King of Trios 2008 Night 2 Review

Before we get to Night 2, let me talk about the conclave. We had the opportunity to meet nearly all of the wrestlers from both nights of the tournament before the show. I got to play Fire Pro against Fire Ant and I beat him with D'Lo. Go watch Podcast #100 -- that's me being interviewed by Wiggly! After about 45 minutes, they had a Q&A session with some rudos & tecnicos. Chikarason asked the interviewees to do an imitation of their favorite wrestlers. The funniest (worst?) on was Chuck Taylor laying down in the ring and then shaking, to make fun of Lince Dorado's injury. There was much more to go into detail here, and you can see a ton of it on that same podcast (UMB's singing was great).

But now let's go over Night 2, shall we?

Team Japan d. The Southern Saints -- Yesyesyes MIYAWAKI. Susumu wasn't a very big guy, and most of his moves landed with no impact. In fact, they had very little sound at all. After 500 moves echo off the walls of the ECW arena, it just looks strange when someone lands on their back and you barely hear it. The Southern Saints came out dressed up as, well, I guess you could call it "reverse-KKK" outfits. Marcus O'Neill and Reno Diamond wore while cloaks, and all three of them carried Confederate flags. There's just so much to analyze there.

Anyway, KUDO and MIYAWAKI are awesome and, as I said 8000 times on this page before, I was ecstatic to see their return to Chikara. Marcus O'Neill's facial expressions throughout the show were definitely a highlight. The finish saw a beatdown on O'Neill with a swinging Yoshitonic finishing move.

Da Soul Touchaz d. Team BSE -- I misread this match horribly. I thought that maybe BSE would get a win here because Chikara has taken a liking to Super Xtremo. Unfortunately for them, Cobra Kai wasn't very good. He yelled...something at us to try to boo him. I just yelled, "TIMMAY" back because that's what it sounded like. On the other end of the spectrum, Da Soul Touchaz were the other surprise of the weekend (along with Team IPW:UK). Their choreographed entrance was great, even if it was to that popular "Soulja Boy" song that is cool among the teens! You really had no idea what you were getting with this team, and then they come out and put so much energy into the arena in just 2 seconds. Willie Richardson was fantastic, hitting a 300-pound leg drop to finish the match. I was glad to see them move on to the next round because we'd get to see that entrance again.

Team F.I.S.T. d. Sweet 'n' Sour, Inc. -- The crowd was all about Bobby Dempsey here. He probably got some of the loudest chants of the weekend. Tank Toland hit his exercise-based moves, Sara del Ray hit a ton of stiff moves on Icarus, and Chuck Taylor said he was going to beat Sara like his ex-girlfriend. Dempsey hit a couple sweet belly-to-belly suplexes, and after yelling "COME ON BABY" for us to cheer him, turned around right into a pedigree by Icarus. No, not a "boot-to-the-stomach, followed-by-a-pedigree" finish, but a "push-Bobby's-head-down-and-do-a-pedigree" finish. It looked kinda lame, but I'm glad F.I.S.T. moved on here. Post-match, Toland smacked Dempsey for losing, and Sara del Ray helped him to the back.

The Fabulous Three d. Team Stranglehold -- Yes Shayne Hawke! An he's wearing a robe and a boa and glasses like his teammates! Before the show, I talked to Sweeney and he looked pumped. I think I knew why -- if his team won this match, they'd get to face Demolition and the One Man Gang later in the night! As always, Donst was the face-in-peril. This match had the best length of all of the first-round matches during the weekend. Many of the matches lasted way too long for a 27-match tournament, but this one was decently-paced. The finish was a falling elbow from the top by Sweeney onto Andy Sumner. And you know what this means: Sweeney and Akeem get to square off!

Team IWS d. Team F1rst -- Dammit I didn't want to see Team F1rst lose in the first round; in fact, if it wasn't for being in the same bracket as Team Mexico, I would have put them into the tournament on the final night. But I really didn't expect them to lose in the first round! Then again, El Generico was fantastic for his team, and Player Uno and Stupefied did a great job of getting the crowd into the show. The funniest spot saw Arik Cannon take out an N64 controller from his pants, put it into Player Uno's tights (anus?), and control him. He got him to attack his own teammates so it worked out well for Team F1rst. The finish of the match was a brutal tag-team spike piledriver onto Ryan Cruz that has to be seen to be explained. This was probably my favorite first-round match of the tournament.

Team Mexico d. Los Ice Creams & ?? -- Before the show, a friend of mine said that he knew who Los Ice Creams' partner would be, but I didn't want him to tell me. Historically, the third name pulled from the hat is usually the new partner. But when Chikarason said that their partner was Glacier, there was no way I was going to believe it until I saw it. And there he was, coming out to Sandstorm (Snowstorm?) with instant mashed potatoes being used as snowflakes. Los Ice Creams jumped up and down in enjoyment in the ring. The crowd exploded when we saw Glacier (Glacier!) in the ECW Arena.

The match went along well, with Incognito having a better showing than at Cibernetico. El Pantera was very strange this weekend, though, but I'll touch on that later. At one point in the match, Glacier got out a sock full of sprinkles. Lince had a move done onto them somehow, but eventually Lince hit a hurricanrana and a moonsault onto one of Los Ice Creams on the sprinkles. Extremely fun match with a great surprise.

INTERMISSION

Team Japan d. Team AZW -- Ohhhhhhhh boy. The Immortals weren't...good. They jawed with the crowd but it was lame. You could see one of the team members say to the other "hold me back" before he went after fans. It was funny but entirely too predictable. AkuA was more than decent in the ring, but it really seemed like he was just showing off power indy moves. The finish saw KUDO hit flying knees from the top onto AkuA for the pin.

Team F.I.S.T. d. Da Soul Touchaz -- Again, we got to watch the greatest entrance of the weekend by Da Soul Touchaz. C-Red is a fantastic manager. Willie Richardson was on fire again, but the best part of the match was Acid Jaz giving the SWISS MIST to Icarus. A "Swiss Mist" is doing a green mist move, but with hot chocolate powder. It smelled like chocolate for a while after that. Chucky Tea hit the Awful Waffle for the the three-count. Extremely loud "PLEASE COME BACK" chants finished off Da Soul Touchaz' nights. They thanked us with bows for a couple minutes.

The Fantastic Three d. Team WWF -- Ed Wood was in the crowd and he was dressed up as, and looked exactly like, Akeem the African Dream. So when Sweeney challenged One Man Gang to a strut-off, OMG put on Wood's hat and channeled his old gimmick! He definitely won the strut-off. Shayne Hawke was actually very good in this match, even though his attacks obviously did nothing. Ryder ended up hitting OMG in the face with a pair of brass knuckles to pick up the pinfall. We were sad to see Team WWF lose but it was great to see them wrestle in a small federation like Chikara at the ECW Arena.

Team Mexico d. Team IWS -- All that I really remember about this match was the finish: Incognito hit a fall away slam from the top rope on Stupefied, but he held on and did a moonsault to land on him. You know, like how Claudio eliminated Quackenbush during the 2006 Torneo Cibernetico. We were all very thankful for El Generico coming to Chikara for both of these matches; "Ole!" chants filled the arena all night. Oh, and before the match, there was some enormous feedback over the PA system and Stupefied and Player Uno freaked out.

Man I need to get these DVDs. So much happened and I forget so much of it. This was definitely the show of the weekend, with the strut-off, Glacier, and Da Soul Touchaz. A review of Night 3 should be coming shortly. Also, I'm going to write about a federation called PCW, an Arlington-based indy fed. Well, I'm going to write about them once because I went to a live show of theirs a couple weeks ago when I was in Texas. It really made me miss Chikara. Thanks for reading!