For Want of a Fork



 

This is "The Gimmick".   The illegal foreign object used by the Wrecking Crew in the opening match at Chikara's show "Out on a Limb".  Sidney Bakabella twice passed this fork back and forth with Flex Rumblecrunch during the match so that it could be used as a weapon against Worker Ant.   In the end, its absence proved The Wrecking Crew's undoing as their inability to find it distracted Rumblecrunch so much that he practically walked right into a prawn hold from Fire Ant and stayed down for a three count.

So why was it missing the third time they tried to use it during the match?  Anyone who has viewed the video of "Out on a Limb" and several who were in the crowd at the show will already be aware that it was picked up off the arena floor by a little girl.  Bakabella dropped it when he tried to put it back into his back pocket after its second use during the match, and a child in the audience took it upon herself to prevent further cheating in the match.  As I implied at the end of my last entry on this blog, the little girl in question is my little girl.  Kory picked up "The Gimmick" and sealed the fate of the Wrecking Crew.

I've been a wrestling fan for around 25 years now.  I know very well that there is a code of conduct for fans attending a wrestling show.

 

It's kind of like being The Watcher from Marvel Comics.  You are here only to observe and never to interfere.  So why did I allow Kory to take "The Gimmick"?

The obvious assumption is that it was out of sympathy for Worker Ant.  Longtime readers of the blog will already be aware that I'm a very big fan of his.  He is among my favorite wrestlers on the roster.  There is even some evidence to support this theory in the screenshot I posted from Chikara's video release of "Out on a Limb":

You can plainly see me in the chair next to Kory.  I'm the one wearing a pair of Colony gauntlets.  I bought those from Worker Ant.  They were part of his gear back when he went by AssailAnt.  In Kory's hand you can see a plush Pokemon that she brought to show Worker Ant because I have told her about how much he likes Pokemon.  It's a little clearer in this shot from intermission later that night:

Despite all of this, Occam's Razor is wrong this time.  While we have a great deal of love for The Colony in general and Worker Ant in particular, my decision to let her keep the gimmick was not out of sympathy for the ants.  The fact is that no matter how odds are stacked against them I trust in their ability to overcome them on their own.  That's also part of being a fan.

You might think (especially if you read my review of the match in the previous post) that I let her keep the fork as some measure of revenge for Sidney Bakabella trying to get Kory thrown out of the show when she stuck her tongue out at him.  During both the opener and the main event my little girl and the King of Manager had frequent shouting matches with one another.  The truth is that I wasn't mad at Bakabella for any of that.  I was proud of Kory for not being intimidated by his bluster.  Nothing Bakabella did raised my ire sufficiently to warrant violating my code of ethics as a fan.

The truth of the matter is simple.  I actually did tell Kory to put the fork down.  Then, as I looked up from saying that, I saw other fans in my row pointing something out to me.  On the ring apron (and you can spot this on the video of the show if you look) Jervis Cottonbelly was making hand-signals to us.  He wanted us to hide the fork.  A polite request was being made of us by the World's Sweetest Man.  Under the circumstances I took this as sufficient permission and told Kory to pick up the fork and hide it.  I think it is important to tell people about this part because I don't want to glorify the idea of fans taking matters into their own hands during a wrestling match.

I should clarify, I am not throwing Jervis under the bus here.  He clearly wanted us to hide it, but it was my decision that we keep "The Gimmick".  Had we returned it during intermission I have no doubt it would have been used against the Osirian Portal in the main event later that night.  Ophidian and Amasis have never been anything but wonderful to me and my friends and family that I have brought to Chikara shows.  I had no desire to improve Bakabella's chances of cheating them out of victory. I was also worried that Kory would feel responsible if we returned the fork and it was used against them.

Before the main event the crowd was addressed by Sidney Bakabella.  He claimed that the fork in question was invented by one of his ancestors and from the sound of it the "heirloom" had passed between 8 generations of his family (I counted the number of times he said it had been passed from Bakabella to Bakabella).  In the unlikely event that this is true, then I feel very sorry for the Bakabella who worked industriously to create it.  I would think that having Flex Rumblecrunch jab it into people is not the work they intended this tool to be used for.  As you can see from the photo at the top of this article, there is tape on both ends of it.  I have left that in place on the assumption that after 8 generations the tape may be what is holding it together.  Rest assured that while I don't believe Bakabella's story about it being passed down through his family, we are taking good care of it nonetheless.

The future of "The Gimmick" is uncertain.  Sidney Bakabella has demanded it be returned, but I wouldn't know how to go about that even if I wanted to.  I'm not sure where the Devastation Corporation keeps its offices, but I doubt it's in the territory where I live.  I also don't see a good reason to return it.  He's just going to have his boys jab it into tecnicos again if I do, and every match he is deprived of that feels like a moral victory for Kory over the King of Manager.

Chikara: Out on a Limb
Opening Match
The Colony (Fire Ant and Worker Ant)
vs
The BDK (Jakob Hammermeier and Pinkie Sanchez)
vs
Princess Kimberlee and Jervis Cottonbelly
vs
The Wrecking Crew (Jaka and Flex Rumblecrunch)

Kory and I were particularly excited for this match because it featured a lot of wrestlers we had only seen on video before.  Most notable among these would be the team of Princess Kimberlee and Jervis Cottonbelly.  For those unfamiliar, Jervis Cottonbelly is known as "The World's Sweetest Man" and is a true sportsman.  I wish I could give a more personal account, but we did not see him outside of his match.  His partner is Princess Kimberlee who is quickly making a name for herself in Chikara due to her fearlessness.  In the matches of hers I've watched it has seemed like she is eager to take on the toughest opponents available as she can frequently be observed trading shots with the biggest man in the match.   I'm sorry to say that I never got a clear picture of them.  My sub-par photography skills and the lighting in the New Mid-Atlantic Sportatorium are not a good mix.  I should also mention that we made a sign that I always said I'd make if I attended an event where Jervis Cottonbelly was competing.  

I figure it's a preferable alternative to "If Jervis loses we riot"

Jervis never saw the sign to my knowledge, but Flex Rumblecrunch, Jaka, and Sidney Bakabella certainly took an interest in it.  Jaka bit the corner off of it and ate it, but the text was still in tact.  Jaka is a savage employed by Sidney Bakabella because his viciousness can usually be pointed in the right direction to win matches. Jaka's accomplishments in the sport include being a former winner of Wrestling Is Fun's Championship Banana... which he promptly ate.  Bakabella's other client in this match, Flex Rumblecrunch, is one third of the current King of Trios team The Devastation Corporation.  His reaction to our sign was confusion:

I think his exact words were, "What does that even mean?"

Sidney Bakabella knew what umbrage meant because you don't get to be "King of Manager" without some  quality education.  I've discussed Bakabella and Flex Rumblecrunch before on the blog, but I will say that seeing Bakabella live was quite the experience for us.  I don't think the crowd would have cheered half as loudly if he hadn't been trying to silence us.  He quickly got on Kory's bad side with a comment that made her stick her tongue out at him.  I think his response was a little bit extreme:

Pictured here is Sidney Bakabella ordering a security guard to throw my little girl out of the building.

Referee Bryce Remsburg had to take a moment to explain to Bakabella that he couldn't have her ejected.

The other participant in this match that we had never seen live before was Pinkie Sanchez of the Bruderschaft Des Kreuzes, or BDK for short.  This team leaves me feeling a little conflicted as a fan.  As I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog I'm actually rather fond of Jakob Hammermeier.  He sold me a t-shirt through charm and persistence two years ago at "The Ghost of You Clings", and I gleefully watched him emancipate himself from Tim Donst's cruel form of friendship later that year at "Aniversario: Never Compromise".  His partner, Pinkie Sanchez is a similar soft spot for me, but for different reasons.  I have trouble thinking of either of them as truly evil, and it makes it difficult to boo them wholeheartedly.  I know the BDK once threatened to take over all of Chikara and that both these men were a part of that, but they weren't in charge of that BDK.  They've both spent much of their Chikara careers simply looking for respect.  I may not agree with the methods they are using to try to get it, but I can empathize with their complaint.  I may have to do a full entry about them at another time to get to the heart of what I'm trying to say.  For now, let's leave it at this: I'm not booing them, I'm just cheering for some of their opponents.

The final team in this contest are Fire Ant and Worker Ant of The Colony.  I've covered both of them for the blog before, but one of them has been through some changes since then.  Worker Ant used to be AssailAnt.  During a pivotal moment in the battle between The Flood (a group dedicated to destroying Chikara which included AssailAnt's old allies The Gekido) and Chikara AssailAnt had to choose a side.  By siding with Chikara he fully earned the trust of his fellow Colony members and he was given the Worker Ant name and the proud legacy that goes with it.  He and Fire Ant have been a great tag team ever since.

The match itself was a great contest.  Pinkie Sanchez started things off on a fun note with a little Ric Flair impression.  Early in the match Princess Kimberlee would live up to her reputation by trading shots with Flex Rumblecrunch.  The Wrecking Crew and the BDK would spend most of the match beating on Worker Ant, but not managing to put him away.  Occasionally, when Rumblecrunch was in the ring he would shout to Bakabella for "The Gimmick".  "The Gimmick" was a code word for a fork that Bakabella would sneak into the ring and then distract referee Bryce Remsburg while Rumblecrunch used it on Worker Ant.  It is a testament to the determination and conditioning of Worker Ant that he took as much punishment as he did and neither the BDK nor the Wrecking Crew could ever keep him down for a pinfall.  When he managed to tag Princess Kimberlee back into the match she tore into both members of the BDK with a great series of strikes followed by a pump kick to Flex Rumblecrunch before leaving the ring via a dive onto Pinkie Sanchez on the outside.  Fire Ant would take a turn trading blows with Jaka before knocking him out of the ring and then diving onto him and Pinkie with a flip that took him into the second row.

I got this blurry picture of him celebrating in the crowd.

When Fire Ant got back in the ring Flex Rumblecrunch would get frustrated by not being able to put him away with a terrific delayed vertical suplex.  He would then ask Bakabella for "The Gimmick".  Unfortunately for the Wrecking Crew, Sidney Bakabella reached into his pocket and found it to contain no silverware of any kind.  He frantically searched the ringside area for his fork (much to the delight of those of us in the audience who knew why he wouldn't find it.  More on that in my next blog post).  Rumblecrunch would be distracted by this and walked right into a prawn hold from Fire Ant.  Three seconds later the Wrecking Crew were out of the match.  For want of a fork the match was lost.  

The match continued.  Princess Kimberlee traded strikes with the BDK again, but Jervis was displeased when Pinkie Sanchez punched her right in the face (Jervis doesn't really seem to be a fan of the closed fist in any circumstances, but was particularly unhappy to see one wielded against a lady).  Jervis would find himself outnumbered against both Jakob and Pinkie, but not out-wrestled.  Pinkie held Jervis while Jakob prepared for his patented knockout punch.  Jervis slipped out of Pinkie's grip and Jakob knocked out his own partner.  This distracted Jakob long enough for Jervis to roll him up for a count of three.  This left only the Colony and Kimberlee and Jervis in the match.  Jervis and Worker Ant shook hands to show their respect for each other before they began fighting.  A short battle followed, but it ended when Fire Ant went for the Beach Break only to have Princess Kimberlee reverse it into a pinning combination that I believe is called the Alligator Clutch.  Princess Kimberlee and Jervis Cottonbelly leave the match with two points toward tag title contention.

Next time I'll give a little exclusive information as to the current status of "The Gimmick", why it went missing, and where it is now.  Why would I have exclusive information?  Well, to answer that I'll post a screencap of Kory taken from the Chikara video release of Out on a Limb

I feel I have some explaining to do