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

Nightmare Warriors (Hallowicked/Frightmare/Silver Ant) vs. Team AAA (Aero Star/Drago/Fenix), CHIKARA King of Trios 2015 Night Two (9/5/2015)

This was a quarterfinal match in the 2015 King of Trios tournament.

Hallowicked and Frightmare EVIL (the moral state, not the wrestler) now, and they’ve dragged poor Silver Ant slowly down with them after they’ve been forced to team together for some reason. It’s CHIKARA bullshit. I don’t actually know. I lost track around 2012ish and zombie CHIKARA rarely offers anywhere near the quality of wrestling that inspired me to watch in spite of all of the goofy comic book nonsense that I don’t love, so I’m not even going to pretend to know.

That’s not the point though.

Once again, the Lucha Underground team shines far more in CHIKARA than in any other U.S. independent environment. Things get a little dance fighty with Frightmare, but Hallowicked and Silver Ant are both phenomenal bases for all of the wilder impulses that the outside stars come up with. Beyond that, Silver Ant especially shines when the match asks them to try and contain the heroes, as every single thing he does looks tremendous and always fits into the perfect place in the match. Hallowicked isn’t quite that, and sadly is a guy who seems to go as CHIKARA goes (great from 2005-2013ish, more average after that). That isn’t to say he’s bad here, but there’s a real kind of baseline feeling to everything he does, especially compared to everything he’s proven able of in the past. All very basic, which is less offensive here than in a title match, both because the match calls for it and because Silver Ant is so great at leading the match for their side.

For the second time in as many days, the point is made that the crazier flying feels much more uproarious when there’s a sense of victory to it happening in the first place. The stuff Drago, Aero Star, and Fenix can do will always be phenomenal but when they have to fight to get it off against bigger guys who want very much for the match not to devolve into a fireworks show, the match devolving into a fireworks show in and of itself feels like a victory, instead of having something that begins like that and never wavers in tone or pace for the next ten or twenty minutes or whatever. Styles make fights, and the success of a match like this compared to the matches had by the LU contingent elsewhere on the independents is proof of that.

The CHIKARA guys are once again at a near total loss when they begin to get bombed out from the sky above. Silver Ant gets hit by an Aero Star outside-in middle rope vault over the top into a splash, followed by Fenix’s gorgeous rope walk springboard 450 Splash, and that’s that.

Another super fun outing from the Temple exiles in CHIKARA, clearly at home in a place just as evil.

***

Hallowicked vs. Francis O’Rourke, WIA Supremacy (7/7/2013)

Sadly, the mat is not quite so wet this time.

This is perhaps not THE VERY BEST that these two can do against each other but it’s a sub fifteen minute match where every moment of the thing is really really good at minimum. Hard grappling, real mean striking, offense that all flowed perfectly and made sense, the whole works. The sort of match you’d turn on after reading “Hallowicked vs. Biff Busick” on a match listing somewhere and be incredibly satisfied with in the end. A match up with an incredibly high floor, so even a match like this that flies closer to floor than ceiling still feels great.

Biff wins with a Tazmission that’s dubbed THE FRANK CRANK.

Even while pretending to be dead, CHIKARA finds a way to get its hands on everything and make it just a little sillier for no real reason. Everybody always has to be this fucking CHIKARA version of themselves, it’s a real pleasure that Biff got out of this sort of sphere before the company actually made its proper comeback in mid 2014 and he got dragged into being mind controlled by a roving gang of frog birds from some place that only exists in a comic book.

Anyways, it’s Biff vs. Hallowicked, it doesn’t disappoint.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Hallowicked, CHIKARA The Shoulder of Pallas (4/6/2013)

This was for CHIKARA’s Grand Championship.

These two had one of the best feuds of the year in 2007, but outside of the brief Incoherence vs. Roughnecks feud in 2008-9 (which focused much more on Brodie Lee vs. Hallowicked), they’ve barely touched since then. Kingston’s reinvention since then as the blue collar face of the company gives this an entirely new feeling, so it may as well be a first time ever match. The value of booking with even just a little care is that you can just throw this out in a semi-main on a big show without a ton of build, and it still feels like a big deal.

It helps that Eddie Kingston recently hurt his right hand and wrist and has a soft cast on too from injuring a tendon punching a mirror. Real relatable stuff, that CHIKARA adapted and turned into a bigger deal and part of the story of King slowly losing his way and being corrupted by the responsibility of the Grand Title. Either way, know that I love that shit. Read the masthead.

It’s definitely limited and a step or three behind their two excellent 2007 singles matches (Aniversario? and Chapter 11, if you’re interested) because he’s real incapacitated with only one hand. So much of Eddie Kingston’s game comes from being able to use the right hand. The slaps, chops, all of that that he just can’t do. This is almost definitely a better match if he’s 100% healthy, although it’s a far far different match, because Kingston goes with it. It’s the great thing about Eddie Kingston and part of why he feels realer than 99% of other wrestlers ever, because he rarely ever lies to you. If he does, it’s based in something real and done well enough that it feels completely genuine, which is good enough for a genre of entertainment based on lying in the first place. People know about the hand injury, people can see the cast on, it would be stupid NOT to do something with it.

Kingston just has the one hand, his non-dominant left, and it’s incredibly interesting to see him adapt, and impressive as hell to see how well he adapts. At this point, I don’t think you need me to tell you that Eddie Kingston is one of the best ever, but it’s such a remarkable performance. He throws shots from the left to little effect, and starts headbutting the chest and neck in positions when he’s otherwise slapping or chopping with the right. Really cool stuff. Something I love about a guy like Bret or Punk or Bryan or whoever is that there’s a reason for everything they seem to do. It’s always more stately and dignified than the stuff Eddie Kingston is doing here, but it works in a similar way, there’s always a thought put into and a reason behind the choices that he makes. Selling the for real injury isn’t all that hard, but Eddie makes a ton out of it, and they build up to Hallowicked finally going to the bad hand and wrist really well. It’s another of these face/face CHIKARA matches to deal with a similar theme of a known Eddie Kingston weakness that someone is initially unwilling to go after because it isn’t morally correct, before they get desperate when King starts beating their ass. It’s one of my favorite CHIKARA subgenres. This is one of the lesser entries into it, but it’s still a super interesting and endearing match.

In the end, Eddie is forced to use the fucked up hand. Without it, he loses the title that’s now pretty much consumed his entire life. He is CHIKARA, and as it starts to crumble, Eddie crumbles with it. Eddie’s capable of just exactly enough to hang on, hurling Hallowicked on his stem with a Backdrop Driver, and using the left hand for a Backfist to the Future, coming from behind Hallowicked and around his neck to hit from an unexpected angle for the win.

Really only the third best meeting between these two, but one of the more interesting Kingston performances in a career full of incredibly interesting performances.

***1/4

 

Team CHIKARA (Eddie Kingston/Hallowicked/UltraMantis Black/Frightmare/Tim Donst/Gran Akuma/3.0) vs. Team ROH (Kevin Steen/The Briscoes/The Young Bucks/Jimmy Jacobs/The Bravado Brothers), CHIKARA The Cibernetico Rises (11/18/2012)

This was the yearly Torneo Cibernetico match. For the uninitiated, there are two teams of eight wrestlers, with a specific batting order of who can tag in first, second, etc. Eliminations happen until only one man is left.

This isn’t quite as heated as the 2010 BDK vs. CHIKARA classic, but it’s much more heated and intense from the start than your usual Cibernetico. Most of that is the Steen and Kingston issue but the ROH team has some incredibly goons on it too. The Bravados and Young Bucks are perfect cowards in different ways, The Briscoes are goddamned animals at points here, and Jimmy Jacobs is somewhere in between those poles. The CHIKARA team is weaker, and the match suffers for building around Tim Donst, a total nothing, but the booking and work on the other side is largely good enough to make this stand out anyways.

The chaos first claims Frightmare, dealing with a lingering knee injury that Team ROH exploits for five to ten minutes in the second cycle, leading Big Kev submitting him with the Sharpshooter. The match then gets incredibly frantic in the next cycle, in all the best ways. My favorite thing about a Cibernetico, which you see in the best ones (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, this) is that you can keep a fast pace up for a long time without blowing anything immediately. You have sixteen people to start with, no reason to not be able to do this and keep it fun and feeling consequential. This has more behind it, but it’s the same philosophy done to perfection. Everyone’s great here, but a few guys really stand out in this phase of the match, especially Eddie Kingston.

UltraMantis Black also goes on an absolute tear. There’s a phenomenal sequence with Jimmy Jacobs, but he also just about runs through the Bravado Brothers too. Mantis is cool as hell, but every once and a while, you get an UltraMantis Black performance where he wants to remind you that, yeah, he’s genuinely really great at this.

Mantis eliminates Harlem Bravado first with the Cosmic Doom and then Lancelot with a Wrist-Clutch Regal Plex of sorts. On a more micro scale, the booking here is incredible too. UMB immediately feels for real again and like an actual force, so when Jay Briscoe comes in and steamrolls him to put it back at six-on-six, it helps Jay Briscoe and also serves as this crushing elimination. The Briscoes also easily handle Akuma and take advantage of rules to get rid of him, before our hero Jagged/Scott Parker manages a roll up on Mark Briscoe (called repeatedly “Brother Mark” by the dullard Gavin Loudspeaker on commentary for some reason) to put it to five on five.

These matches can very rarely be wall to wall insanity either though, unless they’re spotfest masterpieces like 2009’s or are only thirty-something minutes like 2010’s. Once it’s down to five on five, the match calms down significantly, and it’s wonderful. Kevin Steen is a big asshole who keeps running from Eddie Kingston. The Young Bucks, Jay Briscoe, and Jimmy Jacobs all play to their strengths, with the three cowards making Jay now do much of the work in this period. And it goes fine! Jay totally handles everything, and gets another elimination off with the Jay Driller on Hallowicked. Sadly, Donst then sneaks in and grabs his weird From Dusk Til Donst (ugh) hold on Jay to eliminate him, before getting out of there. The match exists in a very weird space where it constantly serves to highlight Tim Donst, but also seems to accept that he isn’t anywhere near as good as the other people he’s in the ring with at this point in the match.

The final run is pretty exceptional too. What it might be lacking in some areas is made up for the overall feeling they’ve built up, the heroics of Team CHIKARA, and the SCUM-my nature of Team ROH. Eddie Kingston has to finally get in and go on a run himself to get it done, and the result is a Backfist to the Future on Jimmy Jacobs and Team CHIKARA having its first lead of the match. The Young Bucks suddenly turn it on to stop his run, and instead of fighting them, Tim Donst dives onto Eddie, turns on him, and begins pummeling him instead. It’s better than Donst wrestling, but something about it just still feels off. You’re not going to get me to want to see this match outside of the year 2007. You’re not. The 3.0 vs. Young Bucks stuff here is better than any of their tag title matches due to the short length and how much of the set up work has already been done. Both Bucks get eliminated by 3.0 members, leaving Steen in there at the end with Shane Matthews. BIG MAGIC forces Steen to use his real finisher on him to eliminate him, and Steen effectively wins, outside of this other CHIKARA story.

King is able to roll up Steen because he won’t stop talking shit, and Team ROH is gone.

But one man always has to win the Cibernetico, and if it’s multiples left on the same team…again, one man has to win.

Kingston kicks out before Donst uses his manager’s loaded European man purse on Kingston for the win.

The first 95% of this is really really great. It came off much better now than I had remembered it. Everyone involved does a terrific job, the pace is blistering, and every single person in this rises to the occasion. Save for the guy who won. The problem I still have with this is the ending, where a big payoff is sacrificed to build up to a match that’s a thousand times less interesting and which highlights the least interesting, entertaining, and all around worst guy in the match.

It’s the sort of bargain that CHIKARA has always made, serving characters and stories first and foremost. It wasn’t such a hard bargain to make with good characters and great wrestlers. Very easy to track the decline of CHIKARA to the moments when these moments began serving stories, characters, and wrestlers who weren’t capable of holding up their end.

Luckily, the 5% of this that wasn’t so good or interesting didn’t wash out everything that came before it. One of the all time great CHIKARA Cibernetico matches, likely the third or fourth best one.

As always, if you want to know everything you need to know about CHIKARA in a given year, watch the Cibernetico. Some big problems, the magic touch is slipping if not gone entirely, but there’s still such an enormous level of talent with most of the top guys that in big situations, it doesn’t matter quite so much.

***1/2

The Briscoes vs. Jigsaw/Hallowicked, ROH The Homecoming 2012 (1/20/2012)

To help promote ROH’s first show back in Philadelphia in a year (!!!??!?!?!), ROH needed the help of local favorite CHIKARA to help draw a house on account of ROH having no actual buzz and ROH having written off the market yet again.

It’s a LOT of fun.

Beyond just that it’s the rare ROH match with all great wrestlers, it’s one actually helped by the booking. The match is more or less worked as a face/face match, but they lean into the CHIKARA guys being local favorites compared to the Briscoes, who align with ROH (as they ARE Ring of Honor at this point). Jigsaw and Hallowicked are the perfect picks for a match like this, as they were in ROH once, but used as enhancement talent for the most part and abandoned despite the obvious talent. Jigsaw, in particular, has a bone to pick after he was unmasked in ROH and exposed in every possible way. So, they have something to prove, and work like it.

The Briscoes are great at being very casually dominant. They clearly don’t get “it” and despise this entire deal, but they’re not really mean about it. When they get mean, it costs them. It’s a nice little story. When Jigsaw gets put through a table, Jay gets into it more and they play with the food. The CHIKARA roster comes down in support, and Jay Briscoe takes offense to Saturyne being there for some reason. He punches out Dasher Hatfield and rolls the girl in. Jay ducks a Fire Ant springboard that buys the girl time to roll out, but it’s actually just a set up. Jigsaw hits a Superkick and grabs a side cradle for the BIG upset on Jay Briscoe. Absolutely the right call, even if the specific distraction only made me wish for The Briscoes vs. The Colony instead.

Yet again, it doesn’t go far enough and stops right when it’s getting VERY interesting. ROH being ROH at this point inhibits matches at something like a three-boy ceiling so often, but like Strong/Cole earlier in the night, this bumped right up against that.

I still liked it. Good things are good.

***

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Hallowicked, CHIKARA The Case of the Bulletproof Waldo (6/24/2011)

This was a Block A match in the 12 Large Summit.

Similar to the Hallowicked/Quackenbush match in the tournament in May, this is one of those incredibly well protected singles match ups between top CHIKARA guys. They had one match before in the fall of 2009 that’s one of the great forgotten match ups of the year, and while this isn’t quite as good, it’s Claudio Castagnoli vs. Hallowicked, and there are millions of worse professional wrestling matches.

This is a little bit different, as this is a match on the middle of the show where that first match was a B show main event. The result is that this feels something like the television rematch of a great pay per view match. It’s shorter, they do less, and it doesn’t matter nearly as much. That all being said, it’s Castagnoli and Hallowicked getting to do things together for ten to fifteen minutes and while it won’t light your world on fire, it’s definitely better than a lot of the other shit you’ve probably been watching. A lot of wonderful little touches on the mat in the first half before they go into trading some things. It’s the sort of by-the-numbers layout that might result in a boring match if it was left to worse wrestlers. As it is, Castagnoli is maybe the best wrestler in the world and Hallowicked has steady enough hands to keep up with anyone in the world.

Hallowicked is ready for the guy Claudio was last time, but not quite so prepared for the version of Claudio that’s this good but also willing to cheat and take the easier way out. He dodges Hallowicked’s big kick in the corner and drops him tube first onto the ropes, before cradling him for the win.

Not a match that’s going to give you everything you want, but non-major CHIKARA singles matches almost never do that. These two are good enough to still have a great match in spite of that.

***

 

Mike Quackenbush vs. Hallowicked, CHIKARA Aniversario & His Amazing Friends (5/21/2011)

This was part of the 12 Large Summit, to determine the first ever CHIKARA Grand Champion. It also happened to be the first match in the tournament.

A classic sort of student vs. teacher fight. Quackenbush is mild mannered and confident, but like in the delightful performance defending the tag titles against The Colony in March, the veneer slips when his student begins one upping him after maybe taking it a little too casually. Quack breaks out some new tricks, modifies some older ones, and gets meaner when he has to.

Quack’s a true blue babyface, but his best work tends to come in these face/face match ups, where he’s able to straddle the line better than almost every peer he’s ever had, arguably even the greatest wrestler of all time. Quack has some particularly nasty stuff to pull out of the bag of tricks when he decides to kill some time working over Hallowicked’s arm. Hallowicked has a lot of trouble with it and tries to just use his right arm, to limited success. He can’t do a lot of the things he normally does, so he adapts and uses some of Quack’s stuff and starts to predict what he’ll do. Quack never gets cocky, it’s not in his nature, but when you work with someone for nine years and they trained you, you learn things, and when they fight over cradles, Hallowicked innovates a combination of a prawn hold and a European Clutch, and pulls off one of his biggest singles wins ever.

Hallowicked is as good as he always is in this match, and he sticks with the arm damage through most of the match in a most admirable fashion, but sometimes Quackenbush is just ON and intent on reminding you that he’s an all time great. Nothing to be done about it.

***1/4

Mike Quackenbush/Hallowicked/Frightmare vs. BDK (Claudio Castagnoli/Sara Del Rey/Tim Donst), CHIKARA Operation Big Freeze (3/12/2011)

It’s a b show main event tag match, but it’s also four of the best wrestlers in the company and also Tim Donst and Frightmare. A good guiding principle with this stuff is that if one side has Mike Quackenbush on it and the other has Claudio Castagnoli on it, you watch it. 

The story here is the slow implosion of the BDK following a loss of power. Tim Donst and Sara Del Rey both have things to prove to Castagnoli, vying for a larger role. Donst also keeps calling out Hallowicked, and that doesn’t become a big issue until the next year, but it’s not nothing. The first third or so is classic CHIKARA tag work, harkening back to the last time before this storyline where Quack and Claudio were on opposite sides so frequently. A lot of forced miscommunication, tecnico evasions leading to the rudos hitting each other, all of that. BDK control work is as good as it can be. Donst is a weak link, but Claudio and Del Rey are both terrific, bullying around Quackenbush and Frightmare. Donst is rougher in the finishing run too, as it starts to become apparent by now that he might just never live up to that rookie year. 

Ultimately, the match isn’t all it could be because of that. Great little microcosm here to help explain CHIKARA’s fall from being one of the best wrestling companies in the world from 2007-11. Four to five great wrestlers perfectly set the stage, and Donst isn’t good enough to hold up his end and make the most of it. Always a step slow or a step behind, even in his better moments. Comes off sometimes in this push as CHIKARA’s version of a developmental failson, who sticks around out of some adherence to the sunken cost fallacy. Still, in this specific match, everyone else does a good enough job that he can’t hinder it too much. Classic CHIKARA finish where Claudio and Del Rey get pinned back in the corner while Donst is up top. Hallowicked runs up the backs of Quack and Frightmare to get up top for a avalanche-style Fisherman’s Buster for the win. 

Nice sort of send them home happy b show main event six man. There are thousands of worse matches.

Mike Quackenbush/Jigsaw/Fire Ant/Soldier Ant vs. Hallowicked/Team FIST/Amasis, DGUSA Enter the Dragon (7/25/2009)

There is at least one great match on this show, as the CHIKARA multi man doesn’t miss at this point. 2009 is arguably the peak of CHIKARA as a roster, if not as a creative endeavor, so everyone in this can go. Yes, everyone. Sleep on all-time level dirtbag Icarus at your own peril. This is a perfect showcase, and a great bit as CHIKARA steals the show away from a troupe of guys that made their bones working matches like this. A fast and inventive formula tag that always stays exciting. CHIKARA did a lot of these in 2003-5 before their guys were really ready and a few more in recent memory before that crop is ready, but this is the time where they absolutely nailed it. Every person in this match is doing unique stuff relative to everyone else in the match, and it feels like the winners win for a reason. Jigsaw and Hallowicked know each other well enough to even each other out. The two teams even each other out, so nobody can use teamwork in and of itself to really get an edge. Quackenbush has the experience edge on everyone though and keeps doing these tricky things that nobody else can or directing traffic for his side in a way that nobody on the oddball heel team is doing. The best DG tags aren’t just incredible spotfests, they’re actually moving forward with something, and this is CHIKARA’s best take on it. Real frantic dive train at the end to cap off a great end run, ending when Jigsaw hits Icarus with the Jig & Tonic to win.

This show was meant to showcase the best wrestling in the world in front of a new crowd (which seems like a comical thing to call 2009 Dragon Gate, but I’ll allow it) and wittingly or not, this match made sure that happened. 

***1/4