So, then.  As trailed last month, we’re going to take a crack at covering the 2015 Chikara season.  We won’t be doing every show – probably just the main ones to check in on how they’re doing, and I might do them as reviews rather than previews, given that I suspect relatively few readers of this blog are actually watching.   Obviously we’re moving here into territory which far fewer people will be familiar with here, but quite aside from being a far more entertaining use of my time, I do think Chikara makes an interesting contrast with the dominant product.

This is also going to be a very long post, since there’s a lot to set up here – not just the show, but the promotion as a whole and many of the characters.  And I haven’t had as much time as I’d have liked to cut down the first draft, but hey, the show’s on Sunday.

Let’s start with a primer on how things work in Chikara.

As a rule, they run shows over one weekend each month.  Between shows, the main official source of hype and promos is the weekly “Event Center” videos on their YouTube channel, and the blog on their website.   The big shows tend to be iPPVs; all are filmed by Smart Mark Video and are generally on sale as downloads within a week or two.  Highlights eventually surface on the Podcast-a-Go-Go (which is also on their YouTube page), which is free.  Chikara generally structures its shows in year-long seasons, and we’re about to start Season 15.

Their home base is Pennsylvania, where they have ties to their founder Mike Quackenbush’s Wrestle Factory training school.  Quackenbush himself serves as the Director of Fun (the GM figure).  The promotion tours quite extensively; it tends to do major shows in its home base but other shows wander around North America quite a bit, and we’re getting a four-show UK tour in April.  Attendance at first-time markets can be unpredictable.

The company bills itself as lucha, and that’s certainly a dominant influence, but far from the only one.  After all, its two highest profile alumni are Cesaro and Luke Harper.  But it prefers “tecnico” and “rudo” to “face” and “heel”, so I’ll follow suit.  It also has a reputation for comedy matches, a superhero comics influence (which naturally hybridises into the lucha masks), and seriously complicated storylines (see also: superhero comics influence).  All this is true to an extent, but can easily get overstated; it’s still first and foremost a wrestling company. This isn’t Kaiju.

Granted, they could stand to do more in terms of accessibility to new viewers – their roster page is singularly uninformative to newbies, and recap videos for new viewers are sporadic at best.  But it’s also a promotion that rewards you for getting to grips with its multi-year storylines.  This alone is a jarring change from the WWE, which generally has only a hazy idea of what’s happening next week.  Not that Chikara doesn’t have dropped plots and abandoned ideas too.  But they’re vastly less prevalent.

Chikara works on lucha rules, which basically means that you can make a tag by simply rolling to the outside; unmasking your opponent is a DQ; and you can also be disqualified for excessive punishment – i.e., if you keep beating up your opponent without trying for a pin or submission.   Also, there’s a points system to determine challengers for the Grand Championship and the Campeonatos de Parejas (the tag titles).  Basically, you get a point each time you win a match (or a fall in an elimination tag match).  Lose a match (or get eliminated) and you go back to zero. If you have 3 or more points, you can challenge for the title on the next show (as long as someone else hasn’t got there first).  If you’re stuck in a queue, you need to hold on to your points meantime.  It’s a system which can have faintly random effects, but it has the great advantage of making every singles or tag match potentially meaningful.

Season 14 focussed on the invading Flood faction, an alliance of rudo stables recruited to destroy Chikara, and ultimately answering to a raving lunatic called Deucalion.  He was apparently out for revenge on behalf of the evil former owners, Titor (who were driven out during the shutdown angle).  Taking both the concept of the monster heel and the convention that all wrestling angles must be resolved in the ring to their insane ultimate conclusion, Deucalion would show up periodically to attack people he was particularly annoyed with and, um, kill them with his finishing move.  Which is some finisher.  Being an angry fellow, Deucalion also took out a couple of members of his own side.  On the previous show, this led to the Flood abandoning Deucalion so that Chikara champion Icarus could wipe him out using a magic hammer (don’t ask).  So Deucalion is apparently gone and we’ve yet to find out whether the Flood alliance will continue in some form without him.

Oh yes… if you’re used to televised wrestling then you are going to have to make a major adjustment in your expectations of production values and crowd sizes here.  Larger shows will have proper sets and lighting; minor ones will often have a rudimentary entrance and lighting design that stopped at “whatever’s in the venue”, which often translates to “finding the switch”.  Again, this is simply the reality of indie wrestling.

Season 15 kicks off with “A New Start” (this year’s shows are all named after Arrested Development episodes), which is in their home territory of Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon.  It’s an afternoon show because the Royal Rumble is on across town in the evening.  We’re in the ECW Arena, which means a reasonable effort on sets and so forth, by Chikara standards.

1.  CHIKARA Grand Championship: Icarus © v. Chuck Taylor.  Nice and straightforward, as the reformed rudo defends the title against his former running buddy.  In fact, there’s not much in the way of immediate story to this; it’s more a testimony to the fact that if you have properly defined characters, then putting them together can be enough.  Icarus has been with the company since day 1, and was a rudo for almost the whole of that time.  With the shutdown angle, he turned tecnico by being the one wrestler who rallied everyone to save the company.  This leaves him as the top tecnico and face of the company, a role you wouldn’t have imagined for him before, but which he turns out to fit nicely.

In his rudo days, Icarus was a long-running member of F.I.S.T. (Friends In Similar Tights), as was Chuck Taylor.  Taylor is a very good wrestler and a very entertaining comedian, which makes him perfect for Chikara.  He’s usually billed as “the Kentucky Gentleman”, which makes rather more sense if you know that Kentucky Gentleman is a brand of Bourbon.  Or more accurately, a brand of something that is legally permitted to be described as such.  F.I.S.T. imploded shortly before the shutdown, for reasons partly connected with the first seeds of Icarus’ turn.  Taylor didn’t get involved in the campaign to save Chikara, but only because he thought it was a waste of time.  He returned to the company as a solo act when it relaunched, quietly picked up three points without many people noticing (he got one of the points in a dark match, and a match he lost was struck from the record books), and then sat on them for a while before challenging, which is… interesting.

It should be a good match.  It’s pretty much guaranteed to be entertaining on a personality level.  Taylor always is, and it’ll be nice to see Icarus have a chance to break out of the role of Captain America here – though the promos indicate that both guys are playing this one fairly straight.  In plot terms, its other function is to block Eddie Kingston from cashing in his title shot on this show – which we’ll come back to.  I don’t see a title change as particularly likely here; the Grand Championship has been around since 2011, it’s still only on its second title holder, and there are other stories which make more sense with a tecnico champion.  But it is the start of a new season, so something newsworthy could always happen.

2.  The Colony (Fire Ant, Silver Ant & Worker Ant) v. The BDK (Jakob Hammermeier & Pinkie Sanchez) & Soldier Ant.   You know the Winter Soldier?  Well, it’s basically that, only with ants.

The Colony are ant-themed masked guys who’ve been around for a while.  The current line-up is Fire (flyer), Silver (technician) and Worker (brawler).  Worker started off in the rudo stable GEKIDO, who posed as “dark” versions of other Chikara wrestlers in order to make a point about the company’s dark underbelly; he was “assailANT”.  In 2012, Titor embarked on some gratuitous meddling with various factions, seemingly in order to screw with people’s minds, and so assailANT and Soldier Ant were swapped between their factions.  assailANT  unexpectedly turned tecnico for real, and eventually managed to get accepted by his teammates, who gave him the Worker Ant identity.

Meanwhile, after an extended stint barely tolerating partners he hated, Soldier Ant gave up and quit.  Then he pretty much dropped off the face of the earth – the great thing about masked characters is you can do that sort of thing when the plot calls for it.  When Chikara relaunched, he resurfaced as an apparently brainwashed Flood member, making occasional run-ins during Colony matches.  At the last show, Soldier finally returned to an actual match, wrestling on the Flood team in the annual Torneo Cibernetico (basically an elimination tag match).  Soldier won, as the sole survivor on his team, but was acting a bit oddly.  He was continuing to block and dodge attacks, but was unaffected by anything that actually connected.  And his team captain Jakob Hammermeier was desperately tagging him out every time it looked like he would have to fight the Colony – though he did briefly face them at the end in order to win.  Oh, and he’s a cyborg now.

The BDK… suffice to say that five years ago, they were a large stable of dominant villains who subverted Chikara management and dominated the company for a year until they were finally driven out.  Today, they’re the remnants of a once-dominant force.  New leader, Jakob Hammermeier, is an ex-flunky trying a little too hard to prove himself as an alpha male.  Pinkie Sanchez, who recently rejoined the group, is crazy.  (He also has a history with the Colony, having once infiltrated the group as Carpenter Ant.)  Their third member, Nokken, is in a different match.

This sounds like storyline central, though I imagine Jakob will try to keep Soldier’s involvement to a minimum, allowing Sanchez to have a proper return match.  It’s been a good long-term storyline, and at least three of these guys are really good in the ring, so I’m looking forward to this a lot.

3.  Sidney Bakabella’s Wrecking Crew (Max Smashmaster, Blaster McMassive, Flex Rumblecrunch, Oleg the Usurper & Jaka) v. The Throwbacks (Dasher Hatfield & Mark Angelosetti), Shynron, Jervis Cottonbelly & Princess Kimberlee.  A cocky heel group issues an open challenge for a ten man tag, to prove how awesome they are.  The Wrecking Crew are basically 80s-style monster heels.  Their manager Sidney Bakabella is literally an 80s heel manager – to the point where he thinks the territorial system is still in effect, and bears a striking resemblance to Tony Clifton.  He’s awesome.  His group consists of the Devastation Corporation (Max, Blaster, and Flex), a Demolition-style group who won last year’s King of Trios tournament; Oleg, a very confused time-lost Viking; and Jaka, who is basically Umaga.  I wasn’t a fan of this gimmick when the WWE was doing it and I have serious reservations about it here too, but we’ll come back to that when he’s in a bigger role.  Max and Blaster won the tag titles on the last show, but nobody currently has the points to challenge them.  Oleg, an endearing, easily-distracted moron, seems to be heading for a split with the group, as Bakabella gets increasingly exasperated by his shortcomings.  They were part of the Flood, but only for the money.

Accepting the challenge – the Throwbacks, the ex-champs, who want to get their hands on the guys who beat them last show; Shynron, an impressive high flyer; Jervis Cottonbelly, the world’s sweetest man, who is a lovely chap but whose win-loss record largely reflects how you’d expect the world’s sweetest man to get on in professional wrestling; and Princes Kimberlee, who in other promotions is Kimber Lee, but on Earth-Chikara thinks she’s a princess.  It’s a pretty random collection but 10-man tags in Chikara are usually solid.  On paper the rudos look to have the upper hand here, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Oleg screw it up for them.

4.  Eddie Kingston v Kevin Condron.  Kingston was the first Chikara Grand Champion.  As an unmasked wrestler and a bit of a thug, he was not the obvious choice to be the face of the company, which was precisely the point.  As his reign continued, he became increasingly unstable, and obsessed with the title belt.  When the company shut down, Kingston went into a tailspin; come the relaunch, he promptly lost the title to Icarus , which made matters worse.  The Flood then recruited him, promising to help him get the belt back.  (Not the title, the belt.)  After a while he was persuaded that the belt needed Chikara to give it meaning, and switched sides again.  He beat three Flood guys, including Jimmy Jacobs, to get the three points needed for a title shot – but he’s stuck in the queue behind Chuck Taylor.

Kevin Condron is making his Chikara debut after a build of over a year.  He used to be Kid Cyclone, an exceedingly enthusiastic masked trainee from the Wrestle Factory who joined Icarus’ campaign during the shutdown.  One of his fellow trainees was killed by the Flood at the end of the shutdown angle; Cyclone was equally horrified by Deucalion’s further attacks over the latter half last year.  He became the leader of a rookie trio called the Greenhorn Militia, who started off calling out Deucalion, and increasingly veered into complaining about why the established Chikara wrestlers weren’t reacting appropriately to the fact that people were actually dying here.  This is interesting – Condron is coming very close to openly questioning the conventions of the story.  And certainly, the idea that Deucalion can kill people and the shows simply continue is a big strain on credibility even by Chikara’s standards (broadly speaking, everyone else reacts to Deucalion’s attacks as if they’ve just witnessed a particularly serious stretcher job, rather than a murder).  Then again, you could make the point that the police on Earth-wrestling already seem remarkably inclined to turn a blind eye to serious televised assault, so why not take the “closed world” idea to the next level?  For fairly obvious reasons, though, this is the part of the 2014 shows I have the biggest problem with.  In a sense, Condron shows up at exactly the right point to signal that these are in fact questions you’re meant to be asking,  but whether he’s actually going to lead to answers, or simply kick the problem into the long grass until it’s no longer a live issue, remains to be seen.

Anyhow.  At the last show, Kid Cyclone attacked Kingston with a wrench after his match, and then unmasked himself as a gesture of his contempt for the values of Chikara, which he now sees as having led him down the garden path.  He’s a soured fanboy, in other words.  Condron hasn’t finished with Kingston; Kingston is angry that he got hit over the head with a wrench.  Taking this match wasn’t very smart for Kingston, because if he loses here, he’s back to zero points and he’ll have to start over in order to earn his title shot.  Condron has flagged up that that also applies if Kingston is DQ’d, so evidently he’s going for the psyche-out angle.  (Kingston was offered a tag match, which would have kept his points safe, but insisted on going after Condron.)

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Condron wins one way or another, to keep Kingston away from the title picture a little bit longer.   Match quality is obviously difficult to predict – Condron wrestled a single match as Kid Cyclone for Wrestling is Fun! (a sort of Chikara NXT), but that was months ago.  Still, they presumably wouldn’t build him up this heavily unless they saw something in him.

5.  The Batiri (Kodama & Obariyon) v. Hallowicked & Frightmare.
6.  Ultramantis Black v Juan Francisco de Coronado.
Let’s take these two together.  Ultramantis, Hallowicked and Frightmare used to be the Spectral Envoy.  Ultramantis, the leader, has been here since day 1, and is a self-proclaimed megalomaniacal super villain.  He is also into veganism and death metal.  Despite being an inveterate schemer, he officially turned tecnico by siding with Chikara against the BDK invaders – but there was a definite element of self-interest to that, and there’s a very plausible argument that he’s not a real tecnico so much as a complete bastard hiding in plain sight.  Hallowicked has also been with the company since day 1, and comes with a cruiserweight mini-me in Frightmare.  The two of them gabble incoherently instead of speaking and appear to be mentally linked.

At the last show, Ultramantis defeated his long-time rival Delirious in a Loser Leaves Chikara match.  As a parting gesture, Delirious used the Eye of Tyr – a long-established mind control trinket – to make Hallowicked turn on Ultramantis.  Frightmare didn’t join the attack, but seemed to be in pain (presumably because of his mental link), and eventually left with Hallowicked.  So the main storyline question here is the status quo of all three of these guys.  Also, Mantis tends to like leading factions, so presumably he’ll be recruiting.

Hallowicked and Frightmare face the Batiri, two demonic ex-henchmen who unexpectedly turned tecnico by siding with Icarus during the shutdown angle.  That’s pretty much guaranteed to be a good match.  Who wins really depends on how functional the post-Envoy duo are supposed to be at this stage.  Ultramantis faces Juan Francisco de Coronado, a self-proclaimed Ecuadorian aristocrat who’s not a million miles from an early Alberto Del Rio, only smaller.  He’s a good technical wrestler, and I’ve actually not seen much of Ultramantis in singles matches – they’ve been few and far between over the last year.  I’d guess Juan wins here, probably with some involvement with Hallowicked.

7.  Ophidian v. Nokken.  Both guys have two points, so whoever wins will get a title shot (or be next in line behind Kingston, if he wins).  Ophidian is a member of the Osirian Portal, the break dancing ancient Egyptian time travellers.  Nokken is the big thug from the BDK.  The only real story content going into this is a couple of promos from Ophidian to the effect that he’s losing his faith in his gods and is looking for a win here as a sign.  That kind of suggests he’s not getting his win, doesn’t it?  Plus, assuming Icarus retains, a rudo challenger makes more sense.  Nokken’s in his rookie year, and he seems solid in his role, but I’ve yet to be blown away by him in singles matches.  We’ll see how this works.

8.  N_R_G (Race Jaxon & Hype Rockwell) v. The Colony: Xtreme Force (Arctic Rescue Ant & Missile Assault Ant).   N_R_G are a rookie team whose gimmick seems to be still undergoing some tweaks.  The idea seems to be that Race is indeed a high-energy, excitable, garishly neon fellow, while Hype is a gentle, miscast soul who is exhausted by the whole thing.  It hasn’t quite clicked yet, though they seem fine in the ring.  The Colony: Extreme Force are a travesty of the Colony created when Titor were in control, ostensibly as a more marketable version with gimmicks suitable for action figures.  They were part of the Flood.  Missile is getting a singles push at the moment, and he lost on the last show, so my guess would be that he wins here.  There’s no particular story here (though the Xtreme Force did eliminate N_R_G in a gauntlet match last year).  It has the potential to be one of those matches where the bad guys are more over than the heroes, and it’s the first time N_R_G have worked a straight tag match since joining the main roster.

In summary… wow, that took longer than I thought it would.  Bear in mind that as the season opener, it is pretty much guaranteed to be plot heavy.  Stories need to get up and running.  But yes, I’m looking forward to this one – it looks like a decent set of matches with some strong storyline hooks on about half the card.