Honest opinions on Chikara?I personally hated it and it's whole vibe but must admit I've seen a mindblowing flippy match or two from there.
>>16190372I know nothing about it. Is this the place with all the gay ant jobbers?
>>16190372>>16190377>the invisible grenade and time travel promotionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y_JkdFuOTA
>>16190372It was fun and Quack is a good trainer/good ideas but he's also a nutcase so it was doomed to failure at some point
Chikara, PWG, ROH, and CZW were the catalysts that started the massive decline of pro wrestling
>>16190372Overall, ehChikara had some of the best arcs in wrestling history. All of the Archibald Peck stuff is arguably the most 'cerebral' long-term overarching story ever produced in wrestling.
>>16190396>Chikara, PWG, ROH, and CZWThey fucking failed to rebuild wrestling. Imagine if, after WCW was sold, 4 old-school regional promotions had popped up instead of the shit we got. Wrestling would have rebounded with a very strong indy scene by 2010 instead of a niche indy scene for freaks. Wrestling history would have changed for the better.
>>16190396Don't forget dragon gate
>>16190423DG was primarily Japanese.
>>16190372The BDK story sounds like some of the most Kino shit in wrestling
>>16190411Plenty of those did exist, in fact a bunch of the guys who would go on to work those places got their starts in places like that. Except for Chikara since a lot of those guys were just straight up trained by Quack. Point is those places existed they just didn't create buzz or draw or were essentially WWE feeder systems much like the florida indy scene now.
>>16190433Their influence on the 2000s indie style in America is undeniable though.
Hate it more than any other indie. Glad its dead. Fuck Quack and Fuck woooditors.
>>16190692Agreed. There was a vacuum after WCW was sold and many promotions rushed to fill it.
>>16190692Well, Michinoku Pro more than anything I'd argue. That and whatever joshi wrestling was around at the time. Like the nerds and flippyshit and lucha sub spamming guys of that era all loved that stuff. Indy spot fest tags with a high pace and a bunch of dives were and to this day are basically the Michinoku Pro tags of the 90s. The other side of it while still respecting all that stuff were trying to emulate 90s All Japan or the old school territories. But really it was a love of most of that stuff that spurred that scene on. Almost all the indy darling guys from the 2000s but especially the early to mid 2000s could list the most random bullshit and gush about the most random wrestlers all day. Chris Hero especially could give you like a full run down of some random ass jobber in 92 WWF.
>>16190775I could give you a full rundown on 92 myself
Didn't Quackenbush insist his ant gimmick trainees not do jobs in other promotions and shit?Also insisting they never take their masks off despite having a 'fire ant' gimmick.
>>16190396It was usually better than what was on WWE or TNA at the time, especially if you were a movez guy
>>16190692I don't think you can blame dragon gate for the young bucks failing to realize guys who train with each other and wrestle each other multiple times a month are going to be able to pull off more complex strings of spots than indie guys who were trained by different people, or in many cases not trained at all, and wrestle 9 times a year.
It's not for everyone but it filled the cartoony void you weren't getting from other American indies.And frankly invisible hand grenades and ice cream sprinkles being treated like thumb tacks done in front of 40 people and pressed to a DVD sold to less than 500 is far less damaging to wrestling than WWE's general presentation of guys being able to alter the card by challenging each other mid show, or guys getting to go to the ring to talk without someone there to interview them.
>>16190999Quack forced talent who wore masks/had characters he created to create new gimmicks or wrestle under their real names when they wrestled outside of Chikara. Hence why Fire Ant created the Orange Cassidy persona and why Drew Gulak had to wrestle under his original name.
>>16190372Chikara was great until the shut down. Once it came back it lost a lot of its magic. The characters were worse, the wrestlers weren't as good and the storylines were shit and it also became annoyingly woke.
cringekino from 2007/2012 (the time travel storyline especially was GOAT-tier stupid wrestling) but made up with the occasional good match, anything from after then was mostly shit
Chikara’s legacy is quicks wrestling advice YouTube channel that gets 200 views a video.
>>16190396Yep. They pioneered the overly fake/blatant cooperation, forth wall breaking style and normalized unathletic skinny fat dorks as stars. AEW is the final form of the indy shit that emerged with the collapse of WCW and ECW.
>>16191221That's not true. OC got tired of doing the ant stuff and wanted to do something fun and rebellious so he came up with the OC character.Quack owned(owns) trademarks for all the Chikara characters, so they weren't allowed to use them in other promotions without his permission. That's why Thief Ant and (the other one, I can't remember his name, but they're the only two ants left) recently changed their names because they didn't want to deal with Quack. The CyberHawkz just came back because they finally got around to ask Quack if they could use the gimmick.
The bdk is one of the best storylines in the history of sports entertainment. Set up all the dominos for the babyfaces to knock over. Every tag match, every young lions cup match, every friggin Tursas match meant something.
>>16191421>>16191221Fake news. Just off the top my head the Egyptian tag team worked czw and Jigsaw worked roh unmasked and was still called jigsaw. For quack allegedly being so pissed about jigsaw he was never not quacks top guy after hero and Claudio left.
Missile Assault Ant killed a bus full of African children.
>>16191817That was when CZW and Chikara shared a training school and had a talent exchange.Jigsaw is a Chikara OG before they had any traction and Quack was trademarking gimmicks. Same with guys like Kingston. Most of Chikara's roster were dorks who were too nervous to approach Quack about anything. A lot of them that are still on the indies are still this way. Wrestlers are literally all stunted high schoolers.
>>16190524It was until Claudio got poached
for me it was UltraMantis Black and Hallowicked
chikara lineage is aew
>>16190372It was only good pre-shut down/Quack divorce. After they came back they went the woke route and became responsible for all the faggot shit and intergender wrestling taking over. I'm glad they ended up getting "cancelled" and shut down by the same audience they pandered to.
>>16192387What went wrong after the poaching?
Slop product controlled by an Autistic nutcase who should never have been put in charge of a wrestling company>>16190396>The indies thriving post WCW Buyout was a bad thing>>16192405PWG*
>>16192592He was the leader of the faction
>>16192600I'm asking how it fell apart. I read about the faction, but I don't remember how it ended
>>16192630It didn't truly "end", it pretty much became a job squad that'd come out once and awhile to eat pins
>>16192592It just kind of fizzled out in the summer of 2011 because WWE signed two of its members (Claudio and Sara Del Rey) and three more left (Pinkie Sanchez due to being a bipolar nutjob I assume, Tursas who decided to quit wrestling altogether and Daizee Haze who was anorexic). So it basically went from the top heel group to limping along for like a year as a tag team with Tim Donst and Jakob Hammermeir in a Gable/Otis type of situation where Hammermeier turned face and then just kind of stopped appearing.They tried bringing it back during the Flood storyline but it was just Hammermeier, some dweeby manager and Not-Tursas so nobody gave a shit.
>>16192756Damn that's so disappointing. Did anyone get shine off of beating them before the fizzle?
>>16190372It was a fun family show. The "lore" was way too complicated for anyone but the most dedicated autists to keep up with. Their house style and dojo was really great, but if you think of it as anything other than a small level indy trying some cool things then you're silly. There wasn't anything smart about the shows, it was like a dedicated fanfic writer booking wrestling for a long time and there's some fun novelty to that.
>>16190433DGUSA/Evolve was the most influential of those indies. The Bucks, Moxley, Gargano, Ricochet etc all got over there
>>16192598PWG only did over stuffed multiman matches on at bola cause they flew a lot of guys out. And they had way better storylines like calling human tornado the n word just for him to turn heel and start beating his white valet.
>>16192822Sort of? Frightmare beat Lince for the Young Lions Cup in 2010 and became the first person in Chikara to get a win against the BDK, Kingston won the Chikara vs. BDK cibernetico match for Chikara and then Quack and Jigsaw won the tag belts (which at the time were basically the top belts in Chikara since they didn't have a main singles belt yet) at the end of the year. 2011 was when guys started leaving up until Claudio and SDR got signed that summer. I have to assume that if Claudio hadn't gotten signed right then and there and had some time to finish things out, the finals for the 12 Large would have been Kingston over Claudio to become the first Grand Champion which would have been a decent want to end the BDK angle because I think moreso than Quack, Kingston at that point was kind of Chikara's top babyface.
>>16192907PWG as a SoCal indie was great. PWG as a super indie around when Dragon pretty much stopped wrestling full time and would only show up like once a year was when it became shit.
I always keep expecting to hear Tony bought the tapes one day.
>>16193054Quack is the kinda autist I doubt he'll ever sell the tapes even if he's broke
>>16193031Ahh that makes sense. Eddie won that tourney after Sweeney died right? That final would've had crazy heat if Claudio was still going strong with the BDK at that time
>>16190423undoubtedly dragon gates most profound impact on indy wresting was that evolve's website was dgusa.tv years after they stopped doing us shows because gabe was to cheap to change it
what do the people who used to watch chikara watch nowadays
>>16193095Anime
Loved Chikara. The Colony > Orange Cassidy, Drew Gulak & Tacy Williams.I still think it's pretty wild how Vin Gerard is arguably the most successful of the Chikara alumni that wasn't signed by WWE/AEW
>>16193095I think there's too much variety and availability for wrestling fans to say that the Chikara fans have moved on to one specific thing.Fans who watched it because of the indy smark feeling probably moved on to Evolve and after that crashed probably watched AEW. Maybe smark friendly NXT pulled them in.Fans who liked the indy feel are probably watching Beyond/Prestige/Wrestling OpenThose who looked for specific Chikara probably looked at some of the promotions the Chikara alumni showed up at that try to go for the Chikara feeling, Camp Leapfrog/Lehigh Valley Athletics Council/Labor Of Love/Daikaiju Pro Wrestling
>>16193149He's definitely the most successful but not as a wrestler or even a personality. I'd bet a lot of people don't even know that he's the guy who runs IWTV. I'm definitely surprised that Paul didn't grab Hot Sauce when they were working with/buying EVOLVE.>>16193090Dragon Gate's biggest influence is that the ROH 6-man got five meme stars which basically overnight turned opinion on spotfests which led to a lot of guys starting to work that style and the those guys and DG trained/influenced guys working NJPW as it was blowing up which then filtered back to the western style.The 2010s indy/current AEW flippy spotfest style of wrestling is a direct result of Dragon Gate.>>16193223It says a lot about how bad the current indy scene is when Beyond, Prestige and the shambling corpse of GCW are the only notable promotions.I'm not sure how the others are since they seem more like for people who liked post-reboot Chikara but I watched Daikaiju because of Kaya Toribami and it had more of that old school 2000s Chikara feel from the bit I saw. It feels like/I assume UMB is involved creatively with it in some way since it feels very UMB in its style and presentation.
>>16193272>I'm definitely surprised that Paul didn't grab Hot Sauce when they were working with/buying EVOLVEBecause he's generic and boring. I know he hated the Green Ant gimmick, but he's never been as over as Tracy Williams as he was as an Ant in Chikara
Dragon Gate has more story and drama than most wrestling promotions (and the only one that is good at tag wrestling) but sadly most indy fans only saw it for its fast paced style.Any of the cage matches and stipulation matches are filled with story and lore.
>>16193288>Because he's generic and boring.Did you not see Black & Gold? They signed fucking Anthony Henry and Blake Christian and had them doing matches on there and 205 Live. Williams might be a generic indy guy but he was at least better than some of the 2020/2021 losers.
>>16190372it was literally a groomer and rapist shell company.
Big missed opportunity.Quack played these "I own your gimmick lmao I'm literally just like Vince" games to control and put masks on all the guys who were better looking than him, but if one of them had fought and won against him in court, it would've set a precedent allowing E's wrestlers to own and keep their slave names in other promotions.
>>16192405You wish
>>16190372Regional indie for kids ran by a control freak with a cultlike atmosphere backstage. Was around at the best time for indie wrestling so a lot of great wrestlers went through there. Not much to say about it these days
>>16193295>the only one that is good at tag wrestlingthis weeb doesn't know about CMLL
>>16191010Pro wrestling isn't about movez. That mentality is what killed it.>>16191389This.
>>16193095Nothingt. chikara watcher
>>16193680Putting masks on all those vanilla midgets and giving them fun gimmicks was a good idea
>>16192598>reddit spacingSup ojama
>>16193031You forgot one. Green ant summoned all the antamaniacs powers and slammed Tursas at the Pontiac silver dome.
>>16193070Sadly this. Thankfully easy to pirate
>>16193095Deadlock Pro Wrestling
>>16194792>making things easier for people to read....le badThere's genuinely a reason why I never really fucking post on this board despite loving wrestling.
>>16195375fool, nobody here actually likes wrestling, this is an autistic shitposting board
>>16193295Every Japanese promotion has factions and lucha inspired tag stuff. Dragon Gate does the least interesting version of it. It's just bootleg cmll for spinsters in Kobe.
>>16195934but Dragon Gate cares about their factions & tag/trios titles in contrast to every other Japanese wrestling promotion
>>16195934Dragon Gate is based entirely around who is in what faction and why those factions are feuding how tf is that worse than random Chaos trios matches vs Bullet Club job squad #2?
>>16195375We're getting more threads like this one post anti-spam measures. It's been nicer here lately.
>>16194792Trev trying to fit in as an oldfag channer.
>>16190372bumpola
>>16193680Missed oppurtunity how, they did shows in front of 50 people on a good day
>>16199219Chikara in the few years before the shutdown was easily one of the biggest indies around. ROH was bigger obviously but it was more or less on par with CZW and PWG otherwise. Part of the reason the shutdown fucked it up so much was because it happened right as the promotion was at its hottest.
>>16190396That would be Vince McMahon and his boring as fuck product that has barely improved in 20 years even now with the Bloodline shit tanking and CAWdy continuing a story that's already finished.They're pulling people who came from those places now to try and counteract it.
>>16190396Might be the dumbest thing I ever read on this board and that is an extremely high bar.
>>16199219They actually outdrew TNA house shows in PA back in like 2009/10.
>>16191421Yeah but what's Quack gonna do? Fucker's broke and a joke. He should sell it all to Tony for a week's stay at a Jacksonville hotel and two pairs of garbage bag pants.
>>16192756It's kinda like what happens to NXT when they do a bunch of call ups. Then you have to replenish the roster with rookies whose gimmicks aren't quite as strong and whose wrestling isn't quite there. Everything after BDK was on the decline and everything after 17/Shard/Swarm was super on the decline.Remember Archibald Peck's majorette manager? I remember hearing she had been training with them for like five years and they finally debuted her to justify it, but she was still really rough and mostly stuck to accompanying him.
>>16199219>A pig trying to gauge crowd sizestee hee hee, wee wee wee
>>16200111I'd guess he's hoping that he can reopen Chikara at some point under the belief that things have died down/changed. But that won't happen because Chikara's fanbase had a lot of terminally online autistic nerds who tried taking it over in the final few years which is why the Chikara got so gay in the last two or three years it was around. Most of the new wrestlers were also faggy turbo leftists and running in the northeast (supposedly) requires you to pay fealty to EFFY. So no chance of Chikara ever coming back because the people it would most appeal to will just tear Quack apart for being a rapist chud or something.The other option is that he's been hoping to sell the library to WWE or something and get a coaching job at the PC but I don't think that's ever happening. I guess option three is just that he's too stubborn and would rather die holding onto it than let anyone else have it.
>>16190396>Chikara, PWG, ROH, and CZW were the catalysts that started the massive decline of pro wrestling>ROHROH is only guilty post 2010, anyone who joined past that date is wrestling cancer, but plenty of the wrestlers who were there before that were/are dimes and are currently top stars in wrestling.
>>16200199>ROH is only guilty post 2010DO-FIXER vs. Blood Generation was from 2005.
>>16200185Didn't he guest coach at the PC for like a week? If it hasn't happened yet, it's not going to happen now. Especially with Phil hanging around.All the bad press outweighs the good when it comes to the Wrestle Factory. Gulak's shit, guys like Claudio and Ricochet not being there, all the rumors of what a slavedriver Quack was, etc. Without the school, there's really no reason for Chikara to exist, and I doubt you're going to convince current indy mainstays to become silly characters. Well, you probably could, but not for what Quack would pay. Well, you probably STILL could, but not given his reputation.
>>16191366I almost feel bad for him
>>16200185>Chikara's fanbase had a lot of terminally online autistic nerds who tried taking it over in the final few years which is why the Chikara got so gay in the last two or three years it was aroundI remember checking out a show a while after the hiatus made me stop caring and holy fuck the crowd thought they were filming Mystery Science Theater or something. So many nerd faggots shouting jokes and heckling in the lamest way possible.
For those who don't know, Camp Leapfrog is basically what's left of Chikara. A lot of the guys toward the tail end do shows for it around Easton, PA: Avery Good, Edith Surreal, Crab & Crawdad, Boomer Hatfield, Shea McCoy, Callux, Sonny Defarge, Travis Huckabee, etc. But I guess it wasn't doing the trick, so they've kinda morphed into a promotion called High Tension Wrestling that still does Leapfrog stuff from time to time.It's cool that the Spectral Envoy is doing spots with GCW from time to time now.Feel bad for Ophidian, but when that shit was going down, it seems he retired and just does gear making/music/burlesque with his wife now. One of his last matches was losing to Nick Gage, oof.
>>16200185>>16200463Quack did a lot of coaching at the PC during the black and gold era, mostly helping women put together takeover matches and helped certain people develop their character work. They stopped bringing him down after his appearance on AEW TV.There were negotiations for wwe to buy the Chikara tape in 2019/2020, but the allegations came out and Chikara closed so the deal fell through. They ended up talking again later, but were offering Quack next to nothing for it, so he decided to hold onto it.The wrestle factory is still around and Quack is still a trainer. The school isn't as popular as it used to be, but has done a good job of producing some well trained rookies. Unfortunately there are a lot of really decent schools in the area that offer good training with good coaches without any negative stigma so they're not likely to grow to the level they were.>>16200550Camp Leapfrog/HTW had some decent stuff, but are very very poorly managed. The people in charge tried too hard to get everyone on the show and would clog shows with tons of heatless multi-man matches. Talent eventually got tired of it and alot walked. There were so many wrestlers that it wasn't enough for them to stop running shows. >>16200550Ophidian is the reason Chikara got me too'd. He's basically been blacklisted from wrestling.
>>16200550Leapfrog got shut down because the main guy behind it was Kris Levin who got outed as an abuser/shitty boyfriend (who knows what the "abuse" actually was) during Speaking Out so got unpersoned like David Starr and Joey Ryan. It turned into High Tension Wrestling and the guy behind HTW claimed that they always owned Leapfrog but I'm kind of doubting that.Also being a continuation of late era Chikara isn't a good thing as late era Chikara was dog shit. In a way it's good that it died because it was never going to recover from AEW razing it like they did the rest of the indy scene.
>>16200804>who knows what the "abuse" actually wasIt was for fetishizing black women
>>16200858Heidi Lovelace > Ruby Soho > Ruby RiotThere, I said it.
>>16200858Based
>>16200181Good point, they probably averaged like 20 people.
>>16200550too bad gcw is gay as fuck
>>16200858What a Chad
