Tag: CHIKARA

Free Wrestling: Sara Del Rey vs. Claudio Castagnoli (Cesaro) (7/31/11)

I don’t know how, but I was sitting in the front row of what was formerly known as the ECW Arena for this match, which is still the best I’ve ever seen live. My experience at live events covers a lot of ground, too, from WCW and WWF shows as a child to working Absolute Intense Wrestling cards as an announcer to WrestleMania this year. This match still stands out to me even watching it today for the first time in a year. I remember everything about that day, the last of a three day trip from Detroit to Cleveland to Reading to Philadelphia. Four days of driving and three nights of wrestling, Sara Del Rey on each card. We were in Philadelphia early enough to go to the Mûtter Museum and the Edgar Allen Poe house. To be frustrated by the lines at both Pat’s and Geno’s and settle instead for a mediocre pizza place down the block. To stand in line at the arena on Swanson and Ritter, waiting, chatting about the match that got me and two friends to drive all that way, occupying the cheapest, sketchiest motels any of us had slept in, driving on no sleep and three or four energy drinks. Sara Del Rey and Claudio Castagnoli wrestled three years ago, but it feels like three persons ago, as if the chubby dude in the Colt Cabana shirt slapping five with Dasher Hatfield and yelling dumb shit at all of the heels never existed. When I see myself sitting there, or hear the things that I yelled, I cringe.

The concept of intergender wrestling was not new to me in 2011. Men and women occasionally mixed it up in WWE—Chyna was an Intercontinental Champion before she ever wrestled a woman, for example, and there was a 2003 “Battle of the Sexes” tag team match that pit Christian and Chris Jericho against Trish Stratus and Lita. But Chyna’s run and that tag team match were built around the premise that it was odd that women might compete with men, break out from their section of the roster and shoot for something greater than a gendered championship. That shouldn’t be a big problem on the independent wrestling scene, but even in 2014 it seems to be a sticking point for some. There are size differences and muscles and societal norms and, really, it’s about realism in professional wrestling. This match, and Del Rey’s entire 2011 and 2012 (before she was hired by World Wrestling Entertainment to train women at their Performance Center), were part of breaking this perception. Every intergender wrestling match that has followed in the United States can be traced back to this one.

From the start, the story this match tells is brilliant. And that’s without the actual story this match is telling. Put in context, Claudio Castagnoli is the leader of the BDK, a villainous stable of wrestlers who made it their business to conquer CHIKARA and were quite successful in doing so. Castagnoli and his partner Ares were successful tag team champions, and they used Sara Del Rey and her partner, Daizee Haze, as a shield, positioning them against other teams that were on the verge of challenging Castagnoli and Ares. Del Rey and Haze were quite successful, accruing enough points in CHIKARA’s contendership system to challenge their leaders, but they never did. When CHIKARA instituted a Grand Championship, they decided to crown the first singles champion with a 12-person Round Robin tournament. Each wrestler on the CHIKARA roster was allowed to vote somebody into the Round Robin, and Del Rey made it thanks to the votes of Madison Eagles and Daizee Haze, who disobeyed BDK dictum by voting for Del Rey over Castagnoli. This wasn’t the final match of the tournament, but it was the most heated: Sara and her partner had grown tired of being held down by the BDK, who promised them opportunities in a promotion that hadn’t given women too many, and this match was an opportunity for her to make a statement against the man most responsible for holding her down. The match has since been presented without any of that context, and it doesn’t need it. Claudio Castagnoli, though not quite in the shape he’s in now as WWE’s Cesaro, was the most imposing man on the independents, 260-pounds of muscle, a man of old-school strongman strength. Del Rey wasn’t small by any means—against most American women wrestlers, she was more akin to the likes of Bull Nakano—but Castagnoli outweighs her easily and has every conceivable advantage. He knows it, too, and isn’t shy. He shoves Del Rey to the canvas and slaps her when she refuses to take the easy way out, and Del Rey responds with kicks that’d cause a lesser human being to crumble.

Castagnoli needs the outside interference of Tursas to gain the advantage, but once he has it he never really lets go. As hard as Del Rey’s kicks are, the Swiss superman’s European uppercuts are just as visceral, catching his opponent on the chin and sending her down to the canvas. The way he hoists Del Rey up from the mat in a gutwrench position and walks around the ring before suplexing her might not seem impressive given the monsters he’s lifted and slammed since becoming a member of the WWE roster, but as close as I was to it, and for how hot it was in the arena, his strength seemed impossible. His strength is certainly why he continues to treat Del Rey as an afterthought, taunting her as he doles out punishment. The match teases and teases an improbable Del Rey win via a surprise pinfall as she tries to bring Castagnoli down with a sunset flip (only to be crushed with a leg drop) or a schoolboy (only for Castagnoli to kick out and complete his attempted suplex), but he’s too strong and too fresh for Del Rey to ever really make a comeback on. A Castagnoli victory seems like a sure thing at every turn. When Del Rey’s bridges out of a fourth Castagnoli elbow drop, it’s like witnessing a tiny miracle just before the apocalypse: Nice, but meaningless.

All of this, of course, makes Del Rey’s eventual comeback feel that much more special. She’s beaten, exhausted, and dehydrated. Her opponent has been hitting her with his best strikes for the better part of eight minutes. It’s 100-degrees in the ECW Arena and this is her third match of the weekend. But she dodges a Castagnoli shoulderblock in the corner, takes Tursas out with a cannonball senton, and dives onto her rival with a crossbody block. When Claudio kicks out, she takes his outstretched arm and applies a cross-armbreaker submission maneuver and wrenches back like her future in wrestling depends on the outcome of this match. Because it does. But Castagnoli struggles and gets his foot on the ropes, and the match continues, which allows Castagnoli a knockout blow with a bicycle kick and, when Del Rey manages to get her foot on the ropes, this absolute nightmare of a move, the UFO:

Del Rey’s comeback from this is unreal—the audio doesn’t quite capture it, but the sold out crowd, mostly silenced by the heat, comes unglued when she kicks out and manages to go on the offensive again, hitting Castagnoli with her signature capo kicks in the corner and reapplying the armbar. It’s the second time, and Castagnoli has been selling his arm, but his freakish strength allows him to lift Sara up from the canvas and onto his shoulder before he sends her smashing back down to the mat… only for her to reapply the armbar! This is one of the coolest sequences I’ve seen in wrestling, a perfect crescendo relying on power, emotion, and positioning, and the explosion when Del Rey once again gets the arm bar is the most genuinely impassioned reaction I’ve seen in on an independent wrestling show. Had Castagnoli tapped out, the match would have been perfect, but he’s a final boss on his last legs, and the big bastard, now desperate, has some fight in him yet. There is nothing pretty about the lariats he clubs Del Rey with, nothing held back from his Ricola Bomb finish. They’re raw and brutal, and the powerbomb should end it, but having been embarrassed by the fight in Del Rey he lifts her shoulders up and positions her for an uppercut. That doesn’t satisfy him either, but this time Del Rey is present enough to cradle Castagnoli, roll his shoulders to the mat, and score the win.

You can see me pop out of my seat, lean over the guardrail and scream in adulation. You can hear the crowd. After this video’s runtime, Claudio gets his revenge, bicycle kicking Del Rey and chokeslamming Haze, but he is soon on his way to WWE developmental. Del Rey had another year on the circuit—she was signed by the WWE as a trainer in July and reported to their training facility in September. That year, though, she was unquestionably the best wrestler in CHIKARA, working a number of matches that were among the best of the year. But none were better than this one, and few matches, in fact, mean as much to me in terms of my development as a fan or as a person. I forget, exactly, what I’m leaning over to tell my friend Caleb as the bell rings, but the conversation we’re having and will continue over the next few weeks will grow and expand as we finish our respective degrees. We talk about maybe doing wrestling school together, but when he and his girlfriend break up he goes to wrestling school by himself because he needs a distraction. I give Absolute Intense Wrestling some money in a Kickstarter and they let me call a match as a try out—Sara Del Rey vs. Mickie Knuckles—and I do well enough that they call me back, and for a year and a half I get to live out my weird kid dream of being a professional wrestling announcer. Caleb finishes wrestling school, but he only wrestles a few times before he moves to Philadelphia to attend the writing program at Temple; I never get to see him in the ring. When I graduate with my MFA in creative writing I take the prize money I won from a fellowship and go to wrestling school myself. I don’t last a night before I get a concussion, before I get so mad at myself for bumping too soft that I decide to really throw myself down to the mat and, in doing so, land head first, but the essay that I write gets me into a PhD program in Georgia, where I am now, and out of an office gig in Detroit. It’s weird, how connected these things are. When I watch this match now, when I watch myself react to it, it’s like I’m watching a ghost.

November 13, 2014
Larry Sweeney vs. Eddie Kingston (??/??/07)

It’s been a year since the tragic passing of “Sweet and Sour” Larry Sweeney. If you’re not familiar with the man’s work—and, to be honest, I wasn’t until a year ago—Sweeney was the best kind of indie wrestler, a dude who was great at all aspects of the craft, able to speak intelligently and wrestle compellingly, a guy who very clearly loved what he was doing. Though he was a career heel, it’s next-to-impossible to not love Sweeney back. His gimmick, if you want to call it that, was brilliant—a throwback to “Hotstuff” Eddie Gilbert and other territorial champions who were too cool for their territory and their opponents, who ran huge super-stables in an effort to put as many roadblocks between himself and his opponent as possible. (more…)

April 11, 2012
Fear of a Ghost Interview: UltraMantis Black

Perhaps more than any other professional wrestler, UltraMantis Black is a walking contradiction. He has competed in violent death matches, professed his goals of world domination, and torn other wrestlers asunder with his deadly intellect and an arsenal of finishing maneuvers whose names—Praying Mantis Bomb, Cosmic Doom, and Cosmic Disaster being but a few of them—sound like the sort of things Dr. Doom would deploy against the Fantastic Four. But the former Angry Insect Evildoer also has a soft side, as indicated by his love of animals, his veganism, and, perhaps most tellingly, the Christmas-themed sleeve tattoos running down both of his arms.

If you’re one of the dozens who read Blogamania, my first attempt at blogging about the weird and wonderful corner of pop culture known as professional wrestling, then you know that my first CHIKARA show, 2010’s We Must Eat Michigan’s Brain, was my foot in the door to the world of independent wrestling, which, for so long, had been a stop-gap measure for wrestlers who weren’t suitable for the WWF, WCW, or ECW. A lot has changed since then, and UltraMantis, a nine-year veteran of the squared circle, is indicative of a dramatic shift in the medium. While huge, larger-than-life narratives were once the bread and butter of the WWE, those are slowly being fazed out in favor of a parade of generically tattooed musclemen arguing over a title that changes hands every three weeks. While there’s still some fight in that old horse, wrestling’s most satisfying stories are now being told in the recreation centers, flea markets, and bingo halls of this great land, the very venues that were once mocked and derided by the likes of Eric Bischoff and Jerry “the King” Lawler on broadcasts of Monday Night Raw and Monday Nitro. The underground is thriving, a veritable phantasmagoria of personality and athleticism the likes of which you won’t find on cable TV, and the devious, megalomaniacal UltraMantis Black is the very picture of indie wrestling’s something-for-everybody ethic. I dropped into CHIKARA in the middle of UltraMantis Black’s war with the Bruderschaft Des Kreuzes and was immediately hooked. He returned a year later, and I’d convinced a sizable group of friends to check out the product, and bake UltraMantis a vegan peanut butter cake.

I’ve written a little about the privilege of being an indie fan, and one of them that I’ve only just recently discovered is that guys like UltraMantis are pretty open to being interviewed. He is a mere two days away from the biggest weekend of his career, a weekend where he not only joins forces with seven other wrestlers to take on the combined powers of the BDK and the Batiri in CHIKARA’s annual torneo cibernetico, but, at the company’s debut internet pay per view, he teams with Hallowicked and puts his mask, his very identity on the line against BDK kingpins Ares and Tim Donst. This still-relevant clip from late last year explains part of UltraMantis Black’s vegan beef substitute with Ares, the Swiss god of war:

The feud between Mantis and Ares—not to mention the one between Hallowicked and Tim Donst, the other half of Sunday’s luchas de apuestas—is far too complex to be recapped in whole here, but UltraMantis is putting his very career on the line in his effort to obliterate the BDK and liberate his and Hallowicked’s former ally Delirious from the influences of the Eye of Tyr, an ancient artifact said to grant the bearer unspeakable powers. The tag team match may look tawdry compared to the headlining clash between CHIKARA founder Mike Quackenbush and Eddie Kingston, but this, friends, is the culmination of two years of bitter hatred, heated confrontations, and unforeseen backstabbings. This is pro-wrestling at its best, and is a huge reason why CHIKARA’s High Noon event is, for many wrestling fans, larger even than WrestleMania. Following the video is the interview UltraMantis was kind enough to accept.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: At Sunday’s High Noon event, you partner with Hallowicked to take on the BDK contingent of Ares and Tim Donst in luchas de apuestas, where you have pledged to unmask if Ares or Donst can defeat you by pinfall or submission. On old telecasts of WCW Monday Nitro, esteemed nerd Mike Tenay often spoke of the luchadore’s mask as his identity. Would you say that the same is true for you? What does the mask mean to you? What would it mean to lose it?

UltraMantis Black: Absolutely agree with Mr. Michael Tenay. In the old tradition of Lucha Libre, a wrestler’s mask is his most valued asset and indeed his or her entire identity and to lose the mask at the hands of another is a most shameful fate. My mask is who I am and without the mask, there is no UltraMantis. As I have said before – if my mask is taken, my career within the squared circle will end.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: In your nine year professional career, I’d be willing to guess that no wrestling fan has seen your face. You’re putting all of that on the line for the Eye of Tyr. Can you give some background on the Eye? What do you plan to do with it?

UltraMantis Black: The reasons I would put my mask and identity on the line are few and far between. I am doing so in order to possess the Eye once more. The Eye has a very ancient and storied history. It has long been believed to hold powers beyond the realm of human comprehension. Some would refer to this power as “mind control”. Ares stole the Eye from me and used it to gain control of Delirious, a former ally of the current Spectral Envoy stable. By taking back the Eye, I will fulfill a promise to my “Nightmare Warrior” Hallowicked to liberate Delirious from his mental enslavement to the BDK. I then have other plans for the artifact…

Once, UltraMantis Black used the Eye of Tyr to bend Delirious to his will. At High Noon, he hopes to use it in freeing Delirious from the tyranny of the BDK.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: You’re a CHIKARA original, one of the first graduates of the WrestleFactory, and the war between the BDK and CHIKARA quickly escalated to the point where you and your cohorts were fighting for the soul of the promotion. You’ve put aside old grudges and forged a few new ones in your effort to get to Ares, and it seems like High Noon is, to date, your best chance to vanquish the BDK for good. What would that mean for you, going forward?

UltraMantis Black: By ridding myself as well as CHIKARA of the BDK once and for all, I can finally bury my enemies and old grudges once and for all and move forward with the mission of The Spectral Envoy – to ascend to the top of the CHIKARA food chain while simultaneously controlling the universe.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: Also on the docket for you this weekend, an eight on eight showdown against the BDK and the Batiri in CHIKARA’s eighth annual torneo cibernetico. You and Hallowicked have chosen an eclectic bunch—The Throwbacks, The Young Bucks, Green Ant, and Sara Del Rey—to face this unified front. What was your strategy in selecting a complimentary team, and what, do you feel, will be the key to victory on Saturday?

UltraMantis Black: I actually can’t speak too much to that question as it was in fact Hallowicked, the Cibernetico team captain, who chose these individuals. He is quite wise you see. However I can tell you that all of these individuals have either engaged in previous battles with our opponents or have scores to settle. The key to victory lies in our ability to function as a cohesive fighting unit. I have great confidence.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: To go back to the mask, I have several questions about it and the lifestyle associated with wrestlers who wear them. How many masks do you own? How has being lucha affected your ring presence and style? Has it changed the way you interact with people? Are you, after nine years under a hood, afraid to reveal your face, or is the mask your true visage?

UltraMantis Black: I currently own around 20 masks – some I have never worn in a CHIKARA environment. I have adapted to life in and out of the ring under a mask quite easily. Do I fear revealing my face? Difficult to say. I fear very little in this world but the mere thought does indeed send a shiver down my spine.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: As the leader of the Neo Solar Temple, you often spoke of your goal of world domination through professional wrestling. Despite (or perhaps because of) that goal you don’t often compete outside of a CHIKARA ring. What is so alluring about your home promotion, and why don’t you take many extra-CHIKARA excursions?

UltraMantis Black: I still do on occasion. However, as you say, CHIKARA is indeed my home and after time, you always return home. In the United States, I truly feel that CHIKARA is the premier professional wrestling stage at this time.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: I’m sure that many people still don’t know what to do with the phrase “vegan professional wrestler,” but not only are you one, you’re quite passionate about animal rights. Rather than ask about the dietary aspects of the lifestyle (I’m sure you manage), I’m curious: How difficult is it to procure vegan wrestling gear? And, as a guy with a fair number of tattoos, are those vegan as well? How hard is it to find a tattoo artist who slings vegan ink?

UltraMantis Black: Wrestling gear can be difficult however at this time I have a dedicated fashion designer who custom makes all of my masks and ring gear to my specifications and he is aware of the materials I will and won’t wear so the problem has been alleviated. As for tattoos, again I am lucky in the fact that my loyal prophet Crossbones does all of my work and fulfills my requests to use only pigments not derived from charcoal sourced from animal bone or glycerin based carrier solution and soaps. There are some fabulous all-vegan tattoo shops out there that I’d encourage people to support.

In the Black Tea Garden, every day is Christmas Day (photo credit: m-drop.com)

Fear of a Ghost Planet: Your taste in music is well-reflected by your merchandise, which takes influence not only from hardcore greats like Black Flag and Bad Brains, but groups like the Smiths. What do you find is the best music to get you ready for a match? What records keep you going for long trips in the car?

UltraMantis Black: Great question! Difficult to answer! I listen to EVERYTHING. Pre-match, the heavier and harsher the better – Integrity, Judge, Infest, assorted vegan death metal. Road trips to shows – lots of English music: new wave, no wave, neo-no/new wave, cold wave, early post-punk like Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, of course the Smiths, northern soul, rocksteady/dancehall. Also, pretty much anything that emerged from Washington DC circa 1980-1995.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: You recently performed at the Secret Art Space (in Bethlehem, PA) with the Human Genome Project. How is performing as a member of a band different than performing in the squared circle? Do you plan on future musical endeavors? Perhaps a spoken word album?

UltraMantis Black: I played in a bands long before I stepped into the ring and even continued doing so incognito as I wrestled. This was the first time I merged both. It was something I felt like I needed to do and it was quite cathartic. If you’ve seen that performance, you’d probably agree that there was more spoken word than music. I have a tendency to rant a great deal when there are things burning on my mind. As for the future, we shall see. Some of the musicians involved perform in other bands that take precedence. Either way, the crossover was quite positive.

Warning: The audio on this video is far from perfectFear of a Ghost Planet: I asked Jakob Hammermeier an awkward question about his dating life, and it seems to be a popular one for wrestling fans to ask, so here goes: On top of your duties as a professional wrestler and color commentator, you happen to be the Mayor of Parts Unknown, a position, I’m sure, that requires a certain amount of image upkeep. What are you looking for in a First Mantis?

UltraMantis Black: One who isn’t afraid to unapologetically crush our enemies with one fell swoop of the universal hammer of karmic retribution. Must be a snuggler.

Fear of a Ghost Planet: Thank you very much for your time. Any last words before you go?

UltraMantis Black: Speak out – fight back! Go vegan – stay vegan! Buy some t-shirts – ultramantisblack.com! Gratitude to Fear of a Ghost Planet for the speaking platform!

—

Again, thanks to UltraMantis for taking the time to answer my fairly ridiculous line of questioning. If you’re on Twitter, follow him @UltraMantis. If you’re a wrestling fan, an ex-wrestling fan, a jaded wrestling fan, or a friend of mine who is tired of hearing me talk about wrestling and thinks that watching a show and making fun of it will get me to shut up, please consider ordering CHIKARA’s High Noon iPPV at gfl.tv. For $15, which is less than the price of a 3D movie, you will be treated to pro-wrestling the likes of which you never imagined possible, and will be supporting the little guy. The WWE’s a publicly traded company now, so ordering this show is a lot like occupying Wall Street. It’s more than fun–it’s a civic duty!

November 10, 2011
Fear of a Ghost Interview: Jakob Hammermeier

Jakob Hammermeier is a man of many hats, a loyal wrestler/ring announcer/manager of the Bruderschaft Des Kreuzes, perhaps the most dastardly stable to have graced the squared circle. He’s been a presence in the Philadelphia-based CHIKARA promotion since January of 2010 as the BDK’s personal ring announcer/ringside attendant, but, after a year of abuse an injury at the hands of CHIKARA’s technicos, he decided to take matters into his own hands, seeking out training from recent WWE-signee Claudio Castagnoli and Ares, the Swiss god of war.

While perhaps not as feared or respected as BDK stalwarts Tursas and Tim Donst, Jakob has nevertheless made a name for himself as an in-ring competitor, having scored victories over the likes of Gregory Iron, Dasher Hatfield, Da Soul Touchaz, and Green Ant, building an impressive resume and maneuvering himself into contention for CHIKARA’s Young Lions Cup, currently held by Tadasuke, of the Osaka Pro promotion in Japan.

While it may not have come across to Jakob from the way this interview went down, Mr. Hammermeier is one of my favorite personalities in indie wrestling. His self-announced ring entrance is fantastic, his shilling of his Team Jakob t-shirts was a highlight of intermission at the three CHIKARA events I’ve been to this year, and the man is as fashion forward as they come, unafraid to wear a tie and a vest without a shirt. In one week, he faces maybe his biggest challenge at CHIKARA’s High Noon iPPV, which takes place Sunday, November 13, live from the former ECW Arena in Philly. In one on one action, he takes on Sara Del Rey, just one of many matches that are well worth your time and money. Jakob was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about the event, which you can order at gfl.tv. Now, the interview…

Q: I suspect most people assume that Sara Del Rey might kill you at Chikara’s High Noon iPPV, but, as you’ve proven in matches against the likes of Eddie Kingston, you’re a resilient competitor. What’s the secret to your strength?

Jakob Hammermeier: Well put mein freund. I am resilient. Sara Del Rey is going to underestimate me just like everyone does, this along with the fact that I am more resilient than anybody on the CHIKARA roster. Bone density is the secret. I drink more milk than the average bear, that’s for sure!

Q: As some may be aware, you’re the first graduate of the BDK WrestleFactory. What advantages do you feel that has given you over a graduate of another wrestling school?

JH: Ares und Claudio Castagnoli are bar none the BEST trainers in all of profressional wrestling. I feel this gives me an advantage because they honed in to train me all by mein lonesome as opposed to one teacher training a whole class. It is comparable to the private schools versus the deplorable U.S. public school system. Assisted lessons by the rest of the BDK (including the aformentioned “homewrecker”) I received a melting pot of different styles from which to pick und chose.

Q: Your in-ring career has been relatively short. What would winning Cibernetico or defeating a world-renowned competitor like Del Rey do for somebody in your position? Do you think about taking matches outside of CHIKARA—a Team Jakob World Tour, maybe?

JH: Mo’ money! Mo’ recognition! Mo’ Jakob merchandise as a result! Also, don’t think for one second that I have taken mein eyes off of the YLC. So a big win may get me in a YLC match.

Q: Being a member of the BDK must make you quite a catch at the local biergarten. Who is a better wingman—Tim Donst, or Tursas?

JH: Tim Donst. Tursas consumes women almost as quickly as he consumes mead and venison. Not much of a conversationalist. Tim on the other hand, usually talks about himself so much that the women just need someone to listen to them, we usually talk about hair products.

Q: Your role in the BDK has evolved rapidly, from ring announcer to manager to in-ring competitor. What do you see in the BDK’s future? What role will you play in it?

JH: I see the BDK turning things around. We obviously did a number on a gaggle of technicos in CHIKARA’s southern excursion. At the Cibernetico und High Noon, we will ride that momentum into next season. I plan on being a soldier for the cause, with always keeping the YLC in the back of mein mind.

Q: If you could call your finishing maneuver anything besides the “Rude Awakening,” what would it be?

JH: Although mein finishing maneuver is indeed inspired by Rick Rude (one of mein childhood favorites) mein variation already has a name, “Gute Nacht!” it truly is devastating.

Q: As a ring announcer, a match’s presentation must be very important to you. If you could hand pick a two-man announce team to call your match at High Noon, who would man the commentation station?

JH: JH: Good ol’ JR und LFC [CHIKARA’ s own Leonard F. Chikarason] .

Q: You’re a frequent presence at ringside, particularly during the matches Tursas is competing in. What philosophies do you bring as a manager, and how does somebody as wise and battle-tested as he respond to your suggestions?

JH: I don’t really have philosophies of mein own. I just take mein orders from Ares and remind Tursas of the battle plan. Sometimes his rage gets in the way of strategy, und I am there to keep him on track.

Q: What, right now, is a bigger threat to the BDK: A unified Spectral Envoy, or the free radical, Sara Del Rey.

JH: I had no idea that this interview would have such loaded biased questions. This is horribly unprofessional. This interview is over!

And that’s how my e-mail communique with Jakob ended. I did not get any tips on hair care, and I did not find out which IKEA the BDK plans to storm if they’re successful at Cibernetico: The Animated Series and the High Noon iPPV. For more information on High Noon, Jakob Hammermeier, and CHIKARA itself, head on over to chikarapro.com.

November 7, 2011
Sara Del Rey: The Wrestling Queen

Any time I tell somebody or some other person tells somebody that I run (well, ran) a movie blog, inevitably the person gets around to asking a question that I assume everybody in my particular line of nerdery dreads. The same goes for small talk with new people in sports, literature, music…on and on and on, all anybody is interested in is knowing what constitutes my favorite thing. On the surface, these are easy enough questions and I can say “The Big Lebowski” or “The Detroit Lions” at the drop of a hat, but I hate being asked because not only do I feel my taste or merit as a critic being judged by the asker, but because I fear the hidden, unspoken question: Why?

“Why” is a much harder question to quantify than “What,” as I don’t always know the reasons why I like a particular thing. I can say that I fell in love with the Lions because they’re my hometown team and, as a child, I saw Barry Sanders run in ways few human beings can wrap their minds around, but I didn’t experience Barry Sanders when the Lions were perennial playoff hopefuls and, for the majority of my life, they’ve have been playing such awful football that any sane man would have given up the ship years ago. Why not follow another team? I don’t know.

I used to be happy on the rare occasions when somebody asked me who my favorite wrestler was, because that was an answer I could give freely, with full explanation. I was watching a very special episode of WCW Monday Nitro on January 4, 1999 when Tony Schiavone, the voice of WCW, told me not to change that dial to Raw (which I never did to begin with) because he had it on good authority that Mick Foley, formerly known as Cactus Jack, was going to win the WWF Title from the Rock.

Even though I once served detention for doing the Degeneration-X crotch chop at recess and talked with my classmates about Steve Austin and the Undertaker and Kane and all that junk, I was a WCW man, right up until this point. See, I didn’t know anything about wrestling, even though I’d been watching since I was four, and the list of my favorite wrestlers remained unchanged from when I first saw an old Coliseum Video tape that I somehow got my hands on: Hulk Hogan, “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Bret Hart. So skilled was the WWF marketing machine that I followed these guys to WCW. My childhood love of Hulk Hogan had faded, but I still dug Macho Man and Bret Hart, who were having good feuds with the likes of Diamond Dallas Page, Chris Benoit, Raven and Goldberg, who I also grew to love. There was the ultra-cool combo of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, the incredible acrobatics of Rey Mysterio Jr. and the humor of a young Chris Jericho to keep me interested between 20-minute long odes to the Hulkster. Though I had all WWF action figures (they were better) and knew nobody who liked WCW, these were my icons. But I knew about the WWF and had read about Mick Foley and his barbarous Hell in the Cell match against the Undertaker and had bought a VHS tape called “The Best of Cactus Jack in ECW,” which was not only my introduction to a third “kind” of wrestling, but a new kind of wrestler in general.

Foley wasn’t in the best shape, he didn’t have the best look or the best gear, but he did everything he could to entertain/enrage an audience, and he was extremely good at his job. As an out-of-shape 11-year-old who couldn’t do a ton of athletic things because I suffered from cluster headaches (which were incapacitating) and swollen adenoids (which made it hard to breathe), I appreciated Mick Foley as a kind of avatar. He, too, was an out-of-shape dude who couldn’t do a ton of athletic things, and he was going to win the WWF Title.

This is what I saw when I flipped the channel:

And this is what happened on WCW Monday Nitro:

I think, had I been watching the rest of Nitro, that I would have stopped watching wrestling forever. As it stood, however, I became a big time WWF fan and Mick Foley became my favorite wrestler, which was too bad because 1999 was his last year as an active, full time competitor. Foley’s books and DVDs kept me going, but I was pretty much done with wrestling in 2002, when I went to a Raw is War and saw Kane and Triple H in a casket match because Triple H insinuated that Kane had slept with a dead woman. It was a combination of boredom and stupidity that did me in, and I was pretty sure that I was over wrestling.

But then YouTube was invented, I looked up “wrestling” and came upon clips of this woman:

Not that Manami Toyota ever took over for Mick Foley, but the minute I became aware of women’s wrestling, a kind of women’s wrestling that went beyond beyond the scope of the WWE’s diva division (which regularly featured matches where the two women fought in giant bowls of gravy or eggnog or what have you), the door flew open for somebody new.

Someone New

I’ve written a little bit about how Daniel Bryan (formerly known as Bryan Danielson) got me into indie wrestling (here). While the wrestler above—Sara Del Rey—wasn’t at that show, I started watching more and more indie wrestling, a scene where she’s a fixture, and was immediately drawn to her. I think indie wrestling works a strange magic on serious wrestling fans, and that, to me, is no more apparent than how Sara Del Rey became my favorite wrestler.

This is how indie wrestling works: When a guy like CM Punk comes out on TV and declares himself the best wrestler in the world, people who watch a ton of wrestling wag their fingers (or blow their tops) and start naming a bunch of dudes who are supposedly way better. Today’s wrestler of choice is probably Davey Richards. In 2009, when Chris Jericho was claiming to be “the best in the world at what he does,” the wrestler of choice would have been Bryan Danielson. This goes back as long as there’ve been nerds debating the finer points of pro-wrestling, with many asserting Ricky Steamboat as the best wrestler in the world at a time when maybe Ric Flair or Randy Savage were on top of the world, and you don’t even want to open the door to Mexican or Japanese wrestlers. The more wrestling one watches, the more likely the viewer is to settle upon some mostly obscure guy as their pick for Best in the World, which may be one of the most annoying chants I’ve ever heard at a wrestling show.

As far as my tastes in independent pro-wrestling go, I tend to prefer the stuff being done by women’s promotions like SHIMMER Women Athletes. It’s got a lot to do with YouTube exposing me to Japanese women’s wrestling before anything else, and also because groups like SHIMMER (and other promotions who use women from SHIMMER) are doing something completely different than what I can see on WWE television: treating women like they’re on the same level as men. Though women’s wrestling on TV is much better now than it was when bra and panties matches were in style, most of the women being pushed by WWE aren’t really my cup of tea. No matter how hard she works, I don’t think I’ll ever completely buy a Kelly Kelly victory, even over a woman of similar size and skill. I don’t have that problem with Del Rey, who looks genetically developed to crush the WWE Divas division into a fine powder.

Del Rey won me over late this past July, when I saw her perform three nights in a row. The first night, in Cleveland, she wrestled Sassy Stephie for Absolute Intense Wrestling at a show called Girl’s Night Out 4 which, as you might guess, featured mostly women’s matches. The show itself was great (if you’re a wrestling fan, you can throw some shekels their way at aiwrestling.com), but there were people in the crowd who, to be honest, made me ashamed to not only be there, but to like wrestling/be a man at all. I don’t think you can talk about the moral degradation of society until you sit next to a nine-year-old boy screaming “Gimmie a blowjob!” at every woman who happened by him, and there were other mutants in the audience who, when not feeding that kid lines, shouted out their own doozies, “kick her in the clit!” and the decidedly un-rhythmic “we want a stripper pole!” being favorites.

I don’t mean to trash AIW—they’re an up-and-coming, well-respected promotion who bring some of independent wrestling’s best to Ohio on a regular basis, and I’ll probably go to more of their shows in the future. But when people standing outside waiting for the door are debating if one of the wrestlers at the last show should have broken more fluorescent light tubes over his opponent’s face, however, you realize that an evening full of women’s wrestling is kind of a tough sell. Del Rey, who was wrestling a last-minute replacement for a wrestler named Super Oprah, was able to get the crowd to watch her match with a minimum of stupid, snide comments, despite the fact that she was pretty much squashing Sassy Stephie, her opponent for the evening.

It was at Girl’s Night Out 4 that the privileges of indy wrestling became apparent, as Del Rey came out during the intermission to sell DVDs and 8x10s. My friend Caleb and I introduced ourselves to her and talked about the crowd at AIW and our travel plans and how we were looking forward to seeing her match against Claudio Castagnoli at the old ECW Arena. I’m sure every schmuck who’s been to a live performance where audience/crowd interaction is key has felt like this, but when Del Rey wrestled Sassy Stephie, asked us to keep chanting her “Queen of Wrestling” moniker, called out for move requests and actually did the stuff we asked for, it felt less like she was playing to the crowd-at-large, and more like she was wrestling for us.

The match that Sunday, against Claudio Castagnoli (recently signed by the WWE), was the reason Caleb, his girlfriend and I packed up and hit the road. Friday in Cleveland and Saturday in Reading (a chaotic six-woman tag team match featuring a trio of wrestlers from Japan) were a great appetizer, and the whole weekend had been filled with a diverse array of spectacular wrestling. British legends Johnny Saint and Johnny Kidd, for example, wrestled two technical masterclasses that weekend–once against each other, once teaming with CHIKARA-founder Mike Quackenbush and Chicago’s own Colt Cabana, respectively—but Del Rey vs. Castagnoli was the featured attraction: One of the best men on the independent scene going against the best woman in a match that not only would determine both wrestler’s future chances at a title shot (this is always important), but was also an issue of respect. The deeper intricacies of the Del Rey/Castagnoli feud are unnecessary, as are the details of the match, which was pretty much worth the road trip.

I don’t know how easy it is to tell from the above image, but the difference between Castagnoli and Del Rey is vast. Claudio’s a huge man—260 pounds of Swiss mountain muscle—and while Del Rey’s not exactly tiny, Claudio had at least 100 pounds on her. The Asylum Arena, long a cradle for American independent wrestling, was sweltering that afternoon, an easy 100 degrees, and the CHIKARA faithful, usually a loud, raucous bunch, were quieted by the conditions in the building. Not during this match, where nearly 500 people yelled themselves hoarse chanting “QUEEN OF WRESTLING” as Del Rey tried her best to overcome Claudio. When she did, surprising Claudio with a cradle pinfall, the place exploded; the reaction was not unlike the best WWE crowds going nuts at a WrestleMania where everything goes right and everybody is sent home happy.

This comparison, of course, is unfair. Indie fans, when backed into the corner, will inexorably talk about matches like CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe being better than, say, CM Punk vs. John Cena. Not to say that their opinion is wrong—it probably isn’t—but the demands of a match performed in front of 300 people are much different than those of a match performed in front of 17,000, plus an additional 200,000 domestic pay-per-view buyers (even more if we’re talking a WrestleMania or Summerslam kinda night). But still, sending 500 sweat-soaked, tired, possibly jaded pro-wresting fans happy is an impressive feat, and Del Ray and Castagnoli really went all out for a great match, trading European-style uppercuts and kicks, lariats and somersault splashes, perspiration flying into the lights with each shot, Rocky-style, for 13 minutes.

Again, the privilege of being an indie fan: After the match and after the after-match shenanigans, Del Rey stood at a table with a few DVDs to sell. Nobody in line was buying them, instead choosing to ask questions like “Did you get that thing I bought for you off your Amazon wish list?” and giving her homemade wallets and other small tokens of affection, which, I suppose, is the privilege of being an indie wrestler. Caleb and I stood in that line, made our way to the front, and started blabbing about how great the match was, how great our trip was and, the weird thing was, she remembered us from Cleveland and stood around and talked to us for a bit:

“That was only thirteen minutes?” I asked. “It felt like half an hour!”

“I hope that’s not a bad thing,” Del Rey responded.

It wasn’t, but I don’t even think the match or her sticking around after the fact is what sealed the deal. There are plenty of wrestlers having plenty of good matches who are plenty nice to the fans. Mick Foley, for example, had a career’s worth of great matches and is almost legendarily nice to his fans. I think, rather, that I like Del Rey for the same reasons I like a guy like Foley or a team like the Detroit Lions—she’s a decided underdog, and it feels good to cheer for the underdog. But even here, there’s a difference.

Sara Del Rey isn’t an underdog in the same way the Lions are, as she’s not getting paid millions of dollars to do what she loves, and she’s not an underdog like Mick Foley, who could have never won a major world title but still would have had an excellent, globe-spanning career. She’s an underdog because, in terms of body type, she’s not the kind of woman the WWE usually hires. Yes, there are women working for the company right now who are larger than your average Hawaiian Tropics model, but that, too, may be working against Del Rey, as you’re either “the norm” or you’re too similar to someone else outside their definition.

That, again, is one of indie wrestling’s strange peccadilloes. I think most of the people who watch it aren’t just invested in the performance aspect of wrestling, or in the characters, which come and go. We’re invested in the people behind the fake names, the men and women wearing the spandex. I don’t know if it’s because we’re closer to the action or if it’s because indie wrestlers actually talk to fans or because there’s a strange sense of power in being a fan—my buying or not buying Rickey Shane Page’s $20 shirt is the difference between him eating at Subway or him eating Ramen—but I like sitting down front row at the TaylorTown Trade Center, looking into the ring and seeing a bunch of people who not only want to be in the WWE, but who deserve to be there.

Del Rey is one of those indie wrestlers. She not only looks ready, not only is ready, but she really wants to go. So she wrestles across the country and gains critical acclaim and builds her fan base hoping that somebody with the WWE will take notice and give her the shot that she deserves. She answers questions about “divas” and body type and her chances of getting in all the time, in a way is told that she’s not going to make it, but she keeps working and keeps getting better. Professional wrestling is how Sara Del Rey makes her living. There appears to be no back-up plan. She either wrestles and gets into the WWE or she wrestles and doesn’t, and it’s hard to be a wrestling fan and not respect this mindset.

It’s a huge part of the reason I like her, and it’s probably why I’ll miss seeing her in high school gymnasiums and half-empty flea markets when she does get signed. But this, ultimately, is why I buy a $10 ticket or a t-shirt or ask her to sign a poster. This is my reality television, and I want to see people who put a lifetime worth of work into something I also love get rewarded for doing so. I want Sara Del Rey to do like Mick Foley did in 1999 and silence the sort of people who look cynically upon hard work and dedication and say “You can’t do it” or “You don’t look right.” I’m a sucker for stories like this, stories which, oddly, professional wrestling seems to have the market cornered on.

September 30, 2011