredible at this, and this is a match that thankfully sticks entirely within their wheelhouses. That’s not so much a worry with Quack, who has aged into knowing exactly what he’s great at and primarily only doing that, but for Zack who has been all over the place in his matches this weekend (the previously reviewed ACH match, one of the worst EVOLVE title matches ever against Big Mike on 3/31, will have a good match against Mark Haskins later in the day), it’s a refreshing show of control, whether or not that decision comes from him or not. The match sticks almost entirely to grappling and it is so cool. Brand new holds, sick counters and transitions, fighting on just about everything, and a real struggle at all times. Not only over each hold individually, but a struggle to really establish anything, and to really have any sort of prolonged control over any direction this winds up going.

That struggle isn’t just something expressed mechanically, but it becomes part of the story of the thing too, two wrestlers with a lot in common not only trying to outdo each other, but having to reckon with these horrible funhouse mirror versions of themselves.

Both of these guys are kind of the same in a lot of aspects. They know a thousand different holds and counters, they were likely heroes to different generations of fans who liked a lot of the same stuff before accusations or total radio silence about accusations made that feel weird in retrospect, and primarily, they’re both skinny grapplers who are just sort of unlikeable and hiding extraordinarily petty dark sides within whenever anyone outdoes them. Zack moreso than Quackenbush (not entirely for xenophobic reasons but when comparing different sorts of aloof nerds who are actually extraordinarily petty just barely below the surface, a union jack does help make that decision clearer, plus Quackenbush is able to sell panic and frustration and other emotions in a more sympathetic way than Zack is often times), but it’s a quality that comes pouring out of both men.

The joy of this match is that it is wrestling as a conversation.

Part of being wildly similar sort of psychotic freaks is that both Zack and Quack start with a smile and some talk, but absolutely none of it seems sincere at all. They joke around with each other talking about their holds and counters, one-upping each other, and it’s all done with a smile, but it so phony in the best possible way. They always look unbelievably pissed off when they’re not looking at each other or stuck in holds that give them more trouble than they’d have against anyone else, before putting those bullshit grins back on their face when they look at each other again, and it is genuinely so interesting. Usually, the play with one of these wrestlers is to have one of them slowly revealed as false against another wrestler like this, like the Gresham/Sabre Jr. trilogy, or any number of 2010s Quackenbush matches, but pairing two wrestlers like this against each other is such a novel concept. Type against type doesn’t often work like you’d think, except in a circumstance like this when it absolutely does, and nothing is like it.

It takes almost nothing for the veneer to slip, and when it does, it’s beautiful.

There’s not some single point when a switch flips here. It’s not Zack’s first uppercut of Quack’s hard slap in response, it’s not a surprise German Suplex from Quackenbush late in the match, or anything so obvious. The holds get meaner and tighter and more complex as the top this mentality leads them to less friendly places, the counters come harder, strikes become a little more plentiful, and at some point in that process, the phony niceness is simply gone.

Something else about this that rules is that absolutely nothing is solved.

Nobody really outwrestles the other here, at least not in the ways that they clearly want to. Zack Sabre Jr. learns absolutely nothing when Quack schools him here and there. Quack is never really outdone by the younger grappler either. Things get more intense, and all that really comes out of this are minor differences that aren’t inherently advantages. Zack Sabre Jr. is better at getting into his stock holds than Quackenbush is, but Quackenbush is much better at improvising, performing grappling alchemy and pulling new things out of thin air. Neither is shown to be a more important or stronger skill, so much as it’s just a difference in the games of the two.

In the end, Zack Sabre Jr. wins not because he ever outdid the old man or because of his ability to get to His Stuff easier, but simply because Quackenbush made a mistake that he didn’t. In turning the heat up, Quackenbush overreaches and takes a risk he’s not quite so adept at. He falls off of a springboard, barely recovers, and hits an angry back senton followed by a lift for a big bomb that feels like an attempt to end the match quick now that he’s finally thrown off. Zack Sabre Jr. reads the response entirely correctly, slips out, and grabs a quick European Clutch for the win.

Neither man throws the other off, as they spent so much of the match trying to do, and instead it’s Quackenbush’s own annoyance at his totally minor mistake that costs him, which feels absolutely perfect.

The way it happens is very much unplanned, but it fits the match so much better than anything they could ever dream up. In a largely even contest, it’ a lack of recent ring time that costs Quackenbush, both in his minor slip and his overreaction to it. Zack Sabre Jr. is maybe not quite as skilled, but in a match like this, sometimes it’s just about who avoids that unforced error. It’s not the happiest ending, but it does feel like the most true to life one, which for a Zack Sabre Jr. match, may be the most stunning thing of all.

On a weekend full of otherwise largely disappointing Zack Sabre Jr. matches, a much better wrestler manages to reach in and pulls out one of the best Zack Sabre Jr. matches of his entire peak. Something close to the ideal version of a thing, and even if it feels like they maybe have an even better match in them, you don’t want to chance

***1/2

Mike Quackenbush vs. Drew Gulak, CHIKARA Supremacy (12/3/2016)

Even if he spent most of his tenure over the last eleven years here under another identity, it’s Drew Gulak paying farewell to CHIKARA, and it’s a momentous occasion.

Given that most of Quack’s 2010s post-full time schedule work are these lighthearted grappling and science based affairs against the likes of a Johnny Saint or Billy Roc or Zack Sabre Jr. it seemed obvious that Gulak would it into that sort of a match. Gulak’s as much of a grapple-fuck style guy as any of them, he works the style he does, and he’s one of the more famous and accomplished CHIKARA Wrestle Factory graduates at that. If he was going to go out against Quack, you’d think it would be another version of those matches one Gulak never really got to have on this level.

To the utmost credit of both men, that’s not what happened at all.

Certainly, the match has a lot to offer in that regard. A great deal of this is conducted on the ground, and it is what you’d expect for two of the better technicians of the century to date. It’s smooth, it’s gritty (Quack never got enough credit for the way he would inject some struggle into things, largely because he also made many of the worst facial expressions in the world), and there’s a great sense of escalation to what they do off of their feet.

Beautifully though, this is a far meaner and nastier match than I would have expected.

Tempers flare early on when both men get a little more intense by going for the knees, shots get thrown and in particular to Quackenbush’s notoriously hurt back, and the match never really becomes purely scientific again.

It is a thousand percent to this match’s benefit.

Gulak and Quackenbush are both at their best when they abandon a lot of the pretense and get shitty and petty with opponents, so naturally, it is a perfect fit when they decide to do that to each other. Every shot is loud as hell, and they’re all thrown with an extra sense of pettiness to it. A long relationship breaking down in to this in a moment of pressure, Gulak being as he’s always been under his own name, and Quackenbush’s manners once again disintegrating under the slightest hint of trouble.

When the match gets meaner, it gets MEANER. Elbows and clubs to the back and little wrenches on the knees. There’s a switch that flips around halfway through here, and while that switch flicks gradually in the other direction, it flicks all the same. Respect vanishes, there’s so much more force and intensity in every single thing that happens from that moment on. Even cradles and roll up trap counters have an increased urgency and desperation to them, which is the most impressive thing of all. “Everything” doesn’t just mean the real hard shots, the stuff that it’s easy to make feel spirited and mean, it means all of the smaller and more miniscule stuff too.

In the end, Quackenbush wastes too much time, never quite having the killer instinct Gulak does, and the Quackendriver I is dropped out of and into the Gulock for the win. Not the absolute best they could have done maybe, but an absolutely perfect finish. Gulak wins because he has what Quackenbush never one hundred percent developed, finally beating his trainer because he’ll grab the biggest thing he’s got when the moment comes, rather than showing off or simply being casually rude like Quackenbush.

A lovely departure, and more of a surprising one than a fitting one, bringing EVOLVE to CHIKARA for the night. Yet another more hidden gem out of Gulak’s 2016, and out of Quackenbush’s career at large.

***1/4

Drew Gulak vs. Dasher Hatfield, CHIKARA When Nature Calls (7/23/2016)

Great match.

I’m not going to sell anyone on a more minor 2016 CHIKARA match (this is a main event, but it’s not like flashy or anything), but this was a lot of fun, if you’re predisposed to learn about a 20:00+ Drew Gulak vs. Dasher Hatfield match and have your interest piqued.

While let down significantly by all the trappings (low crowd energy, solo commentary by Mike Quackenbush) of Zombie CHIKARA, it’s still Gulak and Hatfield largely riffing it out on the ground and some on their feet for twenty minutes or more, and that’s a real appealing sort of a thing. There’s no real throughline to be found in the thing, but everything that happens in the match is (a) good as hell & (b) treated as important. Not an end of the year list match, not even the sort of thing Gulak even needs in a year like 2016 to make any sort of case for himself, but a real delight for a certain sort of wrestling fan.

(it’s me. i am that wrestling fan. maybe you are also.)

A very good professional wrestling match.

***

Mike Quackenbush vs. Johnny Kidd, CHIKARA Aniversario: Chamber of Secrets (5/28/2016)

This was a World of Sport Rules match.

(It is also announced as Kidd’s final match by the ring announcer, but as anyone who can look at Cagematch can tell you, that is patently untrue. There was a retirement tour of sorts in 2016, but he would be back within eighteen months. Pro wrestling, baby.)

A match this is sort of self-selecting in terms of viewership in a way that I really respect.

For the most part, nobody is going to watch this match who won’t like it.

You know ahead of time, in most cases, if this is going to be for you. If you are some sort of boring water-brained weirdo who doesn’t like this sort of 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, 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.

What we have as a result is a match for the true maniacs.

Twenty four minutes of the god damned sweet science. Sick reversals, cool holds, fun little bits that let in some entertainment but without it ever overpowering the contest. A slow and steady escalation of pace and intensity, furthered in tiny little ways, but all ones that matter. Little bits of storytelling like Kidd knowing more, but Quack being a little younger and a lot quicker. Nothing that shouts that at you, but again, there’s a kind of self-selection at play I think, where anyone who really needed that to be done likely wouldn’t have loved this match anyways. What matters is that the little things telling these small stories all matter, each finish in the match is about these ideas. Kidd’s first fall comes from him getting a little meaner to open Quack up for a pin, and Quack’s comes from shrugging off the respect and picking up the pace, outmaneuvering the old man before going into his own. It’s wonderful. It’s easy and cool and fun as hell.

In the end, time runs out, and the clock stays unbeaten.

For Kidd, the time runs out in his attempt to beat Quack for the “last” time. Too long is spent warming Quack up so he can bring up the intensity in the back half, unable to get him hot and bothered like he did to Zack Sabre Jr. in a similar match the year before. For Quack, time runs out in his attempt to beat Kidd after failing to in a similar match seven years prior in Germany. He’s a little less starstruck and a little more ready, looking more and more like he’s going to win as the match unfurls itself, but without enough time to effectively close in on a third fall that seems like a guarantee to fall in his direction.

There isn’t enough time to do everything that they ever wanted to do, but thankfully more than enough to do everything everyone else needed them to do.

One of the best matches of the year, provided you’re right for it.

***1/2

Silver Ant vs. Eddie Kingston, CHIKARA Evil Ways (2/28/2016)

Eddie Kingston comes into this match with a kinesio-taped up and injured neck from an angle the night before. You could honestly tell me anything and I would believe it and then also forget about it entirely. CHIKARA never opened again in my mind, any angles or stories that happen are to be regarded with an extremely suspicious eye.

ANYWAYS.

The point here is that Eddie comes in hurt, and nobody in wrestling this century, save a few Kawada performances, plays a better wounded animal than Eddie Kingston.

Commonly noted fortes of Eddie Kingston as a seller are the knee injury and the head injury. I’ve gone so far as to call Eddie Kingston one of the best knee sellers in the entire history of wrestling, I’m not alone in that, and I don’t and won’t ever take it back. He also sells a concussion better than almost anyone else in the world. His last match against Silver Ant (then Green Ant) asked him to sell a hand, and it was one of my favorite CHIKARA matches of the entire decade.

This match asks something slightly different of him in selling the neck, but predictably, Eddie Kingston does just as remarkable a job with that as anything else. Eddie seems to be another adherent to that Bret Hart school of thought, selling a general stiffness or tightness when moving rather than rolling around in pain. He also dips his toe into the old nerve damage selling pool, which is especially effective here, registering the pain it takes to throw a chop or an elbow here or there. A match like this, all about one injury, can sometimes grow grating as a result of repetition, but part of the genius of Kingston is the way he switches between a few different ways to communicate the pain he’s in. It keeps the match interesting while not only communicating the larger story, but it also has the effect of making Kingston all the more sympathetic. If someone’s just holding their neck a lot, that sucks, but there are limits. What Eddie does is not only that, but show the way it impacts his offense and his mobility as well, creating a much fuller and more well-rounded picture of all the ways in which this injury is affecting him, making it so much easier to find one’s self just a little more invested.

Once more, Eddie Kingston sells in vibrant color and in 3D.

Silver Ant is something of a passenger here, but that undercuts how great he is too. In a strictly mechanical sense, everything he does is very cool. His strikes all land with the sort of smacks and thuds you hope for every time, his holds are all great, but there’s more to it than just that. It’s a hard thing to do, being in a face/face match like this and not getting swept up by the sympathetic nature of Kingston’s performance. Silver Ant has a fine line to walk here, being both likeable himself, but also delivering the hurt, and he does a really great job. He gets fired up, really full of Hot Sauce (look how smart i am), when Eddie begins to come back and swing for the fences with his narrow window, and makes sure to shut it down real emphatically.

It’s the sort of match that would do a lot for someone, has everyone watching this not already known by now and known for years how great Silver Ant actually is. I doubt too much thought was really put into this ten minute opening match, it could have been anyone, but I’m real glad that Silver Ant got to be the one here, one of the few CHIKARA guys left who can deliver both the story elements necessitated by this company, but also deliver a match worth watching years later.

At the end, the damage is too much, and Eddie winds up passing out in a Triangle Choke, with Silver specifically grabbing onto his back foot and pulling it down into the hurt neck.

Maybe not all it can be, especially when one considers the man under that mask, but a thrilling ten minute opener. An indictment on CHIKARA that it wasn’t even more than that, but there are a thousand other indictments of CHIKARA out there already. As it is, a real hidden gem here worth carving out ten minutes here or there for.

***