4thletter!

Yep. It’s already time for another interview, this time with an honest-to-Gog comic fan. First, I should point out that it’s been a while since I’ve done any articles that compare the CHIKARA DVD covers to their comic book counterparts, but I should be getting around to that next week. I hope.

In the meantime, check out this awesome cover of Café Culture, featuring Claudio Castagnoli.

Obviously, that’s based on the comic cover where… uh… Despero was… er… enjoying a cup of coffee. Yeah.

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So! This time I get to interview Shayne Hawke, a charismatic youngster in the CHIKARA ranks with a lot going for him. He’s entered in this weekend’s Young Lions Cup 6 tournament, convinced he’s going to make it to the end and acquire the championship trophy. Meanwhile, he and his raspy mentor Mitch Ryder have won three tag matches in a row, thereby earning them a title shot against the tag champs Delirious and Hallowicked.

Shayne Hawke agreed to meet me up on the 4th Letter Helicarrier for an interview, mainly as an excuse to keep his pale hide out of the sun for a few minutes. I mean, that’s not what he told me, but I got that vibe just from looking at him. Anyway, the interview.

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CHIKARA is getting set for another group of shows, so once again I’m capitalizing by badgering one of their wrestlers. This time, it’s Tim Donst, an American icon who mixes the best traits of Rick Steiner, Rocky Balboa and Dan Hibiki into one red-blooded grappling machine.

As coincidence would have it, my very first CHIKARA show was also young Donst’s first match. Being my first experience with the wacky fed, I was more enamored with the antics of the masked cultists calling themselves the Order of the Neo-Solar Temple, his opponents in a six-man tag match, and paid Tim little mind. Months later, I watched his performance as a singles wrestler at Young Lions Cup V and saw potential in his unique amateur/pro wrestling hybrid style. He just needed an extra, undefined something.

Then came the infamous match against that big bully Eddie Kingston, where the outclassed and overly punished Tim Donst stood up against Kingston’s never-ending in-ring torment and fought back, winning the hearts of the fans in attendance. With his newfound gusto, Tim gained respect in his following matches, no matter whether he won or lost. He even got the last laugh against Kingston by pinning him in a tag match.

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First off, the latest Comics From the 5th Dimension is up. This time it’s part one of a two-parter where I discuss Luke Cage’s 70’s rogues gallery. I’ve gone over some of it here before, but I go into more detail and discuss why I believe Luke Cage is currently a Skrull.

The mega wrestling site Figure 4 Weekly Online recently had Leonard F. Chikarason as a guest on Dr. Keith’s radio show. You might remember Chikarason’s interview on this site months back. It’s apparent that he does, since he proceeds to give us a quick shout out. What a guy. Even if he does read Countdown.

I should return the favor by mentioning that CHIKARA has shows this upcoming weekend. Saturday is Deuces Wild at Hellertown, PA. Sunday is Passion and Persistence at the ECW Arena. I will be making one or two of the shows in May, but not these shows.

No, instead, I’m going to be at New York Comic Con this weekend. It’s going to be me, hermanos and some of those jokers from Funnybook Babylon. I’ll be the dumbass with the 4th Letter t-shirt, so if you see me, be sure to keep your dirty fucking hands off my nachos. And say hello if you feel like it. I honestly don’t even eat nachos. I don’t know where that came from.

You may have noticed that for the past week or so, I haven’t said a damn word on this site. That’s because last Friday I went off to Philadelphia for the three day CHIKARA wrestling show known as King of Trios ’08. What a blast.

Me hanging out with Stupefied, El Generico and Player Uno. This should be the new Mount Rushmore.

King of Trios was the biggest tournament in wrestling history, featuring 28 sets of three-man tag teams. The first two days would feature 14 teams each, whittled down to four teams after ten matches and two byes. By the third night, they’re down to eight teams, with several non-tournament matches added on. Follow that? It doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that there were 31 matches over the course of three days and it was rocktastical.

That’s not to say that there weren’t any disappointments in the roster. CHIKARA top guys Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli are in Japan, so they missed out. Plus some of the more memorable guest stars from last year like Yago, Dino and American Balloon weren’t returning. Despite that, we had some of the reliable mainstays, surprisingly entertaining new guys and some bizarre surprises.

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Next Friday I’m going to be taking a 3-day trip to Philly for CHIKARA’s King of Trios tournament. This thing is going to be crazy epic as over these days they are going to hold a tournament of 28 teams of 3. That’s 84 guys in there!

Other than the CHIKARA mainstays, teams are coming in from other independent wrestling feds and several other countries. It even has some stranger attractions like a team of Kaiju Big Battel monsters and a team made up of 80’s legends Demolition Ax, Demolition Smash and the One Man Gang.

I figured this was as good an excuse as any to get another CHIKARA interview down. This time I chose to interview the Osirian Portal, a tag team made up of the insidious human cobra Ophidian and the cold dancing machine Amasis.

The Bangles used to have nightmares that looked like this.

Ophidian debuted back in July at Showdown in Crisisland. After a couple weeks of build-up, he made his first appearance by taking on fan-favorite Player Uno. Showing off his viperlicious attack style and slithering to and from the ring rather than actually walking, Ophidian got everyone’s attention by knocking out Player Uno with a Cobra Clutch combined with leg scissors.

In September, at the show called Cibernetico and Robin, he was joined by Amasis, the Funky Pharaoh. As the Osirian Portal, they won their initial match against veterans Jigsaw and Shane Storm. Despite Amasis’ mastery of mixing wrestling with dancing, he still comes off as annoyed and with little patience when it comes to the CHIKARA crowds.

As it turns out, these guys don’t actually read comics. Well, not anymore at least. When Amasis wasn’t looking, Ophidian slipped me a note talking about how “Sssssspawn” is still the greatest superhero ever. Man, these guys really are evil. Nonetheless, I couldn’t pass the chance of interviewing two grown men dressed as up like Egyptian supervillains.

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This past weekend was the 2007 season finale for CHIKARA. The third and final show ended very badly, when young wrestler Lince Dorado landed wrong during a Shooting Star Senton (if you have any idea what that move means, you can see how it can go very wrong) and caused a major scare. He was taken to the back with the wrestlers, Lince’s family and the fans in fear of his fate. Thankfully, he’s relatively okay, but it could have been a lot worse. The main event of Chris Hero vs. Claudio Castagnoli was cancelled. Despite the year-long build-up, I don’t think anyone objected, considering the circumstances.

I wasn’t at that show, but I did make the one on Saturday. Fantastic stuff, including a main event that gave me some of the biggest laughs I’ve had all year. Being behind on my DVD’s for shows I didn’t have a chance to go to, I shelled out more money than I should have and bought a handful. More specifically, I got myself a copy of Bruised.

Based on Incredible Hulk #181, the battle of the doofy-looking Wolverine and Hulk is replaced with Tim Donst going up against Eddie Kingston. For some reason, they changed the background color and it looks more like a box of Wheaties.

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I haven’t mentioned CHIKARA that much lately, but right now, the unorthodox wrestling federation has a lot going for it. For one, they just released two DVDs for their recent shows Bruised and New Star Navigation. The former of which has a neat cover based on the first battle of Hulk vs. the goofy-masked Wolverine, but I’ll feature that one later, when I have a better, less diagonal image.

Speaking of DVDs, the company has just let loose its first wide-release DVD, The Best of CHIKARA. If you find yourself in an FYE, Sam Goody, Best Buy, or wherever you get your DVDs, they just might have this baby waiting for you at $9.99. Come on, that’s a great price for the sweetness within.

This weekend comes the final three shows of CHIKARA’s 2007 season. On Friday the 16th, it’s The Battle of Who Could Care Less. On Saturday the 17th, we get The Sordid Perils of Everyday Existence, whatever that means. Finally, the season finale is on Sunday the 18th with Chapter 11 in Philadelphia.

With CHIKARA having such a pulse at the moment, I figure I’d hitchhike onto their success with another interview. This time the unfortunate victim is Leonard F. Chikarason. Mr. Chikarason isn’t a wrestler by any means, but plays the role of the company’s Director of Fun. He, you know, makes matches and stuff. He also does a big chunk of commentary and shows up whenever pictures are taken in the ring.

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After nearly three months of ignoring it, I’ve finally updated the site’s Table of Contents page. Other than adding the newer articles, I’ve added Hoatzin’s section, got a better picture for the “Ruining the Moment” section and added the Juggernaut.

See? Cain can be seen dashing into any articles deemed suggested reading by 4th Letter’s writers or readers.

In other news, CHIKARA has a new contest based on their DVD covers. By sending in your own artwork, you could possibly have it grace the cover of their yet-to-be-named November 07 event and win a bunch of free crap. The requirements:

- .jpg or .psd file
- 200 dpi
- RGB mode (NOT CMYK!)
- Measuring 5.125” (width) by 7.25” (height) inches
- Keep it family friendly

Send the entries to lfchikarason@gmail.com with your name and address. You can enter as many times as you want. I’m going to try and break out the pencils for the first time in years and see what I can do with this.

Finally, I made a couple purchases yesterday for the next series of articles that I’ll get to once I finish the Professor Marc’s Homework Trilogy. All I can say is that despite all the comics I’ve read over the course of this site’s history, nothing… NOTHING… has made me fear for my sanity more than what I have in store. Stay tuned.

About a month ago, CHIKARA did an awesome show in Conneticut called Showdown in Crisisland. You’d think they’d do one of their comic-based DVD covers, what with “Crisis” being in the title. Instead, they passed over it by doing a meh cover based on the least entertaining match on the card.

It’s all right. Two weeks later, they did another show in Philly called Maximum Overdraft. Now they’ve released the DVD cover for that and it makes up for their previous folly.

Based on Avengers #4, the famous issue that brought Captain America to the present, the main image of the cover includes Tim Donst, Jigsaw, Shane Storm and Moscow the Communist Bovine. With them is popular referee Bryce Remsburg. In the opening match, these four wrestlers teamed up to take on the team of UltraMantis Black and the Southern Saints. Great opener.

Having Moscow wield a hammer and sickle is absolutely brilliant.

The Black Tiger made a special CHIKARA appearance, where he went up against Mike Quackenbush. Quack had recently acquired the NWA Junior Heavyweight title and decided to defend it here in his own fed.

The show is pretty stacked and worth looking at. La Parkita, a skeleton midget, fights a normal-sized guy named Payaso del Futuro (Clown from the Future) in what can only be described as a drunken trainwreck of a match. Ring of Honor’s tag champs the Briscoe Brothers visit CHIKARA to take on their tag champs Team F.I.S.T. And also, I almost got ejected during the third match. Heel Eddie Kingston and I got into a wacky little confrontation prior to his match and he asked that I be thrown out of the arena. One of the security guards thought he was serious and really did want me gone. Luckily, I talked him down. Hopefully that shows up in some form on the DVD.

Like always, you can get your CHIKARA shows at Smart Mark Video. They’re having a couple shows this weekend, but I have a wedding to attend. I’ll definitely be around next month, September 21st, when they go back to Philly for their next show called Lettuce Entertain You (And Other Puns).

hermanos is off covering that E3 thing for that magazine he does, so that leaves me to hold up the fort. It’s all right because I have quite the treat. Regular readers know that I’ve been talking about the pro wrestling federation CHIKARA to the point of annoyance in the last few months. And with good reason!

Moving to the next step of fandom, I’ve secured an interview with “Lightning” Mike Quackenbush himself. Quackenbush, nicknamed “The Master of a Thousand Holds” (though to be fair, I’m sure he’s probably sorta kinda good at eight or nine more), is a 16-year veteran of the ring and is the man who co-founded CHIKARA back in 2002. He’s a wrestler, a trainer to wrestling hopefuls, occasional commentator, writer, and possibly the next surprise identity of Ronin. He’s also one of the best performers I’ve ever had the honor of watching wrestle.

A rare image of Mike Quackenbush that doesn’t involve him shoving someone’s left knee into their right ear.

Not to mention that he’s a major comic fan. So this is, you know, still on-topic for the site.

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I know what CHIKARA is and you certainly know what CHIKARA is, but let’s play it safe and say that whoever’s reading this doesn’t know. Can you give us a little description of what it’s about and what sets it apart from all the rest?

- CHIKARA is a group of pro-wrestlers/luchadores/ninjas/ would-be-super-heroes that get together and enact the age-old struggle of “good vs. evil” within the context of a wrestling universe that permits elements of science-fiction and fantasy beyond what is currently considered “acceptable” or “mainstream” by wrestling fans at large. I hope, when the final word on CHIKARA is written, that our effect on the wrestling performance genre will be akin to the effect Monty Python had on British comedy, or Jack Kirby had on comics.

Quack as part of Eddie Kingston’s Cibernetico team, based on the first issue of Justice League International

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