Check out National Pro Wrestling Day 2014! Live! For Free!
January 31st, 2014 by Gavok | Tags: ChikaraIt’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted anything about CHIKARA Pro Wrestling and with good reason: CHIKARA is dead. Sort of.
Eight month ago, they did a big, climactic internet PPV during the mid-point of their season. During the show, a disgruntled former referee revealed that Titor, the company owning CHIKARA, was really involved in some shady stuff. The brass got really mad about this and during the main event, a wave of security guards washed over the ring and removed both the wrestlers and the acting referee. The set was destroyed, the live feed went out and everyone was told to go home. After that, all of CHIKARA’s future dates were cancelled and the company was gone.
After a month or so of inactivity, Icarus, a longtime heel, decided that he wouldn’t let CHIKARA die and tried to find assistance in a rebellion. He got some fans to help him, but finding other wrestlers to rally on his side was easier said than done. A series of YouTube videos have been released over the past few months called Ashes that tell the story of Icarus’ search for allies, as well as other subplots involving CHIKARA talent (mainly Fire Ant and Green Ant searching for their missing teammate Soldier Ant and tag team 3.0 venturing to Parts Unknown to find time-traveling marching band leader Archibald Peck). The videos were initially released weeks apart, but have since been released weekly and several have popped up in the past week.
As for actual wrestling, there were several affiliated promotions that popped up right before CHIKARA went under. Wrestling is Intense, Wrestling is Respect, Wrestling is Cool, etc. Put them all together with Kaiju Big Battel and you spell out “CHIKARA”. These shows were pretty uneventful until they were snuffed out. Various heel factions from CHIKARA’s past would show up and end these promotions, revealing some kind of massive Secret Society of Superheels. Dr. Cube and his Posse, the GEKIDO, the BDK, Sinn Bodhi and the Odditorium, the Colony XTREME Force and the Wrecking Crew have joined together as an unstoppable army.
A lot of this is going to come to a head at National Pro Wrestling Day 2014, a free show featuring at least 7 matches that’s trying to raise money for the Against Malaria Foundation. It’s this Saturday, February 1st and starts up at 1pm. Here are the announced matches:
Colt Cabana vs. Drew Gulak
(Best 2 Out of 3 Falls)
Mike Bennett vs. Hallowicked
The Baltic Seige vs. Bloc Party
(Six-Man Tag Match)
Sonjay Dutt vs. Eric Corvis
Juan Francisco de Coronado vs. Shynron
(No Disqualification Match)
Eddie Kingston vs. Francis O’Rourke
Heidi Lovelace vs. Joe Pittman
(For Wrestling is Heart’s La Copa)
Some of those matches should be really good, but naturally, I’m more interested in seeing the Return of CHIKARA plotline move forward. Really, that’s what most people are interested in because the backlash to this whole storyline has been brutal. It looks like they’ll be coming back wholesale in May, but NPWD should be good enough for the meantime.
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With a name like “National Pro Wrestling Day,” you’d think it’d be something that was observed well, nationally. At the very least, it should be something observed on a scale less isolated to one and only one independent wrestling federation. That’s how it was in previous years, where you’d get a super-show consisting of representatives from multiple promotions booked by multiple people. Just look at the 2013 card compared to what’s in store here. It’s night and day.
I was never all that interested in them since match quality isn’t paramount to what they’re doing, but hopefully the severe isolationist approach that Chikara is taking comes to an end this weekend. Still, when I see that ONLY Chikara is participating in NPWD when lots of groups used to combined that with how Chikara seems to be the only “major” indy fed that is NOT part of any of the various independent goings-on in New Orleans just prior to Wrestlemania (and that’s on top of the fact that King of Trios didn’t happen last year, another event requiring cooperation across multiple groups), I’m not sure how confident I can be in that.
There’s a reason they were a runner-up for Worst Wrestling Promotion in the latest Wrestling Observer Awards, after all. Still, keep up the good work; were it not for your posts here and in PSP, absolutely none of this would be on my radar.
@Daryl Surat: Previous “year”, to be more accurate. Last year, the whole thing was a big stunt to really push the various Wrestling Is shows while showcasing some matches from the few indy promotions that are still on good terms with Chikara. Now that there are only three feds left (Fun, Heart and Kaiju), they can’t play that card anymore. The best they can do is have people from the promotions they’re on good terms with (ie. Mike Bennett) show up and just promote it as a bunch of matches.
I’m not sure if it’s just those seven matches or if they’re going to toss a bunch more out of there, considering how huge last year was. If it’s just the seven, that’s admittedly pretty sad. But at least it’s free, there’s charity involved and there’s primed to be some good wrestling there.
Missed the live stream, but I watched the replay. Not bad, but chunks were missing, which I assume is the result of streaming errors during the original broadcast. I know I missed out on the finish of the Mike Bennett/Hallowicked match, for instance. I won’t complain too much, though, as it was free. The ten-man tag was fun, too. Were you there, Gavok? I spotted someone I thought could be you, but I couldn’t get a good enough look to be sure.
@Gaijin D: I was in the front row, near the middle, so probably. You can see me shaking Icarus’ hand before the main event. And yes, the parts missing were because of streaming issues.
Show was a complete blast.