BRM Reviews CHIKARA A Touch of Class (very important)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews CHIKARA A Touch of Class (very important)

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 28th, '20, 22:06

CHIKARA A Touch of Class (1/31/2010)- Philadelphia, PA


PINKIE SANCHEZ PROMO- fine
We’ve got a BDK backdrop for Bruderschaft Des Kreuzes promos. In this promo Pinkie explained to us why he joined the BDK. He feels like he was made into an “outcast” in CHIKARA because people didn’t take him seriously.

PINKIE SANCHEZ vs. GREEN ANT- 6.75/10
In addition to the promo background, we have a BDK ring announcer, too, who does the intros for them in German. His name is Jakob Hammermeier. These two had a very good opener. You can tell from the get-go just how into this whole BDK angle the crowd is. Pinkie won clean, giving the invaders a strong victory. It looked like Pinkie pretty much killed Green Ant with a Burning Hammer for the finish. The rest of the Colony came out and helped Green Ant to the back.

THE UNSTABLE vs. PLAYER UNO, CREATE-A-WRESTLER, & SUGAR DUNKERTON- 4.5/10
Create-A-Wrestler quickly brawled to the back with Gerard after the heels jumped the bell on the babyfaces. He would later come back as Ultimo Breakfast for a bit, head to the back, and eventually reemerge as Dasher Hatfield, which he would go on to stay as forevermore.
Dasher ran wild on the heels and I will admit that this did a fine job of getting Dasher over and solidifying a special connection between Dasher and Sugar that CAW hasn’t had with anyone in any of his other personalities, but surely we could have found a way to do this that didn’t involve him abandoning his team? I will admit that the more I think about this, the more it grows on me, but I still think there must have been a better way to do this.

OSIRIAN PORTAL vs. THE BRUDERSCHAFT DES KREUZES (Sara Del Rey & Daizee Haze)- 6.75/10
A GREAT showcase win for Sara and Daizee while still letting the Osirian Portal get enough offense in to maintain their credibility as recent Campeonatos de Parejas. Sara and Daizee did a tremendous job of making you hate them even though they wrestled pretty much cleanly. Another strong win for the BDK.

BRODIE LEE vs. HALLOWICKED (w/Frightmare)- 6.75/10
Gavin claimed that the match went fourteen minutes, which is definitely false. The match was very good. It felt like they were going to continue the Roughnecks vs. Incoherence feud from last year but on a smaller scale now that Brodie disbanded the Roughnecks. I say “felt like” because despite the finish seeming to set up a feud (Brodie, who had been distracting himself with Frightmare several times during the match, did so again, which allowed Hallowicked to recover, come back, and beat him), this didn’t lead to anything. In fact, to this date, a few months shy of eleven years later, the only time Brodie has wrestled either Frightmare or Hallowicked since then was a four-way in EVOLVE a few weeks later (and yes, I know Brodie was in WWE for a long time and was injured for a while before that, but these three were all in CHIKARA for almost a year and a half from this point until Brodie’s injury and their paths never crossed. It’s a little weird, especially from CHIKARA).

ORDER OF THE NEO-SOLAR TEMPLE PROMO- great
UltraMantis Black salutes the BDK for outwitting him and getting the Eye of Tyr back. He says that now that they have what they want, they should please kindly stay out of his way. He says that he and Delirious will win the Campeonatos de Parejas next month, and that the Order of the Neo-Solar Temple will go on to win King of Trios in April. Oh UltraMantis. If only you knew what was in store for you.

ANDY “RIGHT LEG” RIDGE, PELLE PRIMEAU, & GRIZZLY REDWOOD vs. THE ORDER OF THE NEO-SOLAR TEMPLE (UltraMantis Black, Crossbones, & Delirious)- 6/10
This went longer than it needed to, but the kids do need the ring time. The heels won clean. Once again, UMD ordered Delirious to let him get the pin, even though Delirious had done most of the work.

TIM DONST PROMO- bad
He basically said “you are better than me, therefore I will cheat to beat you.” And that’s not an exaggeration. He outright said that Player Dos was better than him in every way other than willingness to cheat, and that therefore he would cheat to win. Donst just completely buried himself.

CHIKARA YOUNG LIONS CUP MATCH: Player Dos(c) vs. Tim Donst- 6.5/10
As he laid out in his promo, Donst tried to jump Dos before the bell, but Dos saw him coming and nailed him with a superkick, making Donst look like a putz. Dons eventually got control and worked over the back. Dos made a short comeback but Donst took over again and got the win with the Inverted CHIKARA Special.

THE BRUDERSCHAFT DES KREUZES (Claudio Castagnoli, Tursas, Ares, Lince Dorado vs. Mike Quackenbush, Jigsaw, Equinox, & Eddie Kingston)- a PERFECT 10/10!
This was originally scheduled as Quackenbush & The Future Is Now of Jigsaw, Equinox, and Lincé Dorado vs. the BDK of Claudio, Ares, Tursas, and the mystery eighth member of the BDK… and as the technicos charged to the ring, it turned out that Lincé wasn’t really a technico, and he grabbed Equinox and slammed him down onto the steps, so now it’s four on two. The heels absolutely dominated our poor babyfaces until Quack started to fire up and starts chopping Tursas… and Tursas just stands there and doesn’t sell it even a bit. Quack ducks a clothesline and charges off the ropes for a running dropkick… and Tursas just brushes it off. I thought that spot was a particularly brilliant inversion of the usual, and made the BDK look that much more dominant. GREAT psychology.
More beatings happened and we wound up with Claudio and Jigsaw in the ring and Claudio taunts Eddie Kingston by hitting Jigsaw with two spinning backfists. This brought Kingston out to chase Claudio. Lincé Dorado stepped in and slapped Kingston, and now the babyfaces have a fourth man!
Kingston starts to… not quite run wild, but he did manage to knock down three of the heels. Everyone but Tursas. Kingston turned his attention to Tursas and starts to chop him like Quack did but Kingston is bigger and stronger than Quack so Tursas eventually gets wobbly and Kingston hits the ropes… and Claudio and Ares trip him up and pull him out. Claudio then dumps a guardrail on Kingston’s knee (which Ares had previously targeted with a chop block), so now we’re back down to three babyfaces again (Equinox had gotten up shortly after Kingston came in).
More heel dominance ensues until Jigsaw slips free of Tursas’ grasp and goes for a small package… but Tursas is strong enough that he just won’t go down, and Jigsaw gets laid out. Here comes Quack with a diving crossbody onto Claudio, knocking him down… but Claudio rolls through it, stands up holding Quack, and slams him down.
Quack pops back up soon after and holy crap he’s getting offense in for real this time, sending Claudio, Lincé and Ares to the floor… but that damn Tursas just WONT. GO. DOWN. Quack comes off the ropes… and gets knocked down. Now Jigsaw is in and he’s chopping and Tursas is barely selling it. Jigsaw comes off the ropes… and eats a freakin’ Stalling Bossman Slam!
Now Kingston is back and he’s chopping Tursas and it’s looking like Tursas might actually go down, but Eddie’s knee flares up! He fights as well as he can and takes out Lincé and Ares… and that f*cking Claudio slides into the ring and takes his knee out from behind!
Claudio gets up and he’s all full of himself, but here come Quack and Jigsaw with a double superkick. Now dives are happening and the babyfaces are actually getting sustained offense in! Quack dominates Lincé… but then Ares takes Quack out… but here is Equinox to take the fight to Ares… and then Claudio jumps in and Equinox gets his ass kicked. But here comes Jigsaw, taking the fight to Claudio and he hits this big, crazy Lucha DDT and goes for the pin… and Tursas storms into the ring and breaks it up, and Jigsaw has to face the monster himself…
But here comes Quack! And now we’ve got the ultimate CHIKARA babyface team, working together to succeed where both of them have failed as individuals. They get Tursas wobbling with the chops and they both hit the ropes… and Tursas knocks them both down with a double-clothesline.
But here comes Kingston! He’s laying it in on Tursas, and he ducks down and goes for the Backdrop Driver… but Ares distracts the referee while Claudio comes in and hits Eddie with a low blow! They let the referee go, and he turns around and there is Claudio covering Kingston for the one-two-three.

This was an absolute masterwork of storytelling, which is made all the more remarkable by how non-standard the story was. Sure, we the dominant heel vs. the plucky babyface all the time, but usually by the time the finishing stretch of that match comes, they made you think that the babyface has a real chance of winning. The story of this match was that the heels were so dominant that it never really even got to that point. It got close once or twice, but this match built around getting progressively closer to that point but then pulling the rug out from under us before it got there.
In addition to all of that, this match did a TREMENDOUS job of getting Tursas over as an unbeatable monster. He never even left his feet, and he no-sold pretty much every strike thrown at him by everyone other than Eddie Kingston. And even in this soul-crushing story, they managed to plant the seeds of hope. Eddie Kingston is the one guy that Tursas never got the better of, and we now have hope that if Eddie ever got Tursas alone, he could defeat that monster. Throw a great babyface performance by Quack and outstanding douchebag heel performances by both Claudio and Lincé, as well as a white-hot crowd, and you’ve got a PERFECT match.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- GREAT!
And it doesn’t even stop there! The BDK grab Kingston and force him to his knees and Claudio shoves a mic in his face and demands that Kingston say that he respects Claudio (which Kingston was supposed to do after losing a “respect match” to Claudio at the previous show but refused to do). Kingston declares that he will never respect Claudio and gets and arm free and lunges at Claudio and tires to take him down but the heels stomp the crap out of him. The other babyfaces tried to make the save but all got beaten down, and Claudio hit Kingston with a Ricola Bomb.

F.I.S.T. PROMO- fine
They almost came off as… well… it’s F.I.S.T. so I won’t say “babyfaces,” but they came off as not dislikable here, which was quite the shock to me.

2 OUT OF 3 FALLS MATCH FOR THE CHIKARA CAMPEONATOS DE PAREJAS: The Colony (Fire Ant & Soldier Ant)(c) vs. F.I.S.T. (Gran Akuma & Icarus)- 6.5/10
This was a lot slower than I was expecting and really didn’t feel like it had the heat you’d expect from these two teams. Maybe that was on purpose, but it made it hard for the match to click for me.
Soldier Ant tried a poisonrana and landed on his head in a terrifying manner. Thankfully he was at least able to roll out of the ring under his own power. Fire Ant wrestled on his own for a few minutes before Soldier Ant came back and the Colony got two quick falls. Soldier Ant did take a bump or two after that, but did seem to be to be a step off.


This was pretty good show from CHIKARA. In the ring, it was only okay, with the 10/10 being the only match that even broke a 7, and the two title matches being relatively disappointing. From a storyline point of view, though, this show is extremely important. Obviously, the title change is important, but the BDK stuff is what really makes this show must-see. Yes, the whole angle was great, but to really understand both the heat and how dominant they feel, you need to see this first show of in-ring action.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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