Okay.  So.  That idea of rewatching the whole Chikara 2015 season turns out to run into a fairly obvious problem: it means finding time to watch both the new shows and the old shows on top of finding the time to, you know, do anything else, and it should be pretty obvious from the rate of progress that this isn’t going to work.  Let’s acknowledge reality on that one.  And instead, let’s do the just-completed 2016 King of Trios tournament.

King of Trios is a 16-team elimination tournament run over three nights (and I originally intended to spread it over three posts, but then figured that I’d just do a huge one).  It’s Chikara’s biggest weekend of the year, at least in terms of attendance, guest stars, and interest from outside the normal fanbase.  For much the same reasons, it’s not necessarily built around Chikara storylines, although there are usually a few turning points for ongoing plots.  The tournament winner is frequently an outsider team that plays no further part in storylines (as with last year’s winners, who were visiting from the Mexican promotion AAA).

Nights 2 and 3 are rounded out with a mini-tournament called Rey de Voladores (King of Fliers), a tag team gauntlet match which is usually a bit of a comedy affair, and a few other random matches.  A lot of these matches feature surprise guests, or just guys who’ve been eliminated from King of Trios proper.

Let’s sketch out the major storylines to start with.  Last year, Princess Kimberlee rallied her team of underdogs to win the Challenge of the Immortals tournament, and earn a title shot, which she promptly cashed in to beat Hallowicked and become Grand Champion.  And Hallowicked failed in his year-long attempt to recruit Silver Ant as a worshipper of the rot god Nazmaldun.  But at the start of 2016, Hallowicked got his hands on the Eye of Tyr – the mind-control trinket which had turned him into a Nazmaldun-worshipper in the first place – and started using it to expand his ranks.  He regained the title during the UK tour, and is now busily zapping people  left right and centre, leading to an ever-growing stable: the heXed-Men.  The babyfaces are just starting to get their act together to do something about all this – but as yet, not very effectively.

Joey Styles is guest play by play commentator for the weekend: he’s just been released by WWE, plus he’s local.  He does a brief opening promo acknowledging that he’s not familiar with the company.  It turns out he’s not kidding, but he turns that to advantage by playing the newcomer who needs to ask questions of his co-commentators, and makes sure that everything gets explained.  And with so many visitors, knowing the product isn’t as big a deal as it normally would be.  He’s a pro and he can carry this off.

1.  King of Trios, Round 1: Dasher Hatfield, Trent Seven & Tyler Bate v. Kobald, Kodama & Obariyon.  Dasher is the saintly soul-of-the-company babyface; Seven and Bate are an English duo who recently won the tag titles.  Since they work mostly in the UK, this was an upset, and time will tell how actual defences are going to work.  Together, they’re one of several makeshift trios of Chikara regulars formed in order to enter the tournament.  Kobald, Kodama and Obariyon – the Batiri – are a regular trio, and one of two heXed-Men teams in the tournament.  As is often the case with a Chikara opener, it’s a straightforward, fast paced action/comedy match to set the tone.   The Batiri isolate Dasher, but he kicks out of their Skull Bronzing, and makes the hot tag to the champs, who clear house and pin Kodama with a double team.  Good opener, and now we don’t have to worry about the two heXed-Men trios meeting in the next round.

2.  King of Trios, Round 1: Juan Francisco de Coronado, Prakash Sabar & The Proletariat Boar of Moldova v. Officer Warren Barksdale, Supercop Dick Justice & Detective Bill Carr.  Now there’s a list of names you’ll only see in Chikara.  De Coronado’s team are what’s left of the United Nations, who have done okay under his leadership – but “okay” isn’t enough for de Coronado’s ego, so the other two are perpetually on thin ice with him.  Sabar is a shameless X-Pac tribute act, and Styles spends a lot of the match expressing his outrage over it.  The Boar is a boar.  Juan is currently feuding with the Big Deal, who is Hornswoggle with two big guys doing all the work for him.  It’s an odd heel/heel set-up.  The Big Deal team pulled out of the tournament at the last minute (because of a medical emergency for Hornswoggle), so presumably plans for the UN had to change.  Meanwhile, this is a first round comedy match against Chikara rookie Officer Warren Barksdale (a wrestling traffic cop who keeps trying to pat down his opponents and give them speeding tickets) plus two other indie guys with similar schtick.  The wrestling is nothing to get excited about but the police-themed comedy spots are endearingly ludicrous.   The early minutes feature a lot of the UN being scared of finger guns.  But in the end they all hit Barksdale with their finishers and win clean.  It’s the first round novelty match.

3.  King of Trios, Round 1: The Big Deal, Rick Roland & Sloan Caprice v…  The Big Deal’s team has withdrawn, so the Submission Squad enter through the crowd, paying off a long-running joke about them trying and failing to get into the tournament year after year.  At long last, their services really are required.

3.  King of Trios, Round 1: Gary the Barn Owl, “The Elegant Assassin” Pierre Abernathy & “Brainwave” Davey Vega v. Fire Ant, Silver Ant & Soldier Ant.  Part of the joke of the Submission Squad is the utter randomness of their gimmicks, the dubious connection between their nicknames and anything they actually do, and the lack of submission-based offence that might justify the team name.  As for the Colony, they were reunited at the end of last year, after Silver Ant escaped Hallowicked and Soldier Ant was freed from his brainwashing.   The Colony also still includes Worker Ant, the reformed heel who took Soldier’s place – but now that Soldier is back, Worker has been left out of the King of Trios team.  Don’t think he hasn’t noticed.

On paper this sounds like a walkover for the Colony, but the Squad unexpectedly put up some proper resistance before focussing on Silver Ant’s recently injured shoulder.  The story is that the Squad are seriously exceeding expectations and, thanks to his injury, Silver might even tap.  He doesn’t – and the Colony finish off Vega with the Ant Hill in around 10 minutes – but they managed to have a competitive match in a way that made the Squad look good instead of making the Colony looking weak, and established an obvious bullseye for the Colony’s future opponents to focus on.  Remarkably good for a last-minute replacement featuring Chikara’s equivalent to 3MB.

4.  King of Trios, Round 1: Solo Darling, Crazy Mary Dobson & Candice LeRae v. Mickie James, Jazz & Lisa Marie.  There are four female teams this year, plus a couple of mixed gender trios.   Darling, Dobson and LeRae represent the women’s promotion Shimmer, and don’t have much in common beyond that; Darling, for example, is a sugar-fuelled fox girl.  Their opponents are three WWE wrestlers from a decade or so back (Lisa Marie was Victoria).  It’s one of those matches where they work through the combinations and everyone does their signature stuff; it could use a stronger story as a through line.  The WWE trio drift into playing heel as the match goes on, and Mickie is great as the smug veteran.  Lisa Marie pins Dobson with the Widow’s Peak in 15 minutes for the veterans to advance.  Bit long for the amount of story, but plenty of good bits.

5.  King of Trios, Round 1: Worker Ant, Bullet Ant & Missile Assault Man v. Hallowicked, ??? & ???.  If Worker doesn’t get to be in the official Colony team, he’ll make one of his own.  Bullet and Missile both used to be in the Colony X-Treme Force, a sort of Colony parody created by the Titor Corporation when they were running Chikara a few years back (don’t ask).  In those days, they were “Arctic Rescue Ant” and “Missile Assault Ant”.  Bullet is now a plucky underdog trying to either prove or ingratiate himself to the Colony, depending on whether you trust him.  Missile is traumatised by his experiences with Titor and swings back and forth at a moment’s notice between being dangerously effective, and being paralysed with confusion.  He’s notionally abandoned the Missile Assault Ant identity but… well, come on, look at him.  He’s plainly uncomfortable in the company of his X-Treme Force teammate.  Over in the heXed-Men team, Hallowicked’s two mystery partners turn out to Icarus (who’s been in the heXed-Men for months and is not a surprise) and Jigsaw (who has no previous connection with the heXed-Men storyline, and must have been zapped since the last show – a neat reveal).  These are big guns within the Chikara-verse.

It’s very much a match for the regular fans; superficially it’s a beating, but there’s a lot going on under the surface.  Poor Bullet, as usual, takes most of the punishment.  Missile spends most of the match lost in his own little world on the apron.  The idea is that by the end of the match Missile is reconciled to Bullet at least enough to come to his aid.  Meanwhile, the heXed-Men are being insanely and pointlessly aggressive: they keep going after people’s masks, even though actually removing them would be an automatic DQ, and they just keep attacking without going for pins.  When the referee finally threatens to DQ them (under Chikara rules, you can be DQd for continuing to beat on a defeated opponent without trying for a pin), Hallowicked pins Bullet clean with his finisher.  The story being set up here is why the heXed-Men are flirting with disqualification, and whether it’s mind games, or a lack of self-control in their hexed state, or a bit of both.  If you get all that context, it’s a good match, with all the storyline stuff balancing out the fact that it’s a one-sided match.

6.  King of Trios, Round 1: Command Bolshoi, Hanako Nakamori & Manami Katsu v. Ophidian, Amasis & Argus.  Bolshoi’s team represent JWP, her own promotion.  The “Bolshoi” in question is the circus, not the ballet.  Nakamori is one half of the JWP tag champions; her regular partner is Kyoko Kimura, and I’m not entirely clear why they brought Katsu instead.  Against them we have the slightly awkward trio of Ophidian, Ophidian’s new protege, and Ophidian’s long-time partner; some pre-show angles imply that Amasis has somewhat been dragged into this team against his will, but that doesn’t feed into the match.  The regulars are basically here to help establish the visitors with a credible first round win.  The regulars hit their big moves, but can’t put the JWP team away.  Bolshoi does some great flying.  Eventually Amasis goes for his 450 splash but takes too long, and gets triple teamed and pinned clean by Katsu.  Good action, and it achieved its goal.

7.  King of Trios, Round 1: Heidi Lovelace, Race Jaxon & Hype Rockwell v. Meiko Satomura, Dash Chisako & Cassandra Miyagi.  Heidi, Race and Hype are another makeshift trio of regulars.  Heidi is currently building to a heel turn over her feelings of being overshadowed by Kimberlee, but that has nothing to do with this match.  Race and Hype just lost the tag titles and are effectively between storylines right now.  The Japanese team represent Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling; Satamura is the company founder and trainer (and so Bolshoi’s opposite number).  She’s widely regarded as one of the best women wrestlers in the world.  Miyagi is the team rookie, and she’s nuts.  She does a lot of eccentric head banging.  You need a lot of charisma to carry off that sort of thing, but she’s got it.  Anyway, Satamura pins Jaxon with a Death Valley Driver for the visitors to advance.  It’s another showcase match to establish the visitors with a strong win against familiar opponents, and it gets the job done.  (And Heidi getting knocked out of the tournament much earlier than Kim plays, however gently, into their story.)

8.  King of Trios, Round 1: Princess Kimberlee, Oleg the Usurper & The Estonian Thunderfrog v. Drew Gulak, Cedric Alexander & Johnny Gargano.  Kimberlee’s trio are another makeshift team – the fact that the non-heXed-Men roster is scattered is a plot point in the wider storylines, but it does result in a tournament heavy on visitors and makeshift trios.  Gulak, Alexander and Gargano are all competitors from the WWE’s Cruiserweight Classic tournament, though Gulak is also a Chikara regular, and so was Gargano three or four years back.   In a bit of a giveaway, Alexander is announced for a show on the other side of the country the next day.  It’s a very Chikara action/comedy match, riffing on the fact that Gargano and Alexander are on their farewell tour before joining WWE  full time, with some good natured biting the hand that feeds them.  Gargano is conspicuously playing to the hard camera like he’s been taught for TV.  People hit the Pedigree and it isn’t a finish.  That sort of thing.  All good fun with some decent action to boot.  Oleg pins Alexander with his finisher for the regulars to advance.

A solid first night, all told.  Nothing really great but everything solidly good (albeit in one case for comedy rather than the action).

Right, day 2!  The middle show has all four King of Trios quarterfinals, the qualifying matches for the Rey de Voladores mini-tournament, and a couple of random singles matches thrown in.  Since we’ve already met all the tournament teams, this ought to go a bit quicker.

1.  Crazy Mary Dobson v. Deonna Purrazzo.  Here’s one of those random singles matches.  It’s pretty weak.  Dobson as the heel has way more personality than Purrazzo as the babyface; Purrazzo wins a fairly generic exchange, and the crowd would clearly have preferred Dobson.

2.  King of Trios Quarterfinal: Hallowicked, Icarus & Jigsaw v. Dasher Hatfield, Trent Seven & Tyler Bate.  All Chikara regulars here.  Dasher’s trio beat the junior heXed-Men team in the first round, and now they reach the main eventers.  The heXed-Men attack before the bell and some brawling follows.  It’s an intense pace in the first few minutes.  But as the match goes on, just like last night, the heXed-Men keep flirting with disqualification by going after Dasher’s mask.  Seven hits a second rope piledriver on Jigsaw, but Icarus pulls the ref out of the ring.  Rather generously, that’s apparently not a DQ.  Anyway, after his team have been working on Dasher’s mask all match, Hallowicked loosens enough to twist it round and blind Dasher (not an automatic DQ because he didn’t remove it), then pins him with the Never Wake Up.  I’m going to query having the ref ignore a blatant DQ when the story is about the heXed-Men flirting with DQ – perhaps the idea was that they dodged a bullet, but if so it doesn’t really come across.  That aside, an excellent match which could bring Dasher into the heXed-Men story in future.

3.  Mark Angelosetti v. Missile Assault Man.  Another random singles match.  Angelosetti is one of the heXed-Men; Missile got eliminated by the heXed-Men in round 1.  Missile is clearly a babyface at this point and does a very good job of getting the crowd behind him given that his flat-affect gimmick rules out using some of the normal ways of playing to the crowd.  As for Mark, he’s retooled all his body language since getting Hexed; the contrast with his established character is pretty great.  The story is basically Missile’s focus coming and going during the match, and the momentum ebbing and flowing with it.  For the finish, Mark astounds Missile by landing on his feet from a superplex, then pins him clean with the Colossal Bomb.  A bit choppy at times, but some really good stuff in there.  That gives Mark two points, so his next singles match will be to earn a title shot.  Not that he’ll be claiming it, mind you – the heXed-Men already have the title – but Icarus has also picked up three points, so it looks like the heXed-Men are banking their title shots in order to win the title straight back in case Hallowicked ever loses it.

And now, an angle for regular viewers!  Max Smashmaster, who was “fired” months ago for attacking boss Mike Quackenbush, makes his return by cornering ring announcer Vlad Radinov and demands to be reinstated.  He’s playing it as if he thinks he’s being reasonable, but his sense of “reasonable” is wildly awry – it’s rather good.  When this gets him nowhere, he attacks Vlad, and Mike Quackenbush comes out to reason with him.  That gets nowhere.  Kimberlee comes out and does the traditional babyface speech demanding that he be reinstated so that they can resolve their earlier feud.  But Max doesn’t want her charity, and when the rest of her team come out as back up, he leaves.  All this means very little if you’re a new fan, but it’s an effective way of kickstarting a storyline that had been sidelined for a few months due to injury.

4.  King of Trios Quarterfinal: Princess Kimberlee, The Estonian Thunderfrog & Oleg the Usurper v. Mickie James, Jazz & Lisa Marie.  Vlad has run away, so neither team gets announced – of course, everyone knows who they are.  Kim and Mickie had a singles match in Chikara back in February, which Mickie won by cheating.  Oleg is complacent at first, and that goes as well for him as you’d expect.  The heels isolate Kim (obviously), and Mickie is just fantastic at this.  There’s a lovely spot where she keeps swapping hands as she pulls Kim’s hair so that she can always claim to be breaking on five.  It’s the delight that she does it with.  Anyhow, the heels try triple teaming the regulars, but Oleg manages to clear the ring of Mickie’s partners, and Kim pins her with a German suplex to get her win back.  That was great, with Mickie as the standout.  If the WWE does decide to go with a women’s tournament along the lines of the Cruiserweight Classic (and it’s been rumoured), then they’d be mad not to try and get her for the returning veteran role.  She was clearly wasted in the WWE of her day.

Vlad returns to announce the next match.  “Do not worry about me, ladies and gentlemen.  I am Russian.  Terrible things happen to me every day from birth to age eight.”

5.  Rey de Voladores Qualifier: Space Monkey v. Frightmare v. Tony Nese v. Candice LeRae.  The Rey de Voladores (King of Fliers) mini-tournament consists of two elimination matches, with the winners meeting in a singles match on night three.  Sometimes the winner is a Chikara regular who gets a push out of it; sometimes it’s an outsider who can give it some prestige.  This time we have Candice LeRae, from the Shimmer team knocked out in round 1; Tony Nese, also from the Cruiserweight Clasic; Frightmare, from the heXed-Men; and Space Monkey, which is exactly what it sounds like – an astronaut monkey.   It’s a fantastic act, and he’s a decent wrestler too.  The Monkey wins over the crowd, so Frightmare (as the only heel in the match) cuts him off to play spoiler.  Nese is reluctant to fight Candice, but gets over it after taking some of her offence.  Nese eliminates the Monkey with his pumphandle driver; Frightmare plants Candice for the second fall.  Nese misses a 450 splash and Frightmare pins him with the Kneecolepsy to win the eliminator.  Complete spotfest, but that’s kind of what Rey de Voladores is for – and it was a good one.

6.  King of Trios Quarterfinal: Juan Francisco de Coronado, Prakash Sabar & The Proletariat Boar of Moldova v. Command Bolshoi, Manami Katsu & Hanako Nakamori.  The basic story is that the JWP team can get the upper hand on Juan and Prakash by triple-teaming them, but they have more trouble with the team powerhouse, Boar.  In the end, the Boar and Sabar hit their finishers on team captain Bolshoi, and Juan tries to follow with his Coronado Clutch submission, but Bolshoi reverses it to a sudden roll-up for the pin.  The JWP advance, having now beaten two of the regular teams to establish themselves.  Fun, though the individual personalities of Katsu and Nakamori weren’t coming across to me.  After the match, Juan characteristically blames his teammates for his mistake, and fires them both, finally disbanding the group and clearing the way for a retooling of Prakash and the Boar.  (But there’s one more bit of business to take care of tomorrow…)

7.  Rey de Voladores Qualifier 2: Johnny Gargano v. Amasis v. Wani v. Aero Star.  Gargano and Amasis were both eliminated from the main tournament last night.  Wani is another Chikara regular, an enigmatic masked guy ostensibly from Japan (though everyone keeps pointing out that there seems to be no track record of him existing before, and he’s clearly not a rookie).  Aero Star is one of the AAA wrestlers who won the King of Trios tournament last year.  There’s an extended diversion to start as Gargano adjusts his boot and the whole thing gets milked wonderfully.  It gets a “This is wrestling” chant.  Anyway, it’s another spotfest – as I say, that is kind of the point – with Gargano playing the fiery babyface.  After a big dive spot, Frightmare runs in and lays out Amasis (continuing a minor feud from earlier in the year).  Amasis is apparently out cold and the referee declares him to be eliminated by TKO.  Wani pins Gargano with his running neckbreaker finisher, which is a real surprise, since Gargano is the biggest star in the match.  Since Frightmare/Wani would be heel/heel, it’s pretty obvious that Aero Star is going to win, and indeed he does.  Good moments, bit lacking in flow.

8.  King of Trios Quarterfinal: Fire Ant, Silver Ant & Soldier Ant v. Meiko Satamura, Dash Chisako & Cassandra Miyagi.  The Colony play de facto heels against the Sendai Girls, which is risky given how beloved they are, but they get away with it.  The Colony work on Dash’s leg, setting up a thread that runs through the rest of the weekend.  The other part of the story is that Satamura is the game changer when she’s in the ring, and the Colony’s strategy is to get her out as quickly as they can.  The Colony nearly finish off Dash with a frog splash, but she won’t stay down, and a six-way brawl break out.  The Sendai Girls clear the ring, isolate Silver Ant, and work on the injured shoulder that nearly cost them round 1.  We wind up with Silver Ant and his injured shoulder against Dash and her injured leg; she reverses a submission into a cross armbreaker and Silver taps.  Very good, using Silver’s injury as an out for the Colony, and setting up Dash as the courageous weak link for the remaining matches.

Probably the best night of the weekend in terms of overall match quality.

And night 3.  This has the semifinals and final of the King of Trios tournament, the Rey de Voladores final, and the annual tag team gauntlet match.

1.  King of Trios Semifinal: Meiko Satamura, Dash Chisako & Cassandra Miyagi v. Princess Kimberlee, the Estonian Thunderfrog & Oleg the Usurper.  Naturally, Kim’s team go straight for Dash’s injured leg from last night.  They tease an early submission with the Chikara Special, though I don’t think anyone was buying such a quick win over the guest stars in the opening match.  The Sendai Girls isolate Oleg and triple team him.  Kim gets the hot tag and does her Suplex Kingdom routine on Satamura, which looks great.  But the Sendai Girls get the numbers advantage on Kim, and Satamura submits her with a cross armbreaker.  Good action, bit of an abrupt finish.  It kept the thread of Dash’s injured leg going without bashing us over the head with it.

2.  King of Trios Semifinal: Hallowicked, Icarus & Jigsaw v. Command Bolshoi, Manami Katsu & Hanako Nakamori.  A win for the JWP team will mean both Japanese women’s teams meet in the final, but JWP are underdogs against the main eventers.  The girls attack on the bell and have fun hitting triple teams.  The heXed-Men isolate Nakamori to turn the tables and, as in the earlier rounds, seem more interested in inflicting punishment and going after Bolshoi’s mask than actually trying to win the match.  This time, it seems clearer that they’re not fully in control.  They Hallowicked hits the Go 2 Sleepy Hollow on Katsu, but pulls her up at 2.  Jigsaw hits a brainbuster, and pulls her up at 2 again.  Icarus hits a Pedigree and doesn’t even bother pretending to go for a pin before setting her up for the Bluray – and the referee disqualifies the heXed-Men for excessive punishment.  The heXed-Men seem amazed and outraged, as if they’ve been watching a different match.  The excessive punishment DQ is an established rule, but it’s not used often – which is why they went out of their way to tease it in round 1.  I can see the argument against doing a DQ in a tournament semifinal, but the semifinals are in an odd position because they’re also show openers.  I don’t mind this; it sets up storylines for both the heXed-Men (on future shows) and the JWP team (in the main event).  And since they were going with the all-Japanese final, they needed to get Hallowicked out of the tournament in some way that wouldn’t damage him too badly.

3.  Mark Angelosetti v. Arik Cannon.  Cannon is a former Chikara regular who still pops up from time to time, and mainly works out of Minnesota.  It’s a straightforward impact match, which is a nice change of pace on this card.  Cannon gets some fiery comebacks and escapes the Colossal Bomb the first time, but gets pinned cleanly with the same move not long after.  That gives Mark his third point and another banked title shot for the heXed-Men.

4.  Tag Team Gauntlet 2016.  This is an annual tradition – it usually features a bit of storyline and a few random appearances.  Frankly, it’s also the “get everyone else on the show” match, sometimes a bit obviously so.  There’s nothing on the line here, though it does count for points towards a tag title shot.  The number of teams isn’t announced in advance – it ends when people stop coming out.

Team #1 are Blaster McMassive & Flex Rumblecrunch, the remaining members of the Devastation Corporation.  Before the match can start, their former manager Sidney Bakabella comes out and berates them, pointing out that two years ago they won the tournament and now they’re stuck at the wrong end of the novelty match.  He tells them they’ve become weak by playing to the fans.  Max Smashmaster (the exiled third member, who we saw last night) comes in and lays out Blaster with a tombstone before leaving with Sidney.  This seems to be a break-up angle for DevCorp and a retooling of both Max and Sidney to lose their 80s retro aspects and take on a more serious persona.  That’s a very big angle for the regular fans.

Team #2 are N_R_G – Race Jaxon & Hype Rockwell – who run in and pin Blaster in the confusion.  Team #3 are the Big Deal’s security, Sloan Caprice & Rick Roland.  (Since they’re not masked, there’s no harm pointing out that they’re indie wrestlers Rex Lawless and Mike Verna.)  They take forever to make their entrance, so Race dives on them.  Well, I say “on them”, it’s really more “in their general vicinity”.  Oh, Race.  Anyhow, a slightly sluggish exchange leads to the security guards winning with their admittedly impressive Dealbreaker finisher.   Gentleman’s Club members Drew Gulak & Orange Cassidy are #4 – Gulak is very serious, Cassidy is characteristically out of it.  Gulak charges the ring to get double teamed, but starts to get control on his own.  When Cassidy finally ambles to the ring, his otherwise unhelpful nonsense distracts the security guards long enough for Gulak to eliminate them with a roll-up.  Cassidy has to be seen to be believed – the timing on his stuff is fantastic, and you’ve got to really know your stuff to get away with doing it this lackadaiscally.  The Sea Stars, Delmi Exo & Ashley Vox, are #5 – another rookie duo, who have a decent enough match with the Club and get eliminated after Cassidy mists Exo with his orange juice.  Cornelius Crummels & Sonny Defarge are #6 – and these guys are serious rookies, on only their third match.  They pin Cassidy with what’s meant to be an elaborate double team but looks a bit ropey, and then quickly despatch El Hijo del Ice Cream & Ice Cream Jr at #7 with the same move.  Unfortunately, it misses by a mile.  The crowd do not like the Ice Creams going in seconds, and are losing patience with the rookies, who pretty obviously are not ready for this show.  (“The thing is”, muses Styles, “they haven’t got that double team right yet, and they’ve won two matches with it, which is almost more impressive.”)

Team #8 are Donald Kluger & Jasper Tippins, who together comprise the cycling-themed Dez Peloton.  This is their debut, but they’re clearly way too good to be rookies, so I assume they work under other names somewhere else.  They’re Very Enthusiastic and they actually win back the crowd and make a cycling-themed gimmick work.  I hope we get to see more of them.  They win with a double pumphandle, having won the crowd back on side.  Team #9 are Hermit Crab & Rock Lobster, which the Peloton also win, though the finishing sequence is a bit confused.  Number #10 is Prakash Sabar & The Proletariat Boar of Moldova, and again  Styles is outraged by Sabar’s X-Pac impersonation.  Sabar hits the Bronco Buster on both guys and pins Timmins with the X-Factor.  That seems to be it, but after a pause D-Generation X’s music plays, and X-Pac & Billy Gunn come out as team #11.  Yes, the real ones.  As you’d expect, they destroy Sabar and the Boar with a few signature moves, which is basically the blow-off for Sabar’s X-Pac copycat routine.  (Between this and the break-up of the United Nations, it leaves the way clear to retool Sabar and the Boar for the future, which is fine by me.)  After the match we get some schtick in which everyone realises that essentially none of the DX spiel can actually be done on a family-friendly Chikara show, so Billy does some of his pre-DX Rockabilly stuff instead.

It’s a fun guest appearance at the end and there’s some good work in there with the Gentleman’s Club and Dez Peloton, but yeesh, there’s some ropey old stuff in that gauntlet as well.  I wouldn’t normally be keen on a 40 minute gauntlet match ending with the last team hitting two moves either (unless they were heels), but the surprise guest factor meant that they got away with it here.

5.  Lucas Calhoun v. Chuck Taylor™.  This is a match in as much as there’s a bell at either end, but it’s really a comedy skit.  Chuck Taylor™ persists in his attempts to cut a promo on Calhoun despite the match having started.  Calhoun ties him in the bottom rope and the fans do a conga to take turns to chop him.  Yes, literally.  And then he continues his promo.  The upshot is that he tries to persuade Calhoun to be his tag partner, and Calhoun isn’t having it and pins him with a karate chop.  The announcers solemnly agree that we have witnessed a technical classic.

Oh yeah…  Chuck Taylor™ is not Chuck Taylor.  He’s Stokely Hathaway from Ring of Honor.  The idea is that he’s the wrestling equivalent of a domain squatter who swept in and claimed the rights to the name in Chikara when the real Chuck announced his retirement last year, changed his mind, and forgot to file the paperwork.  The real Chuck is now DUSTIN (the name he uses in Evolve), but he’s in California this weekend for the PWG Battle of Los Angeles shows.

6.  Rey de Voladores Final: Frightmare Tony Nese v. Aero Star.  Frightmare (legitimately) suffered a separated shoulder in his qualifier match and has not been cleared to wrestle, so the runner-up from his qualifier takes the spot.  So this match no longer has any Chikara regulars in it, and if it would have gone somewhere in story terms, we’ll never know.  Still, it’s a pretty good singles match.  Nese fights for his finisher, and finally gets it only for Aero Star to kick out; Aero Star pins him with a springboard Codebreaker and a Backstabber.  Bit abrupt and maybe lacking in a clear reason to choose sides, but some very impressive stuff in there.

7.  King of Trios Final: Command Bolshoi, Manami Katsu & Hanako Nakamori v. Meiko Satamura, Dash Chisako & Cassandra Miyagi.  With all the Chikara regulars eliminated, there’s no wider storyline here beyond the simple prestige of the tournament, and the rivalry between the two Japanese promotions.  In terms of tonight’s story, Katsu took a beating in the last match, but Dash has an injured leg.  The Sendai Girls are trying to keep her out of the match, which means that even though Katsu isn’t 100%, it’s still worth JWP using her to get the numbers advantage.  Being a plucky babyface, Dash eventually tags in, but she can’t do much and the JWP team promptly go to work on her.  There’s a nice bit where Bolshoi nearly submits Dash as her teammates run interference to try and stop it being broken up.  Finally Dash makes the hot tag to Satamura so that the team captains can face off for a bit.  Satamura goes after Katsu, who puts up her best effort but finally falls to the DVD.  Very good match.

It’s a good tournament, though there are stronger ones in the Chikaratopia archives – if you’re minded to buy one of these shows then to be honest night two probably has the best wrestling, but they’ll show up on the subscription service anyway within a month or so.