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

The Colony (Fire Ant/Soldier Ant) vs. Team FIST (Chuck Taylor/Icarus), CHIKARA Aniversario Yang (5/24/2009)

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`

 

Fire Ant vs. Francis O’Rourke, Wrestling is Respect 4 (9/29/2013)

All-time dream match, provided you have exactly the same sort of deeply damaged brain as I do and have the right opinion that Fire Ant is The Greatest Babyface Of All Time based on a match from thirteen years ago.

Not all it could be, of course.

It’s fucking WRESTLING IS.

And yet, it’s Biff vs. Fire Ant. I don’t know, it’s hard to get too annoyed. I grew up with IWA Mid South shows where stars would show up and two-thirds ass it and seeing a dogshit AJ/Daniels hour broadway on a 2005 PWG show that they clearly didn’t actually want to do. Guys not doing their absolute best on smaller shows doesn’t really bother me, so long as there’s still something to enjoy, and these guys gave a lot of stuff in this to still enjoy. Biff beats the hell out of Our Hero, and Fire Ant’s still the best. Wonderful comebacks, great strikes, stellar looking offense in general, etc.

It’s not as big as it could be, but with seventeen people in the crowd, I don’t know that they could have summoned the atmosphere to make the most out of that anyways.

Biff wins with his Tazmission aka THE FRANK CRANK because this is basically CHIKARA and everyone in CHIKARA who first made a name outside of CHIKARA has to have some bullshit CHIKARA thing added onto them.

Again though, Biff Busick vs. Fire Ant! I simply cannot summon the energy or vitriol to stay mad about anything that happened, because finding out this happened at all feels like a gift from God.

***

Jay Lethal/Adam Cole/TJ Perkins vs. The Colony (Fire, Soldier, & Green Ant), ROH UNITY (4/28/2012)

HOOT AND A HALF.

It’s a pure sprint from start to finish and it all goes off without a hitch. The Colony is an all time great trio, but this is a little different for them, being like a pure Dragon System style mad dash to the finish line.

The three ROH guys get plugged in here and there. They’re fine, they hit their marks, but they could probably be any three competent wrestlers and this match would have been exactly as great as it was. The ROH team tries to play in the format and work as fast and loose as the Colony does, and they just can’t. They get distracted by legal man rules and lose track of things. TJ rolls up Fire Ant at the end, only for Green Ant to sneak in and roll them over, so Fire Ant’s cradle pins TJ Perkins.

It’s played off as close, but on a mechanical ass X’s and O’s level, The Colony have them at the end and always had them. The ROH team hangs in there, but they play a game to which they barely understand the rules and pay for it.

One of the most fun ROH matches of the year, not that anyone will ever or should ever go out of their way to see it besides the deeply disturbed and/or big Colony fans.

***

Chuck Taylor/Johnny Gargano vs. Fire Ant/Soldier Ant, CHIKARA Joshimania Night One (12/2/2011)

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.

***

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Fire Ant, CHIKARA Martyr Yourself to Caution (9/18/2011)

This was a Block B match in the 12 Large Summit to determine the first CHIKARA Grand Champion.

If not for, at very worst, the second greatest CHIKARA singles match of all time happening only two months later, this would be the best singles match to happen in CHIKARA in 2011.

Long time CHIKARA fans will know that while it’s a first time one on one encounter, it’s not a NEW pairing, but it’s also been something like four years since those Colony vs. BLK-OUT tags that put The Colony on the map. It’s been a long enough time with enough significant changes that it may as well have never happened before. It certainly feels like it’s never happened before. It definitely feels like a big deal. CHIKARA’s all time most endearing babyface wrestler takes on CHIKARA’s all time greatest character.

Beyond simply that it’s a first time match up between two exceptional wrestlers and two of the all time company MVPs, it’s an incredibly interesting match too. The crowd loves both men, and they could easily produce an exciting and cool fifty-fifty sort of a match without doing anything but wrestling. Instead, it being New York, Eddie Kingston takes offense to some people not totally loving him. He does some crowd work, gets very specifically mean with a few people, and gets more and more aggressive as the match goes on and Fire Ant doesn’t let him get away with things. The best stuff is about transformation, and Eddie Kingston initially taking this very lightly, before getting more and more pissed off is so much more interesting than another face-face match. Because while Eddie Kingston is a tremendous babyface, he’s just as good if not better when he get mean as hell.

It’s been a long enough time since he got properly mean as hell in CHIKARA, against someone this beloved, that it’s special again. It matters so much more now because it’s a rarity, relatively speaking, and the entire match feels bigger and more important for it.

Fire Ant is, once again, an all time great sympathetic character. He’s specifically expressive in the ways that all great full mask wrestlers are, but always aggressive fighting back too. Like in his effort against Jigsaw in July, there’s a very specific route that he could take, which he doesn’t for a while, only reinforcing what a good person he is. It stood out then, but against a guy like Eddie Kingston, who so willingly and gleefully gives in when he gets even just a little bit mad, it especially stands out. Eddie limps around early on on his historically crummy leg, but Fire Ant stays away from it. Even initially coming back, it’s not something he does. He fights back and beats the hell out of Eddie too, but he avoids the leg initially. Fire Ant isn’t the type to try and hurt anyone, but he’s also not ever going to take anybody’s shit and eventually the leg not only becomes a way to return fire and be mean to King in return, but also a pretty easy way to try and win the match. The result is that, like the Jigsaw match, it means a lot more when he’s pushed to a point where he does go after it. The difference is both that now he’s doing it against one of the great leg sellers in the history of wrestling and that it feels a little cathartic too after the way Eddie’s treated him. Jigsaw was sympathetic. It was hurt and there and Fire Ant did what he had to. The same is true here, but Eddie brings it on himself a whole lot more with the way he treats Fire Ant in the first half.

Comparatively, it’s another classic Eddie Kingston match where he only brings the problems upon himself by pushing it to that point, for the most part. It’s hard to say Fire Ant is wrong for going after the leg when he gets a chance to, because Eddie was such an overbearing prick to him in the first half. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel for Eddie. He pushed Fire Ant to the point to do something about it, but it’s still this constant nagging injury yet again being exploited. It’s a beautiful thing when a match this great can develop not in a way that suits the action, but in a way that suits these specific characters. It’s not a great match that happens to involve Eddie Kingston and Fire Ant, it is a great match that very specifically feels like only these two could have had this exact match.

Sadly, it’s not a perfect match, and like usual, it’s a booking concern.

Following a series of terrific Fire Ant crowd dives, Vin Gerard attacks Eddie Kingston’s knee while he’s down, before being ejected by security. It feels out of place within the match itself, as Fire Ant’s already fought back on his own and hurt Kingston with the dives, but also has no real value, because Eddie Kingston is able to fight through it eventually to win the match. It had no value in the match and only served to diminish (even just slightly) what they’d already accomplished, and as a feud, it’s not worth pursuing. This sole piece of booking is what holds the match back from being an all-time great CHIKARA match.

It’s such a shame too, because the third of the match following that is incredible. Fire Ant walks the tightrope perfectly by not immediately going for the leg but uses it as an anchor once and then as a last prayer when the Beach Break doesn’t work. The leg is damaged enough to slow King and to put some doubt into the match when he begins bombing out poor Fire Ant. Final minutes are some of the best in wrestling anywhere in the world at the time. Fire Ant delivers a master class on how to handle a one count kickout spot, feeling less performative than it does desperate and mad as hell, and the three or four big nearfalls are triumphant and hopeful, and never ever overwhelming. Eddie never lets up once he’s come back in the end though. Fire Ant survives the Backfist, a Backdrop Driver, but when he kicks out of the Sliding D, King follows up with the Northern Sliding D to knock him out for the win.

It feels very weird that he won, honestly. Following the way he wrestled this match and with the booking in the middle of it, and the way the knee was handled, it felt like a match that he probably should have lost. The match feels like it’s leading to a Fire Ant victory that never actually comes, and it’s a very un-CHIKARA like problem. CHIKARA, despite the bevy of behind the scenes issues, worked so well because it tended to punish characters for mistakes they made. The booking of the interference muddied those waters, before the match then lets Eddie escape learning any sort of lesson when he just wins anyways. It’s all a little off. Eddie Kingston rules so much because he’s very much one of us, so when he has something of a Superman performance like this, where he comes close to paying for his mistakes only for that lesson not to be learned after all, it stands out so much more. If I have a complaint, it’s this weird tonal issue there that the bad booking only exacerbates.

Still, this is quite an exceptional match before that. One of the great Eddie Kingston performances ever, marrying his gift for realistic and sympathetic knee selling with his gift for just being a difficult person in the first half. You get the face-face match this was always going to be, but in a much more interesting way, where both men are completely correct in the actions that they take, and you can side with whichever one you’d like to. They could have bombed each other out for fifteen minutes, and instead did something far truer to the characters involved and that carried so much more weight because of that, even with the very very weird booking choices in the final third.

The fact that they had something so easy and still made the choices they did is what makes this match so interesting, so great, and what makes a guy like Eddie Kingston one of the best wrestlers of all time. This is the best match of 2011 that nobody ever talks about, and it’s completely understandable. The booking is weird and it’s very easily hidden underneath the gigantic shadow cast by the other best Eddie Kingston match of 2011. Have a little faith though and seek this out.

***3/4

Jigsaw vs. Fire Ant, CHIKARA Chikarasaurus Rex: King of Sequel N1 (7/30/2011)

This was a Block B match in the 12 Large Summit to determine CHIKARA’s first Grand Champion.

It’s another one of those rare match ups that made the 12 Large Summit so special. It’s two of CHIKARA’s most popular, longest tenured, and all around best babyfaces, who rarely ever get to meet one on one. We saw in March that they had a lot of chemistry though, and this more than delivers on the promise of their interactions then.

The major story is that Jigsaw’s missed the tournament so far because of a bicep injury, and might be coming back prematurely to avoid being eliminated entirely. Fire Ant is as respectful of the arm as possible, but that doesn’t mean it’s not injured. As satisfying and engaging as quality limbwork can be, there’s something about a match like this that hits me in an even better place. As impressive as it is to pick a story and stick with it, it’s even more impressive to start out with a story and tell it this effectively while taking such a minimalist approach to that story. The arm matters in spite of Fire Ant being a good guy about it. Jigsaw is a one armed man for so much of the match after it’s innocuously reinjured early on, and it gives Fire Ant the openings he needs to counteract whatever Jigsaw has over him because of experience alone.

Jigsaw knows enough to keep Fire Ant from hitting any of his big signatures through experience and wit alone, but his arm provides the escape lever that Fire Ant needs to do the same. It’s at the end that Fire Ant finally does go after the arm, and they couldn’t have laid it out any better. By avoiding it for the first five-sixths or so of the match, Fire Ant is established as a good man. In going for it in the end, when the match has given him little other choice, he’s established not so much as an opportunist, but as someone willing to take what’s there. You feel for Jigsaw, but not at the expense of Fire Ant’s position as CHIKARA’s most likable babyface.

Jigsaw survives a cross armbreaker and short-arm scissors, so Fire Ant does something real cool and puts on a sort of short-arm scissors Kimura Lock instead, and Jigsaw has to surrender.

Nothing that’s going to blow anybody away, but a really smart and satisfying undercard affair from two guys who specialize in that sort of thing.

***

Team FIST (Icarus/Chuck Taylor/Johnny Gargano) vs. The Colony (Fire, Soldier, & Green Ant), CHIKARA King of Trios 2011 Night Three (4/17/2011)

This was the finals of the 2011 King of Trios tournament.

To get it out of the way first, the booking is not ideal. This isn’t entirely a “The Colony won too late” bit, because I understand some of those calls. The Colony weren’t a trio when King of Trios 2009 happened, and 2010’s BDK victory was necessary. The big one is that they should have won in 2008, given how colossal of a failure the big Lince Dorado push ultimately was. There’s also the issue of Claudio’s absence ruling the BDK out of the finals, and leaving Nu FIST as the only other heel act that’s halfway established and good enough to be a worthy foe for this moment. That presents the biggest issue of all, which is that this is a settled issue and has been for two years.

This isn’t a match without tense moments and a few dramatic twists and turns, but The Colony doesn’t have to get revenge on these guys like they do the BDK. That’s a wrong yet to be righted. This is a wrong that’s been righted before. It’s hard to muster up the same emotion, given that that entire element just about telegraphs the result. Given that and the idea that winning of King of Trios hardly feels like the same sort of accomplishment in 2011 that it would have years earlier, this doesn’t feel quite as big as I think they wanted it to.

Now that every problem with this match has been laid bare, this is a great match!

There are four great wrestlers in this match, one good one, and one bad one, and the other five are talented enough and helped out enough by clever layout that they don’t let John Boy drag the entire ship down with him while he fails to swim in deeper waters. Green Ant’s bad arm plays a part, and he’s already good enough to care about it for the duration of the match. Fire Ant The callbacks to the 2009 matches don’t quite hit their mark for the reasons discussed earlier, but they don’t waste a lot of time here and the big nearfalls wake up this graveyard of a crowd. It’s enough to cast any real doubt onto this thing, but they’re enough to make this good as hell along the way to what very obviously comes to pass. Icarus gets beaten with the mother of all Ant Hills.

It’s the third best ever FIST/Colony match ever to this point, at best, but it does everything it needs to do. Not the moment it should have been,

***

CHINA (aired 1/26/2015)

this actually is letterboxd now.

2015 is the best year of professional wrestling in the last decade, and this is one of the ten best things to be released in 2015. It’s the most charming little thing in the world, I rewatch it probably once a year. Clips of a great group of wrestlers on tour in a v stage land, cut in with little music videos set to Big Dust’s little songs, and some delightful interludes. Dudes being guys.  There are recurring bits (iced out panda), character growth (Greg getting more comfortable with the camera), a bunch of little side characters, all of it.

The best documentary of the 2010s?

fuck maybe

one of the purest forms of dudes rock style media out there in the wild

*****