BRM Reviews CHIKARA King of Trios 2010: Night 1 (awesome!)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews CHIKARA King of Trios 2010: Night 1 (awesome!)

Post by Big Red Machine » May 30th, '21, 15:20

CHIKARA King of Trios 2010: Night 1 (4/23/2010)- Philadelphia, PA


MATT CLASSIC & THE THROWBACKS PROMO- whatever
Matt Classic doesn’t understand what a camera is. He also called Sugar Dunkerton a “Schvartze.” Sugar Dunkerton thought he meant “The Schwartz” from Spaceballs. From this, we can deduce that Sugar Dunkerton has not seen Blazing Saddles. This whole thing was just an excuse for Matt Classic to do his schtick.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: The Throwbacks & Matt Classic vs. F.I.S.T.- 2/10
The Throwbacks started off by Dasher Hatfield throwing a basketball at Icarus, which hit him in the chest. How was this not a DQ?
The match was snippets of decent wrestling interrupted by WAY too much of not my style of comedy. If you like your comedy so far over the top that you need a ladder to reach it, you’ll enjoy this match. If you’d prefer for your comedy (and your wrestling in general) to be less cartoonish and more believably human, you’re in for a long fourteen minutes.
In case you’re wondering why the Order of the Neo Solar Temple were not in this tournament, it’s because Dieter van Stiergerwalt decided to bar them from doing so.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Team Frightning (Mike Quackenbush, Frightmare, & Hallowicked) vs. Team Big Japan (Daisuke Sekimoto, Yuji Okabayashi, & Kankuro Hoshino)- 8/10
Eleven minutes of awesome. Someone PLEASE tell me that there is a Quack vs. Sekimoto singles match out there somewhere. Or, even better, that there are forty-five of them that I can go watch.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Osirian Portal & Sara Del Rey vs. Bruderschaft des Kreuzes (Claudio Castagnoli, Ares, & Tursas)- 8/10
So Skayde apparently held CHIKARA up for more money so we had to replace his team with a mystery team via drawing from a hat. After some “comedy” of picking Well Dunn and Strike Force, we pick Osirian Portal. The referee starts to explain what will happen to their opportunities in Rey de Volares Tomorrow should they win tonight, but Dieter von Stiegerwalt comes out with a new hat that he orders them to use to pick the third person… and it’s BDK member Sara Del Rey, so I don’t think we’re really going to have to worry about what happens if the Osirian Portal win tonight (but I did greatly appreciate them letting us know that they had at least kayfabe thought it through).
The Portal’s reaction to this was tremendous, as was Bryce apologizing to them. And then when Sara volunteered to be the one to start the match for her team… WONDERFUL stuff from everyone involved.
To stave off Sara starting the match, Ophidian charged at Ares and started fighting with him to force a start to the match with him as the legal man. He gets some roll-ups, then tags in Amasis… and that f*cking Sara Del Rey just reaches over the rope and grabs Amasis’ arms and won’t let him get involved with the action. She’s not even trying to hide it. Ophidian was forced to leave the ring when the count got to four, and so Ares was just able to walk over to the trapped Amasis and attack him and take over the match.
When Amasis finally broke free, he was intimidated a bit by the large Tursas and strategically backed up a bit… and accidentally went into Sara’s reach, so she tagged herself in, ran over to Tursas, and laid down so he could pin her. In another little detail I loved, Tursas, knowing that the person he was pinning wasn’t going to try and kick out, opted for the foot-on-the-chest pin, because that allowed him to be able to defend himself while still making the pin. Fortunately, Amasis was able to move him enough to break it up. Bryce doing his job and following the rules, ordered Amasis to leave the ring. Fortunately for the babyfaces, Sara made the mistake of straying too close to the ropes, allowing Ophidian to pull her out under the bottom rope, forcing a tag in CHIKARA’s Lucha Libre rules. Another brilliant spot!
The heels dominated Amasis and showboated… and when the camera shot would be far enough over to show Sara, you could see her showboating on the apron right along with them. There was another point where Amasis was reaching for a tag, and just at the edge of the screen, you could see Ophidian’s hand sticking out… and then Sara’s grabbing it and pulling it back.
Amasis finally broke free again and crawled over to his corner for the tag… and the only person there was Sara Del Rey. He realized he was alone so he turned around to fight and saw Claudio charging at him and got out of the way and Claudio bumped into Sara and Amasis rolled him up for a nearfall. The heels got the advantage again and decided to go for an illegal triple-team… so Sara ran into the ring to distract the referee. And Ophidian was also distracted, yelling at Sara, so he can’t break it up, either. And, because the storytelling in this match was just that good, the heels weren’t just hitting random moves on Amasis. They were specifically working his ribs over. I LOVE THIS!
Amasis eventually got the chance to make the hot tag. Sara tried to intercept it but Ophidian grabbed her outstretched arm to yank her off balance so that she couldn’t get in the way. He went to the top rope but Sara grabbed him so he had to push her off before he could go for his high-risk move, and that bought Ares the time he needed to recover enough to counter it. Fortunately, Ophidian was able to counter the counter and we finally got a string of babyface offense and Ophidian hit the double knees off the top rope and went for the pin… and f*cking Sara Del Rey made sure she was distracting the referee.
Osirian Portal finally figured out how to neutralize Sara: Their hypnosis spot. With worked for long enough to them to keep up their offense on Ares and they hit Osirian Sacrament on Ares but he kicked out. I suspect that actual plan was for Sara to break the pin up but she didn’t get there in time, but they still got the point across by having it clear that she had been trying to do so. The Portal finally got sick of this and actually attacked Sara (which got a big pop), and they were able to get some sustained offense in. Ophidian kicked out of Roaring Swiss Death and then countered a Ricola Bomb into the Ophidian Death Grip, but that f*cking Sara Del Rey ran in and tried to pry him off.. and when she couldn’t do that, she kicked him in the nuts, because what’s Bryce going to do? Even if you could disqualify someone for hitting a member of their own team below the belt, that’d be giving the BDK exactly what they want: A win for Aries, Claudio, and Tursas. Sara took Amasis out of the ring and kept him occupied on the outside, leaving Ophidian alone with all three opponents, who hit Ragnarok for the win. And that f*cking Sara Del Rey has to go and rub it in all of our faces by doing the BDK pose with them after the match. The BDK were perfectly infuriating here, and the crowd ate up every single bit of it, as did I, watching at home more than eleven years later. This is definitely one of those matches where it I was rating matches on storytelling alone rather than storytelling plus action, this would be a 10/10. (Basically, to get a 10/10 under my system, your storytelling needs to be flawless- no matter how simple of complex you choose to make that story- and then there has to be a necessary quotient of action as well, otherwise things like squashes would be 10/10).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Just to be a jerk, Tursas hit a big splash on Ophidian after the match and he had to be helped to the back. I don’t remember there being much of a payoff to this, but I could be wrong.

TEAM OSAKA PRO PROMO- This was pretty much all in Japanese, so I really can’t rate it.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: The UnStable vs. Team Osaka Pro (Atsushi Kotoge, Daisuke Harada, & Tadasuke)- 7/10
Both of these teams are having some internal issues. The takeaway here was that Team Osaka Pro was able to put their issues aside for the duration of the match, but the UnStable (and specifically Vin Gerard and Colin Delaney) were not. This was a great action match with a babyface vs. heel dynamic but without too much cheating and with a babyface win, which was exactly what the crowd needed after the previous match.

JOHNNY GARGANO & AEROFORM PROMO- meh
This team earned their spot by winning a Jack of All Trios tournament. Aeroform were goofs who talked about dunking cookies. Gargano was cartoonish, too, but at least he was talking about winning the tournament.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: The Colony vs. Johnny Gargano & Aeroform- 6.75/10
More great action, but this one started to drag by the end.

F1RST FAMILY PROMO- I am ashamed to admit that this really grew on me by the end.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Bruderschaft des Kreuzes (Lincé Dorado, Tim Donst, & Pinkie Sanchez) vs. the F1rst Family (Arik Cannon, Darrin Corbin, & Ryan Cruz)- 7/10
There was a lot of gaga early on but this eventually got great and the crowd once again really wanted to see the BDK lose. Unfortunately, they didn’t.

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: Team Delicioso (Curry Man & Los Ice Creams) vs. Team Perros del Mal (Cuije, El Abrije, & El Oriental)- 6/10
We got some great comedy from Cuije, El Abrije, and Los Ice Creams early on, then some good action.

SOMEONE PROPOSES TO SOMEONE ELSE IN THE RING- I wouldn’t have even mentioned this if not for two things. First, the fans, even in CHIKARA, chanted “JUST SAY NO!” The second is that we cut to this directly from Curry Man nodding to Green Lantern Fan, which I REALLY hope was on purpose, because that is one hell of a deep inside joke.
(For those who don’t know, GLF got to do this very same thing on an early episode of Raw. Propose in the ring, I mean. Not edit a DVD to include an inside joke.)

KING OF TRIOS TOURNAMENT FIRST ROUND MATCH: The Jackson 3 vs. The Future is Now (Jigsaw, Helios, & Equinox)- 8/10
This was a strong, action-packed main event with the Jacksons acting a little more heelish throughout the match-though Malachai reluctantly- to really get the crowd behind TFIN.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Matt and Nick wouldn’t shake hands after the match but Malachai would. He got shoved and his brothers walked out on him, also spitting at the babyfaces for good measure. They received a great kayfabe “DON’T COME BACK!” chant for this.

WEIRD THING AT THE END- As the credits rolled over a black screen, we heard Gavin Loudspeaker announce “ladies and gentlemen, I’ve just been handed this.” And then it cut off. Odd. I’m not sure if this was a tease of something or an inexcusably amateurish screw-up.

This was an awesome show from CHIKARA. It was the usual King of Trios draws of great trios action and getting to see teams from all over the world, mixed a hot crowd and some very strong babyface/heel dynamics. I’m not going to pretend that the idea of a trios match didn’t lose a bit of its luster by the seventh match, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to hurt the show.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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