For the past four years, I’ve been hyping up the indy wrestling fed CHIKARA. Originally just a wrestling school run by Mike Quackenbush, it translated into its own fed for the sake of giving its students somewhere to compete and over a decade carved its own niche. It’s got just about everything a wrestling fan could want. Great characters, great wrestling, great comedy and some of the better storylines in the business while at the same time keeping it something all ages can enjoy.

Of course, my support of the company can only go so far. While they’re doing shows more spread across the country nowadays, they are centered around Philly and I can’t expect anyone reading to go and buy a ticket on my say. Their shows are all available on DVD, but I can see the hassle in that, especially not knowing where to start.

On the other hand, this Sunday is High Noon, the company’s very first iPPV and I highly, highly, HIGHLY suggest giving some thought in checking it out.

High Noon is the finale of CHIKARA’s tenth season. It’s a climactic, big profile show that you can watch live from the comfort of your own home. It’s $15 and you can order and stream it through GFL Combat Sports. It starts at 4pm and has its own 45-minute free preshow beforehand.

Here’s a look at the card and what the show has to offer.

The main story of the 10th season has been crowning the first ever CHIKARA Grand Champion. Although the company has had tag champs and a Young Lions Cup (a singles title for people 23 and younger), they’ve been able to write around the fact that they’ve never had a world heavyweight championship. Until now. Twelve wrestlers were selected to take part in a year-long round robin tournament called the 12 Large Summit (“12 Large” being a catchphrase of the late Larry Sweeney, who died early this year). With all the matches done, we’re down to our finals.

On one side, we have “Lightning” Mike Quackenbush, the squeaky-clean head trainer of CHIKARA who is an absolute genius at technical wrestling. On the other side is “The Last of a Dying Breed” Eddie Kingston. Eddie is a brawler, who tends to win the crowd over with his pure emotion and never-say-die attitude, along with an intensity reminiscent of Taz in ECW. Despite Kingston being a major name in the company for years, I can’t recall too many times that the two have crossed paths. Either way, this should be good and constitutes as a perfect money match for someone to be crowned the first champ.

Long ago, UltraMantis Black and Hallowicked teamed together as the Dark Breed until Hallowicked grew to despise UltraMantis and left to become a good guy. Over the past couple years, CHIKARA has been at war with the Die Bruderschaft des Kreuzes (also known as “Brotherhood of the Cross” or “BDK”), an invading group not unlike the nWo, only better written. This has been the kind of Saturday morning cartoon threat where heroes and villains have had to put aside their differences to take on a common foe. That’s led to UltraMantis and Hallowicked rekindling their alliance to take out the top ranking BDK members (now that Claudio Castagnoli has gone and signed with WWE) Ares and Tim Donst. For the last year, the BDK has been wounded with membership of their once-unbeatable regime dwindling. Now it’s time for the Spectral Envoy to finish them off once and for all in a match with no disqualification.

In CHIKARA, one doesn’t simply get a tag title shot out of thin air. You have to earn it through points. Winning a tag match gets you a point. Losing a tag match causes you to lose all your points. Earning three points in a row will get you a shot against the champs.

As it turns out, both the Colony (Soldier Ant and Fire Ant) and the Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson) each have two points. Whoever wins this match gets the next shot at the champs, Team FIST (Chuck Taylor and Johnny Gargano). The losers will fall back down the ladder and have to start over again. Other than that, it’s just an excuse for two excellent tag teams to have an excellent tag team match.

Gregory Iron is a professional wrestler who legitimately suffers from cerebral palsy. The guy is a real inspiration and it’s great to see him succeed. Icarus is the most hated man in CHIKARA and has been for years. The two have tussled before with each winning a match, but this is supposed to be the big finale to their feud. Adding to his already critical heat, Icarus claims that Iron is faking it and he’s been totally 100% this entire time. Yikes.

Green Ant vs. Tursas is a feud that’s been brewing for quite some time. Tursas has been the enforcer for the BDK, so the two were already opposing each other. Green Ant broke his arm in a match and had a metal rod inserted, which mentally turned him into Lex Luger. No, seriously. The massive Tursas had a contest to see if any of the fans or wrestlers could bodyslam him and it was ultimately Green Ant who took him down. He even started aping Luger’s style by driving around the country in a bus called the Flex Express on his way to take down Tursas in the name of AMERICA! Luger himself has even shown support for the little guy. The feud’s been heating up for the entire year and now it’s going to come to a head.

When the BDK first formed, Sara Del Rey joined to prove that she was good enough to trade blows with the men of the roster instead of having to face the same couple women wrestlers again and again. She had proven herself and after a while, became unsure why she was taking abuse from her BDK bosses when she already got the vindication she had been working towards. She faced then-leader Claudio Castagnoli during the 12 Large Summit and defeated him, causing her exile from the stable. Since then, she’s been on a one-woman crusade to take out the BDK.

Jakob Hammermeier is the ring announcer for the BDK (basically, what Ricardo Rodriguez is to Alberto Del Rio, only German and Jakob was doing it first). He himself has been trying to prove himself by becoming a wrestler. He’s the lowest-ranking lackey in the group, although his buddies will usually cheat excessively to get him the win. While it’s strange to see Del Rey go from taking on the top guys to smiting the Glass Joe of the BDK, it should at least be entertaining to see Jakob get wrecked.

To even describe the backstory of this match is to describe CHIKARA in a nutshell. A year ago, CHIKARA had all these videos online that were saying “The Band is Coming”. The videos clearly suggested that this would relate to former nWo members Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and X-Pac, who called themselves the Band in TNA. Since CHIKARA had their big King of Trios tournament on the horizon, that would make some weird kind of sense… only the fans with more sense were disturbed by how much of a trainwreck that would be. As it turns out, all that hype about the Band was really for Archibald Peck and his valet Veronica, who are a marching band. Yes, really.

Marchie Archie has been pulling out wins through underhanded means, usually with the help of Veronica’s baton. He faced indy wrestling darling Colt Cabana earlier this year and snuck in a cheap win. Instead of leaving well enough alone, he’s been trolling Cabana with the recent reveal of his new mascot Colt Cabunny.

Quick history lesson. Years ago, CHIKARA had a comedy wrestler named CP Munk. It was a guy in a plush chipmunk costume with a Pepsi logo patched over his shoulder and the same shorts CM Punk used to wear in the indies. Later, he was joined by Colt Cabunny, which was the same joke. A guy in a plush bunny costume with Colt Cabana’s mannerisms. Now he’s been brought back into the picture to lure Cabana into another match.

Archibald Peck is the new hotness of comedy wrestling and the show is almost worth watching specifically for him.

This is part of the free preshow. No storyline or rivalry here. The tangled as part of an awesome four-man match a couple years ago, but that’s it. They’re both awesome and this should be an awesome match, so by all means, you should at least give this one a look to help measure your decision on whether the show is your bag.

I don’t quite know what to expect out of this one. Amasis was in a pretty bad car accident earlier this year and it’s been said that while he’ll ultimately be okay all things considered, his in-ring career is over. Whether he’s there to say his legit farewell and thanks to the crowd or if this is part of a bigger storyline is up in the air, but I’m interested regardless.

There you have it. Eight matches and a special announcement. On paper, it appears to be a pretty rad show. If any of my posts on CHIKARA have ever gotten you even slightly interested, this is the show you should use as a test to see if it’s for you.

If that’s not enough, here’s a kickass promo by Eddie Kingston to help sell you on it.

CHIKARA’s come a long way in these past ten years. I hope this iPPV experiment is the start of something bigger.

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Posted in Chikara, Wrestlecomics by Gavok |