Bullet Club (AJ Styles/The Young Bucks) vs. Team AAA (Aero Star/Drago/Fenix), CHIKARA King of Trios 2015 Night Three (9/6/2015)

This was the final of the 2015 King of Trios tournament.

At the time, this was regarded as something of a disappointment, and so I had actually never seen it until right now (or, October 20th, 2015, for those reading in the future).

While I won’t go that far, it’s not hard to see why other people thought that. Combine the killer run that AJ and the Bucks had been on as a trio and as individual acts and pair it up against the Lucha Underground trio only a month after that landmark first season came to an end AND given the hype their recent PWG weekend had garnered. People seemed to expect some all time barnburner, but it’s 2015, and nobody on this level is going to go nuts in CHIKARA anymore. That’s kind of the trade off. You maybe only get this in CHIKARA, but you still get the sort of a house show effort that stars are going to put in on a 2015 CHIKARA show.

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad match though or that it’s not a good little match.

Not getting the hardest effort version of a thing doesn’t mean the thing you do get is inherently bad.

This is no epic, but it is just a fun little match with a nice story to tell.

I’ve always been someone very interested in house show or smaller show level performances from guys, mostly because of how revealing they are. Who gives a shit and who doesn’t, but also the ways in which that’s reflected in the match. While neither AJ or the Bucks are breaking out a lot of dives or things off the top, or doing much beyond a B level heel performance, that’s still really good. The Bucks bother less with the schtick now, stooge a lot, and AJ joins them in that. It’s a fun change of pace for the usually very serious AJ Styles at this point, stooging and playing a fool early on like he hasn’t in a while.

As they’ve spent all weekend demonstrating, the three luchadors once again have a much more interesting and effective match when faced with this contrast. The Bullet Club team is better than any other at repeatedly stifling them, leaping on each new entry into the match as they come on, but having to do more and more each time to stop them. Eventually, they can’t. The kicker is then that, for the first time in the tournament, it’s not immediately over within a minute or two of Team AAA finally getting free and loose and going wild. It’s not a perfect match, but it is picture perfect tournament wrestling, building up something for three matches and then giving the biggest challenge yet in the finals.

The final third or so is pretty awesome, if not out of this world great. You don’t get EVERYTHING, but there’s still a lot, and almost all of it is very very fun. Some unfortunate slip ups do happen, but they’re all covered up especially well, typically by an all-time master at hiding the mistakes of faster junior heavyweights in AJ Styles. The Bullet Club team succeeds in the ways they always do, but they’re always cut off before the second or third thing in a row. The key is what it always is, and that’s splitting the Bucks apart in crucial moments. The luchador contingent is able to do that, and after doing their crowding spots to Nick Jackson, Fenix uses the rope walk springboard 450 Splash to win.

If not all that it could be, still a more coherent and thus better match than virtually every other time that Fenix and the Bucks met. Having never expected anything going in, it’s a match that did more for me than I would have imagined.

three boy

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.

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Team AAA (Aero Star/Drago/Fenix) vs. The Gentlemans Club (Chuck Taylor/Drew Gulak/Swamp Monster), CHIKARA King of Trios 2015 Night One (9/4/2015)

This was a 1st Round match in the 2015 King of Trios tournament.

While mode of the plaudits for the immediate independent run of the Lucha Underground contingent went to the tag team match the week prior in PWG, I find this to be a far more interesting and enjoyable experience.

To start off, every single member of the Gentleman’s Club is better than Pentagon Jr., and that helps. Primarily though, it’s that styles make fights and it’s now more impressive for the masked men to pull off a similar level of stunt show against a team that doesn’t do that. Gulak and Taylor are both tremendous foils and decent bases, and then obviously Swamp Monster is the greatest wrestler alive. It’s not exactly a match filled with struggle, but there is some battle over the AAA team getting to do all of their most extravagant offense and drown the Gentleman’s Club, while Our Heroes both badly want them not to and are wholly incapable of stopping the boat from taking on water forever.

It’s not much, it’s minimally great if great all, but it’s also the sort of match that ages beautifully when compared to the more ambitious efforts. Lower aiming, but it means that there’s almost no moment here that feels out of place or that hurts the match, while still hitting most of the same highs.

There’s a lesson here.

(Obviously, that lesson is that the Swamp Monster is the greatest luchador of all time, and could have saved Lucha Underground had they set later seasons around the Swamp Monster and not Sexy Star, John Morrison, and Jack Swagger.)

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