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| Me consoling a dejected Jakob hammermeier during intermission Photo Credit: Random Chikara Fan |
Highlights
- Meiko Satomura fought valiantly to stave off all three members of Team ROH after her partners were taken out, but she fell victim to More Bang for Your Buck.
- Icarus' "Best in the World" shirt is real and it's spectacular.
- Alas though, he wasn't "Best in the World" enough to keep Johnny Gargano from eating a screwdriver from UltraMantis Black, advancing the Spectral Envoy.
- Ophidian tapped out Saturyne with the Death Grip.
- The Devastation Corporation mowed through a bunch of tag teams during the tag gauntlet, until they ran into... DEMOLITION!
- In the highlight of the gauntlet, Demolition and the Powers of Pain got into an old school HOSS FIGHT~! tag war.
- Ultimately, it was the 1-2-3 Kid and MARTY JANNETTY?!?!?!? who won the Tag Gauntlet, dispatching the Powers of Pain and Los Ice Creams.
- A rousing game of Duck, Duck GOOSE broke out in the Colt Cabana/Johnel Sanders/Swamp Monster/Darkness Crabtree vs. Tako Yakida/Ebessan/3.0 atomicos match.
- Yakida took advantage of a "dead" Crabtree to win after a missed headbutt and an assisted lateral press from help from Scott Parker and Shane Matthews.
- Tsubasa Kuragaki, teaming with Commando Bolshoi, gave the torture rack to both Kaori Yoneyama and Manami Toyota en route to a win in a tag match.
- Tadasuke knocked Jigsaw the farg out in their match.
- The Spectral Envoy defeated Team ROH to win the 2012 King of Trios after a whole big ruckus of a main event. Hallowicked tapped Mike Bennett with the Chikara Special.
General Observations
- According to Gavin Loudspeaker, the Submission Squad was on their way to Night 3, but turned around and went home because "they had work in the morning."
- Mike Bennett's lariats improved like 300% since seeing him at ROH in January.
- Meiko Satomura was just so awesome playing the last woman standing for her team. I really thought she was going to beat Team ROH by herself, but even in eating three superkicks and taking the loss, she was golden.
- Before the second semifinal began, Chuck Taylor actually stole the cash register from in front of Leonard F. Chikarason and absconded into the Palmer Center corridor before being caught. I don't know whether this was a rib on Davey Richards or not, but it was funny regardless.
- The biggest heel heat gotten all night was when Icarus took off said "Best in the World" shirt.
- Both teams broke out some pretty swanky team moves. FIST broke out a move where Chuck Taylor threw Mantis lawn dart style into an ace crusher by Johnny Gargano followed up by an Icarus frogsplash. Mantis himself corralled Gargano into a funky surfboard move into a double stomp from the top by 'Wicked.
- After the match, Sugar Dunkerton, the Chikarametrically-forced fourth member of the stable, made fun of them.
- Saturyne slipped on the ropes at one point during her match and fell really bad. I'd like to think that people were generally concerned with her safety to chant "You screwed up!"
- The full ten team lineup for the Tag Gauntlet: Jakob Hammermeier/Tim Donst, Fire Ant/Green Ant, Max Smashmaster/Blaster McMassive, Paul Simon/Art Garfunkel, Jolly Roger/Lance Steel, Johnny Miyagi/Ralph Macchio, Jr., Ax/Smash, Warlord/Barbarian, 1-2-3 Kid/Marty Jannetty, El Hijo del Ice Cream/Ice Cream, Jr. Yes, Simon/Garfunkel and Team Karate Kid were "local talents" fed to the Devastation Corporation.
- Donst abused Hammermeier most of the match, even as Hammermeier kept doing things like jumping in front of Colony double dropkicks.
- The Devastation Corporation's finisher is one of the best (a powerbomb lift finished with a splash from the top), and it would look a lot better if they didn't do it so sloooooowly.
- The DC got "FEED ME MORE!" chants while they were killing the "jobber" teams.
- Smash actually looked really good, like he could appear semi-regularly. Ax... it was good to see Ax, let's leave it at that.
- Meanwhile, Warlord still looks as jacked as he did in 1988.
- Jannetty's appearance tonight proved that the key to having him show up at a Chikara show is not announce him beforehand.
- Before the atomico match, the crowd burst out into an a capella "O Canada". Cabana afterwards announced the Swamp Monster would sing the Japanese national anthem.
- I didn't take very good notes during the atomico because it was so goddamn funny I couldn't look away from it. All eight men. Wow.
- My only complaint of the whole night actually was that we didn't see enough Johnel Sanders in the match.
- Duck, Duck, Goose was the most Chikara thing of the night. That's not a complaint.
- After the match, Loudspeaker did mouth to mouth on Crabtree and got a kiss for his troubles. "I'll never drink Metamucil again."
- Seriously, Tsubasa Kuragaki is a strong, stout woman. I am impressed.
- And for as strong as Kuragaki is, Bolshoi was jarring in her smallness and quickness.
- This match had a Toyota Roll that reminded me of King of Trios '09, when Claudio Castagnoli gave Grizzly Redwood a 100-revolution big swing.
- Kuragaki got both Toyota and Yoneyama in the torture rack, and the place EXPLODED, even though she had to release the grip within seconds.
- Tadasuke actually countered a Jigsaw plancha attempt with a punch to the face. It was the best counter ever.
- The KO finish was met to the most silent finish of the night from the crowd.
- The Young Bucks, Bennett and Maria really deserve all the credit in the world for putting their everything into heeling it up all night long.
- Two or three guys in the crowd kept trying to create dueling chants for the ROH guys against the OVERWHELMING support for the Envoy. Our solution? Drown out their dueling chants with redundant dueling chants for the same people.
- I thought Team ROH was going to win after Mantis took the springboard tombstone from the Bucks on the entry ramp.
- Towards the end, Team Delirious came out to try and 86 the Envoy's chances until CROSSBONES appeared to clean house.
- The arena nearly came down when Bennett tapped to the Chikara Special. Holy crap, what a moment.
Match of the Night There were so many really good matches tonight, but after the show was over, there was no doubt that my pick would be the main event. It was the best of the three King of Trios finals I had seen by far. BY FAR. Maybe it was that I was the most emotionally invested in the team I was rooting for. Maybe it was that, more than the BDK in '10 and even more than FIST last year, Team ROH were effective as heel foils. Either way, from the point when the Spectral Envoy made their entrance to the moment Bennett's hand slapped the mat to submit, I was made to feel like I was a kid again.
Unlike in other years, I almost felt like this match could have gone either way. Obviously, the match wasn't going to be won in the beginning of it, but Frightmare did the face in peril thing so well. It was awesome when he finally got to his corner to make the hot tag to both 'Wicked and Mantis. There were some really big spots doled out by both sides too, really giving the match a bigtime feel. Again, I gotta give Mantis MAJOR props for taking that spike tombstone on the ramp. That was, ouch, just ouch.
The final act of the match was just there for us to lose our voices. Crossbones coming out to shoo the Batiri/Ophidian/Delirious bloc caused me to lose my poop personally. I wasn't paying too much attention to those around me, a testament to the moment. When he threw Delirious into the pole, I just lost it. When Bennett finally tapped to the Chikara Special, I jumped up and down like a little kid. Any good match can have the nuts and bolts and the big moves. Chikara goes above and beyond because they and their performers know how to present them with the pitch-perfect emotion.
Overall Thoughts This is the 19th Chikara show I've been to. Every time I'm flabbergasted at how they're able to top themselves. Sometimes they don't. The shows are always great, but sometimes, they go short of their last benchmark. This show was not one of them. I don't mean to name drop here, but Brandon Stroud remarked that this might have been the best wrestling show ever, and I'd be hard pressed to disagree.
From top to bottom, the card delivered. Sure, there were some slow moments. However, the show had hard-hitting joshi action, great comedy and outstanding emotion and storytelling. Meiko Satomura dying a warrior's death, Icarus generally dicking his way around his match, Demolition and the Powers of Pain taking us back to 1988, Duck, Duck, Goose, Tsubasa Kuragaki hitting her limit break and just the entire main event, it was all outstanding and epic. I may have missed the first two nights of King of Trios this year, but the third night more than made up for it. So good.
Special Picnic Thoughts Before the show, I was able to meet up with Stroud, his lovely girlfriend Destiny, DDS site photographer Gregory Davis and a gaggle of other fans at the With Leather Pre-Night 3 Picnic. It was great conversing and interacting with other Chikara fans. There was pizza (one of which was stolen by Icarus), football-tossing, wrestling magazines passed around and Stroud wiped out racing Destiny and Casey - THESTINGER. He scraped himself pretty bad, but he taped up and sucked it up for the rest of the night. HE'S HARDCORE! HE'S HARDCORE! My regular Chikara buddies could not make it, but it was great making new friends with everyone who made it there. Chikara is way more fun when shared with like-minded and fun people!
Results
- Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson and Mike Bennett defeated Meiko Satomura, Dash Chisako and Sendai Sachiko via More Bang for Your Buck on Satomura.
- UltraMantis Black, Hallowicked and Frightmare defeated Chuck Taylor, Johnny Gargano and Icarus via pinfall after Mantis hit a screwdriver on Gargano.
- Ophidian submitted Saturyne with the Death Grip cobra clutch.
- 1-2-3 Kid and Marty Jannetty won the Tag Gauntlet, defeating Los Ice Creams in the final frame.
- Tako Yakida, Ebessan, Shane Matthews and Scott Parker defeated Colt Cabana, Johnel Sanders, Swamp Monster and Darkness Crabtree when Yakida pinned Crabtree.
- Tsubasa Kuragaki and Commando Bolshoi defeated Manami Toyota and Kaori Yoneyama via pinfall. Kuragaki pinned Yoneyama after a standing Iconoclasm.
- Tadasuke knocked out Jigsaw with a piledriver and two punches to the head.
- UltraMantis Black, Hallowicked and Frightmare defeated Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson and Mike Bennett to win the 2012 King of Trios. Hallowicked submitted Bennett with the Chikara Special
