One of my favorite things about pro wrestling is the energetic and at times surreal indie promotionCHIKARA.
Its $7.99 a month, which is a pretty great deal just for all theKing of Triosshows alone.
Thats definitely worth some consideration.
A lot of the time, they take a step back and try not to take themselves too seriously.
The wrestling reality gets broken and many laughs are had.
Despite the seriousness of the face-painted behemoths, the bWo made sure to have their fun.
Two moments really stick out on this one.
Unfortunately…that was a bit problematic at the time.
That Hulk Hogan scandal was still very recent.
Nova slowly crept out of the ring to chants of, THIS IS AWKWARD!
Although Smashmaster tried to accept, Meanie kept switching which hand he was reaching up with.
Whenever that happens in wrestling, it usually leads to the trope of the obvious masked newbie.
He took on the sinister deviANT in Alabama and the venue had a rather peculiar setup.
There were three entrance curtains lined up in a row.
During the match, the Stranger chased deviANT through one of the curtains and lost him.
deviANT ran back in through one curtain while the Stranger ran back through another.
Like aScooby-Doomusical interlude, the two kept running backstage, then coming back via different entrances.
After several failures, deviANT laughed at Strangers inability to catch him.
The Stranger stood in his spot and punched his arm through the nearby curtain.
He dragged him over and continued with the battle.
Especially since both promotions had their own cartoonish supervillains in UltraMantis Black and Dr. Cube.
Naturally, they were besties for a while.
Tucor is, by the way, the most nightmarish-looking thing in wrestling.
The match was short, but it went off the rails pretty fast.
After that, the two sides brought out some Big Wheels to do a game of chicken.
Donst and Hydra won both the game of chicken and, shortly after, the match itself.
Then Dr. Cube angrily chewed out everyone, so we all won.
Hes Chuck TaylorTM, an R&B singer who bought the rights to the name.
Think of him as Ultimate Honky Tonk Man.
Being that theyre both music based, Chuck TM suggested the two of them do a duet together.
This was very much a trap and it very much failed.
As the crowd egged him on, he became inspired and asked for some conga music.
This also included literal babies.
(Ill admit that this is on the list for self-promotional reasons.
Check out the handsome, pale guy in the red Larry Sweeney shirt.)
Chuck TM tried to save face and save himself by singing Say My Name but it wasnt enough.
As wrestlers tend to do, he argued with the ref that it was three.
Usually, the match would just continue.
EL HIJO DEL ICE CREAM VS. On one side was El Hijo del Ice Cream, representing Crown & Court.
On the other side, Blind Rage, representing the Nightmare Warriors.
Said test of strength was about 95% of the match.
Somehow the knuckle lock led to them escaping the ring and grappling through all sides of the audience.
CHIKARA was still finding its footing by this point and the fanbase hadnt fully figured itself out.
Theyre more confused than amused.
Steel handily defeated the elder with a roll-up within seconds and Crabtree insisted on making it best two-out-of-three.
Again, Steel won immediately.
Crabtree kept insisting on various gimmick matches and lost again and again.
Finally, he suggested a match with no count-outs and no time limit.
As the fans sat in confusion, the camera man eventually returned, shrugging, as he lost them.
The show continued to the next match.
The next night, in a different town, CHIKARA hostedCibernetico Cometh.
They made their way into the ring, where Steel made Crabtree tap to the Boston Crab.
At 23 hours and 36 minutes, its the longest match in wrestling history.
It also got an entry inWrestlings 101 Strangest Matchesby Oliver Hurley.
Well, neither one was there, but the third pick, Colt Cabana, certainly was.
The third time, Colt pointed out that this was 100% going to end with Colin getting slapped.
Colin spent about a minute trying to rationalize his decision and…got slapped.
Instead, Vin Gerard blocked him off.
Suddenly, with Gavin Loudspeaker announcing, it transformed into a game of baseball.
Colt hit a pop fly and the two members of 2.0 collided in the outfield.
Dasher and his teammates each hit a baseball slide on Colin except for Colt, who slapped him.
Briefly, CHIKARA had a wrestler named Mokujin Ken, otherwise known as Ken the Box.
If youve playedTekkenand remember Mokujin the living wooden dummy, imagine the Party City version.
It had to be Falls Count Anywhere due to Mokujin Kens complete inability to enter the ring.
The two brawled for about six minutes and it was beyond stupid, yet fascinating to watch.
Fans ironically chanted, THIS IS AWESOME!
The finish involved Mecha Mummy using his giant drill to kill Ken.
At least in terms of reality-breaking stuff that serious wrestling purists hate.
One even yelled for them to slow down.
A bit winded, the two tagged their partners in.
Corbin and Olsen stepped forward and did indeed slow things down.
In that they wrestled the next minute or so in slow motion.
Lockups, Irish whips, hiptosses, reversals, and even pinfalls.
All done at a third of the speed, including the refs counts and the partners reacting.
All the while, commentator Larry Sweeney spent most of the segment treating it like the most normal thing.
That first team has two Lance Steels, just from different points in history.
Time travel and whatnot.
What we have here is a double debut.
He would constantly lose his mind over the newcomer and would oversell every mannerism.
Round one went to Archie easily.
He offered a fist bump, but Crabtree simply collapsed onto the mat.
Archie beat up the old man and announced that he was going to do his finisher.
He climbed to the top rope…and the bell rang.
Archie tore into him in the final round and finally went to go pull off his finishing move.
Crabtree didnt move and when Bryce checked his arm, he noticed how cold it was and scrambled away.
Realizing he had a corpse on top of him, Archie screamed in terror until the bell rang.
Somehow, the judges decided Crabtree was the winner.
Maybe they saw that ending as a tap-out.
For a good bit of the match, Gary even perched up on top of Swampy in the corner.
Things became very, very chaotic and even Bryce was getting in on the violence.
The Submission Squad briefly held an advantage and called for a triple cartwheel.
Rather than turn it into a joint attack, they instead posed in front of the hard camera.
Then the other wrestlers joined them in striking a group pose.
Over time, this evolved into gags where he had an actual invisible grenade and wackiness would ensue.
They both wore fanny packs over their shoulders, which enhanced their offense for reasons.
Having had enough of Soldiers orders, Chuck broke out of the control and pulled out his grenade.
The crowd chanted, THAT WAS AWESOME!
which they would do again several minutes later.
A big CHIKARA banner against the wall started to fall apart and Chuck pointed it out to Bryce.
Delirious and Hallowicked: 1080p!
Live in the now, 8-bit!
Live in the now!
The referee had to pull both teams apart.
The crowd chanted, N-E-S!
but Delirious responded by a one-man chant of, SEGA CD!
Delirious and Uno discussedNight Trapand 32X before remembering that they had a match to wrestle.
Still, that wouldnt be the end of the dialogue.
Delirious would win a grapple exchange and shout, NEO GEO!
Uno would win a grapple exchange in response and yell, SUPER NINTENDO!
And so it continued.
Delirious, speaking clearer than ever, then said, How about this:Princess Peach is a tramp!
Uno was furious at this and then Delirious accidentally paused him.
Its…a thing that happened to Uno a lot back in the day.
The building they were in had an extremely low ceiling.
Later on, he went for it again, this time trying it from the bottom rope.
Of course, he couldnt get much distance from that height and fell flat on his face.
This was one of them, which for some reason featured a Japanese Colonel Sanders.
The hijinks were many in this laugh-a-minute bout.
I really dont know where to even begin.
Theres just too much to talk about and too much context to give.
That was ill-thought-out aseveryonecollided and fell in a circle.
and the wrestlers gave them what they wanted.
They literally played a game of duck, duck, goose in the middle of their wrestling match.
While Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura gave us, FIGHT FOREVER!
this battle gave us, kindly DONT END!
Speaking of endings, Darkness Crabtree keeled over at one point.
Ebessan jumped off the top ropes to capitalize, but only landed halfway.
Matthews and Parker lifted him up, dropped him onto Crabtree, and got the easy pin.
A year later, Incoherence had to defend their tag belts against them in the best two-out-of-three falls.
What they got was the return of Incoherencito.
Finally, Incoherence won the first fall and chased their opponents to the back.
Moments later, Cheech and Cloudy walked out, apologizing for being late.
Archie was coming off being dumped by his former valet Veronica and couldnt deal for the opening minutes.
Eventually, he didnt even go for a shoulder block and instead embraced Chuck and cried into his shoulder.
With Archie feeling better, Chuck went back to thrashing him.
But the part that puts this classic over the top is the brawl that became a photo session.
The two battled to the outside and came across a huge painting of a lake.
Chuck declared, Im gonna drown you!
and slammed Archies head into it.
Chuck sheepishly admitted he thought it was real as Archie suddenly became inspired.
He started posing in front of the painting while having photos taken.
This was all a master plan by Chuck Taylor to shove Archibald Peck into a pile of chairs.
Bryce just accepted it and Chucks incredulous reaction was priceless.
Thats what we got here, albeit with Archie and Remington being counterparts.
But my focus for this entry is probably the funniest moment in CHIKARA history.
El Hijo del Ice Cream and Ice Cream Jr. chose to hug it out rather than fight.
Archie and Remington dragged them away out of annoyance, only to turn around and hug each other.
Bryce, attempting to make them stop hugging, initiated a count.
As you’re able to guess, they let go right after he got to one.
Remington playfully did a finger-gun gesture at Archie with a wink and a smile.
Rather than be charmed, Archie took it literally, yelling, AHH!
El Hijo screamed in the presence of the invisible wound.
As this played out, Archie stood back up and pulled out his own finger-gun.
With revenge on his mind, he slowly pointed it towards Remington.
Then, at the last second, Bryce dove in front Remington and took the non-existent bullet.
That is, all but Shane Matthews, who looked over Bryces dead body and yelled, Guys!
God, I love this company.
