The card for Chikara's Season 9 premiere, A Touch of Class, was finalized today. Looking at the lineup, it looks like a very fun card. I'm majorly stoked for it, especially since it's only the first half of a wrestlecentric day for me (The Royal Rumble is later that night). Hopefully, this preview will get you off the fence if you're on it about getting a ticket and heading on down to the Arena, and maybe the folks over at Chikara HQ will think about sending a few shekels my way for the pimpage? Nah, I keed, I keed. As long as Chikara is around and still putting out excellent shows, I'll continue to shill it for free and consider it my privilege.
But without further ado, let's run this card down, right:
Chikara Campeonatos de Parejas Match
The Colony (c, Fire Ant, Soldier Ant) vs. Team FIST (Icarus, Gran Akuma)
This will be my first live CdP defense, and I'm excited. FIST and the Colony have such great chemistry together as we saw last year with the culmination of their feud. With the emergence of the BDK, FIST might have appeared to take a backseat as the top rudos in the company, so I expect them to really amp up the dickishness. I'm expecting a slam-bang main event here.
Mike Quackenbush, Lince Dorado and Equinox vs. Claudio Castagnoli, Ares and Tursas
I'm guessing this is the co-main event, the big battle on the card to represent the Chikara/BDK war as the face of the company, Quackenbush, will be thrown right into the fray. The guy I'll be watching in this match most closely is Tursas. 6'7" and 328 lbs.? Are you nuts? Chikara is known for the smaller guys with athleticism, so I'm wondering if he's even a good fit. Hopefully he's more Mark Henry than Great Khali in the land of the little dudes.
Chikara Young Lions Cup Trophy Match
Player Dos (c) vs. Tim Donst
This was the final match announced. A CdP AND a YLC defense on the card? Score! Dos is coming off an acclaimed match at Three Fisted Tales where he German suplexed Lince Dorado into the steel steps so hard that I think the people passing the Arena walking to Forman Mills felt it. Donst will be representing the BDK. Blog fan Sean McLaughlin seems to think that no matter what, after the match, the YLC Champion will be in the BDK Champ, and if Dos retains, well, that will be a swerve and a half, especially since the smart money has his erstwhile partner, Player Uno, as the one most likely to defect. Speaking of Uno...
Create-a-Wrestler, Sugar Dunkerton and Player Uno vs. The UnStable (Colin Delaney, Vin Gerard, STIGMA)
Blog fan Ziasaurus Hiltey seems to think that the 8th BDK will be STIGMA, which makes sense given his history with those who've held the Eye of Tyr and his epic 2008 feud with the Chikara tecnicos. The UnStable has also kinda fallen by the wayside since concluding their feud with D'Lo Brown and Glacier at Aniversario Yang, which is a shame, because they were really over at one point. Regardless, this match has been billed to have major King of Trios implications, so I expect that the winner will probably remain intact through the tournament at least. I'm expecting some shenanigans with CAW as well, as his last appearance on the Podcast-a-Go-Go saw him get shocked changing a fuse, as well as him making an appearance with Dunkerton as one of his prior incarnations, Ultimo Breakfast. What personality will he show up as? Who knows, but if the end game is him permanently as Dasher Hatfield, I'll be a very, very happy man.
Hallowicked vs. Brodie Lee
A matchup between two of the larger guys in the company, I think this one could be a darkhorse for match of the night. Lee is a man without a trio now that the Roughnecks are no more and Eddie Kingston (a darkhorse to be the 8th BDK, in my humble opinion) has seemed to have gravitated to tecnico-by-default status vis-a-vis his longtime rival Claudio Castagnoli's defection to the invaders.
Grizzly Redwood, Pelle Primeau and Andy Ridge vs. the Order of the Neo-Solar Temple (UltraMantis Black, Delirious, Crossbones)
Crossbones is my personal pick to join the BDK, which would make them the beefiest faction in Chikara history, but that aside, I'm expecting this to be an expositionary squash for the ONST. I'm glad to see that Grizzly is a tecnico now (which is what a borderline-midget lumberjack SHOULD be, to be quite honest), but the new guys aren't going to win here.
The Osirian Portal (Ophidian, Amasis) vs. Sara del Rey and Daizee Haze
This is the match I'm most looking forward to. Man vs. woman matches are mostly virgin territory for wrestling promotions, but I think Chikara's the best place to try it out, given the relative size of most of the male competitors. The Portal are one of the best, if not the best tag team on the market right now, and I think they're the perfect pair to begin SDR and Daizee's quest to compete with the males after Chikara failed to give them suitable female competition.
Green Ant vs. Pinkie "Pink Ant" Sanchez
This one should be a very heated match, even if I'm not entirely sure that it'll have a decisive finish. The issues between these guys started way before Pinkie Sanchez took off the Carpenter Ant mask and unveiled himself as an infiltrator to the Colony. Green Ant had some accusatory things to say about Carpenter in blogs as soon as a month after the mysterious wood ant debuted helping the Colony win their lucha de apuesta against Team FIST. Sanchez has impressed under the guise of the Carpenter, winning the 2009 Ciebernetico Incredible with an inverted Chikara Special. Again, I don't see a decisive finish, and I hope not either because there's mileage between these two guys, a feud that can define and help make both guys in 2010.
As I've been hinting throughout the column, the 8th BDK will be unveiled during this event. The smart money candidates have already been named - Uno, Crossbones, STIGMA - but what if it's someone from way out of leftfield? Like Quackenbush? That would be Hulk Hogan-to-the-nWo levels of insane. How about UMB? Having him plant the entire scenario might seem VKM-as-Higher-Power levels of lame at first, but I think it might have legs. However, I think that the most intriguing guy they could bring in, and one that makes a ton of sense if you count what's been going on in ROH and other feds, is Chris Hero.
Hero made his bones in Chikara, and for him to come back to aid his Kings of Wrestling partner Castagnoli would add a more delicious level to the doings. Hero, chased from Chikara by the tecnicos led by Quackenbush, coming back to get his revenge by destroying the fed from the inside. Either way, even if the 8th member unveiling is underwhelming, I have very, very high hopes for the matches on the card, and I think that those in attendance on Sunday the 31st will be in for a major treat.
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, ROH and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography
