RD: I pull a half day at work so I can get out in time to head out to the Port Authority to catch the bus out to Pennsylvania. I meet up with Pete at the station and we head down to get on line. I kill time on the bus reading the 2002 Mook which Pete picked up. Fun things are that they mixed up the Hardyz, Brian Blair and Steve Kern made it in and that Juggernaut is still listed as Jaguar Nott. Nothing really much of note. Though I did count two living woodchucks (what's the difference between a woodchuck and a groundhog anyways?) by the side of the road and Pete hit his head on the bar behind the driver at least three times while he was sleeping. We realize that the show is actually not that far from Dorney Park/Wild Water Kingdom and consider ditching the show, but Sumie Sakai beats any rollercoaster in my book. We catch dinner at the diner/bus stop, I try to figure out what exactly the gravy for the fries is. Pete keeps up his stupid questions of the day by asking the cab company "What does the taxi look like?" and getting "A taxi" as an answer.

PP: So it's my fault I was in NYC Mode and thought there might- just might- be more than one cab company in Allentown? BAH. I also swing a half-day at work so I can jet home and get the dog out the door before she explodes, then change clothes and head down to Port Authority where I get lunch at Yoshinoya before hooking up with Ray. The ride is very pleasant going up as we go through the more picturesque parts of northern New Jersey before finally arriving in Allentown. At one point you had a girl getting dropped off at the bus station by her farmer parents as she went off to summer camp. The bus drops us off at a diner where my day is instantly made as I get a perfectly fine steak sammitch for the princely sum of $2.15. Dorney Park is quite the tempting diversion but we have the joshi to go to. Ray no-sells me when I note the fact that they're hiring.

RD: We show up at the building about two hours early and mill around the wrestling store which serves as the front for the wrestling school.  Since we showed up early, we check out the merch.  There's a lot of figures and we get to see great things like the New Blackjacks figures which prominently labels Windham and Bradshaw wrong on the front.  They also had a bunch of trading cards which I ended going through. Unfortunately there were a lot of Hogan and stuff in here and aside from a Kaientai one which I picked up, there weren't any truly great ones.  Topps did a set of WCW cards which were truly great that I picked up from another show at one point.  Those cards were great because the people at tops genuinely seemed to care about the wrestlers, so all the lWo guys had a pretty complete bio on them. Sad when a card company cares more about the luchadors then the company employing them.  There was a truly great WWF card from the 80's that had Hogan applying an abdominal stretch on Inoki which was clearly from a picture from New Japan, but was neat to see.  We watch some old MSG stuff on video before they let us in to the "Arena".  The Arena part of the building is the school and is more or less in a warehouse/garage type feel to it.  There's some air conditioners on one side, the entrance way is painted up like a dragon head/mouth with two red lights for eyes.  We get seats opposite the entrance near one of the corners.  Prior to the show, I catch a car jobbing to a bus a few blocks down from the show.  There's probably 80 people in for the show.  Little Jeanie is around ringside at the start of the show having her picture taken by someone for some wrestling magazine. A comment is made by someone that they swore they saw Boogie Woogie Man Jimmy Valiant wrestle in the same outfit, though I doubt Jimmy looked that good in it.

PP: The old MSG footage ruled it as these were the shows I cut my teeth on as a young spinach-chin, and I really miss the little MSG touches like the old microphone that got lowered down from the ceiling. We saw a great Hogan/Orndorff match from back when Hogan was massively over yet hadn't reached that epiphany where he realized he could half-ass it and still get the same reaction, so he was putting some effort out here and the match was great. Also got to see Slaughter's MSG face turn as well as a fine ladies' match with Velvet McIntyre and Princess Victoria defending the WWFJO tag titles against "Cowgirl" Wendi Richter (still a couple of months away from being turned face for her huge 1984 run) and Judy Martin. I still can't get over the idea that Tiger Chung Lee would be main-eventing Budokan 17 years AFTER these shows took place. The Chikara ring is like the one they had for the Jersey J-Cup last year in that the apron is built very low to the ground to compensate for the short ceiling in the "arena," although this ring is a lot more solid than the JJC ring. Sakai comes out to check the ring pre-show and is suitably bemused.

THE SHOW
MATCH 1:  TRINITY vs. QUEEN BEE
RD: Paul Turner, aka the referee who's not Hansen from JAPW, is doing all the matches tonight.  Trinity works the Northeast, sometimes as Trinity H Campbell.  I had seen her one time before against JT Jobber in JAPW.  I'm not sure who Queen Bee is, but I was told she is a wrestler, but doesn't use this gimmick anywhere.  She's got a mask which is black and yellow and is similar to Ultra Mantis from the promotion, which I think is actually a variation on the Kamen Shooter Super Rider mask with antenna.  I am disappointed, as Bee doesn't use "Flight of the Bumblebee" as her entrance music.  Though people were guessing Bee might be Mary Kate, it wasn't.  This match was ok, the crowd was sort of dead at the start with Trinity trying to shut down some hecklers which seemed to be a recurring theme of the night. There was some good stuff and some rough spots in this.  I've noticed there's some point in a match where someone will go with strikes, say kicks for example, and they start off strong, but as they go on, they lose something.  So the first one or two will sound look good, the rest sort of go downhill.  At one point Trinity is on the floor and as she's stalling, she takes a A/C break before heading back in the ring, which is followed by Bee doing the same thing.  Trinity threatens to unmask Bee a few times, including pulling on her antenna, which I try to convince Turner is like an eye poke for a bee.  Bee eventually hits a swinging DDT, from my angle, it looked like it might have been some sort of variation, like a underhook swinging ddt, but I could be wrong.  After she hits it, Blind Rage, one of the Chikara students runs in and attacks Queen Bee as on an earlier Chikara show, they set up that Trinity is Rage's girlfriend.  As a result,  Ultramantis runs in to save Bee as I think he's feuding with Rage.  With all four going at it, Turner tries to maintain control and adds Bee and Trinity to the 8-man tag later in the show, making it now a 10 person tag.

PP: I was prepared to hate some of the "fans" in attendance as they spent the balance of the match loudly ragging on both Trinity and QB for what they perceived as "light" offense. Thankfully Trinity has the gift of gab and she gives those clowns what for while she has her match. At one point Trinity tries to unmask QB, leading Turner to admonish her to "watch the mask!" I couldn't resist and yelled "Whose mask?" which everyone in the ring heard... Trinity included. The bit with the A/C was pretty great as the arena was a total sweatbox, and it allowed for Trinity to sneak in and actually post QB on the air conditioner when she went out for her A/C break. INNOVATION~! QB should go with the old "Green Hornet" theme (reworked "Flight of the Bumblebee," I know) next time she shows up.

MATCH 2 :  "BERTHA" vs. MERCEDES MARTINEZ - Winner faces Lexy Fyfe later in the evening
RD: Several of the women had cancelled on the show, as a result, 3 of the 5 girls pulled double duty on the card.  "Bertha" was a man in a dress wearing a Universo 2000 mask.  We're pretty sure it was Love Bug, but initially I joked it was "Donna Montoya."  Mercedes has a good look and got a pretty good reaction from the fans, plus she interacted with a bunch of people which seemed to get them into this a bit more.  I think Mercedes looked a bit better in this match as she did a bunch of flying and "Bertha" being a bit bigger seemed to be able to hold her up better to bump for her
sattilite head scissors and things.  Mercedes got the win with a swinging DDT.

PP: There were six cancellations by my count leading up to the show, so Joanne is forced to bring in Universo 2000 to put Mercedes over. Mercedes did a great job of getting the fans into her match by doing the Forbidden Dance with some fans after she came out (ironically, the same throwbacks who were burying Trinity and QB in the opener... go fig).

MATCH 3:  THE NIGHT SHIFT (Blind Rage, Hallowicked, Ichabod Slain & Trinity) & MISTER ZERO vs. ULTRAMANTIS, RECKLESS YOUTH, LIGHTNING MIKE QUACKENBUSH, LOVE BUG & QUEEN BEE
RD :  The Night Shift come out first and do some mic work.  Unfortunately, Rage gets heckled a bunch by someone in the crowd and really doesn't have any really good comebacks to shut the guy up, so this sort of trips him up in the promo department.  Hallowicked does some mic work which has him mumbling, when Rage tells him not to be stupid and to move up his mask, wicked does and mumbles the exact same thing.  The thing I've noticed about the Chikara students is that everyone seems to have a gimmick character, and they do the smart thing of when they do the introductions for everyone, they actually have a prepared line to go with it, so you sort of get the idea what the gimmick is if you couldn't figure it out. Night Shift are I guess the equivalent of the LOV in Osaka as they're the evil rudos.  Rage is the "goth rock monster" with the shinny leather pants. Hallowicked's intro I missed, but he's wearing a black version of one of the Halloween masks, a cooler and eviler looking one rather than the standard Jack O'Lantern design they usually have up on Highspots.  Slain is doing a zombie gimmick, though I don't really recall what his mask resembled.  Either Slain or Wicked has a pumpkin taped up which they had been using as a weapon in previous matches. Mister ZERO comes out, his gimmick is a middle management business man and his mask totally kicks ass.  It sort of looks like a payaso mask, minus the clown nose, with an added mustache and the truly revolutionary... COMBOVER! That's right, you heard me, a combover.  How fucking awesome is that?  Zero comes out with his giant 7-Eleven coffee cup and a news paper, he stands in the center of the ring as the Night Shift hit their pose which is all of them hanging upside down in the corner with their arms crossed like bats. Ultramantis is sort of doing the Kamen Rider bug/super hero gimmick and is one of the students.  Love Bug is I think another indy worker from the area who's not a student but has been doing shows with the group.  He sort of looks like a shorter and fatter Rhyno.  He's got a dancing gimmick and gets his team to dance.  The added a stip to the match which was if any of the men lost the fall, they'd have to wrestle in a dress on the next show, if
Bee lost, she had to unmask and if Trinity lost, she's have to wear a mask. This match got a lot of time, which is good because you've got 10 people in there, everyone got to do some stuff so it worked out well and was a good filler for the middle of the show. There was some good points and bad points, the good points being that we got to hear and interact with Mister ZERO, the bad points being that I had a hard time seeing parts of the match. The ZERO gimmick is truly hilarious. He spent parts of the match reading his paper in the corner, at one point someone in the crowd asked him for
part of the paper. When the guy told him "Hey, this is from June 7th" ZERO proclaimed "My secretary is in trouble now."  ZERO had a segment with Reckless which started out with ZERO telling him in didn't approve of Reckless' attire before they slapped and started out wrestling.  At one point, Reckless intentionally messes up the combover on the mask.  As someone who feels Mister ZERO's pain in the hair department, I couldn't let Reckless get away with messing up the combover and I had a truly inspired moment.  When ZERO tagged and was on the apron, I got is attention and
passed him a comb. The great part was when he took it, he saved it for later and ended up using it for a spot. On the technico side, Mantis stood out for some of his spots.  He pulled off a praying rope walk into a bounce off the ropes armdrag at one point and later in the match he pulled off a praying powerbomb which was either an underhook or a pyramid driver, I forget which.  For the most part he looked good with the spots he hit and I don't really recall him blowing anything bad.  For the most part, this was fine wrestling.  At one point, the rudos did the assisted abdominal stretch with them using me and some other people as an anchor to the hold ala ReDrug in ARSION.  The technicos answered back by doing the same on a figure four shortly after.  They did a spot where someone (either Mantis or Lovebug) gets put in a cross armbreaker by Slain, Hallowicked runs in a puts an armbar on the guy too, then the benches clear as the person in the middle gets put in two crossarm breakers, plus a figure four, with his partners then coming in and slapping holds on the opponents.  This ends up with everyone tied up except for Mister ZERO who ends up sitting down on the pile in the middle so he can read his paper.  This breaks down at one point with everyone brawling on different sides of the ring.  Reckless hit a dive on ourside on ZERO and then "punched" a fan, who may or may not have been worker Chef DZ Gillespe who totally no sold it.  With everyone fighting on the floor, two guys would go for finishes and get countered or saved by their partners.  Youth ended up in the ring with I think Hallowicked with Slain getting the Pumpkin from the corner.  Slain tries to nail Reckless who either ducks or has Quackenbush save him and Reckless hits Slain with the pumpkin who then ends up taking a top rope splash from Quackenbush to end the match.  The match went 35 minutes according to the announcements, but I don't really recall it dragging so it all and all it was a win.  As a result of the stips, Ichabod Slain has to wear a dress on the next show.

PP: Ray hit the big points and then some up there. Announced match time was 34:02 according to the ring announcer... while it felt every second of 34 minutes, it definitely served its purpose as everyone got a ton of time and the match never really dragged. This was like a DDT or Osaka match with the puro and the wacky gimmicks, all of which ruled. Mister ZERO'S appearance resulted in this massive dork-out moment for both me and Ray... I can't remember marking out for a worker's shtick like this since the Chicago Triplemania show in 1996 where La Parka was doing his thing live at the Amphitheater. FWIW the ZERO mask didn't remind me of the Payasos as much as the old Hampones (Hoodlums) gimmick in AAA... think gangsters ("Al Capone," "Nitti," "Goyo") with creepy human face-masks. Semantics aside, it's the coolest fucking gimmick in the world. ZERO works the crowd best out of the heel team and does it in such a way that it's impossible to boo the guy. Ray's moment of genius WRT the comb was a truly grand moment as there came a point in the match where ZERO knocked down someone on the opposite side, started to go for a move, then stopped so he could whip out the comb and freshen up. The finishing sequence is super-fun as it goes about 7 minutes with a four-way dive and a million near-falls until Quack puts Slain away with a frog splash for the finish.

INTERMISSION
RD: During the intermission, I end up getting a picture with Sumie Sakai, who I tower over, thus adding another picture to my collection of international workers I dwarf.  I also get her to sign a card which she signs in English letters and not Japanese.

PP: I also pop for a photo with Sakai as well as a JD program. I remember that Dan-mg went to at least two shows with Sakai on the card and try to picture what that photo-op would've looked like... I'm getting a "Rey Misterio Jr. on Lurch's shoulders" visual. Note to Dan-mg: please tell us you did this.

MATCH 4:  LEXIE FYFE vs. MERCEDES MARTINEZ
RD:  Lexie comes out in the Southern Heel mode and does a lot of running commentary during the match.  She does a bunch of complaining about hair pulls and stuff, I try to convince her to "not trust that no good Yankee referee".  I'm not really remembering much about this, but a heat wave and waiting five days to write the report will do that.  I seem to recall Mercedes doing a few of the spots from the first match, but her satellite  headscissors didn't come off as well on this time out.  The finish was Lexie hitting a powerbomb on Mercedes out of the corner, I think as a counter to the swinging DDT, when she hit the move, she cradled it into a pin with her feet on the ropes.

PP: Mercedes was in her second match of the night so I can forgive her for botching stuff here and there. This match was all about Lexie being the motormouth redneck heel as she was quite the female Iron Mike Sharpe during the match. We immediately fantasy book a mixed-tag rematch with Lexie and Jacey North as the evil Southerners against the "Freakin' Puerto Ricans" team of Don Montoya and Mercedes.

MATCH 5:  LITTLE JEANIE vs. SUMIE SAKAI
RD: There were some streamers on sail at the door, so I bought one for the intros.  My throw fills me with shame as I concentrated too much on making sure I didn't throw it as a giant wad of paper and thus got inexcusably bad distance on it.  Jeanie takes this out to the floor first and throws Sakai into a few sides of the arena and into the bleachers, I think cutting the back of her leg in the process.  This was fun as Sakai was awesome and Jeanie was holding up her end in this as well.  Jeanie would heel it up beat up Sakai on the ropes, which Sakai would later revenge with and count along with the referee as she's pulling Jeanie's hair with one hand, letting go with one and pulling with the other.   This was funny as soon as someone got a hold on someone, all five of the photographers at the show would run to a side of the ring to get pictures of it.  This was worth the trip alone. Sakai hit two huge top rope drop kicks in this, the first of them I think
ended up with Jeanie bumping the back of her neck on the bottom rope. Sakai ended up getting the win with a really quick and crisp moonsault.  Post match, Sakai gets the mic and thanks everyone and says she loves being in the US.  She was asking one of the photographers for helps with the words during this, but it was cool.

PP: I had no problem with my streamer, having recovered from the debacle at the Haas show. Sakai is absolutely amazing in person... she's a great athlete, but she also has this incredible Tajiri-like charisma that doesn't necessarily translate well on videotape but is clear as a bell live. She got an entire room full of people behind her against Jeannie without speaking a single word of english. I'm guessing this went about 12-15 minutes as Shun was at ringside and gave Sakai a "10 minutes gone" call near the end of the match. Jeannie looked fine here but really, this was the Sumie Sakai Show.

RD:  Post show we hang around waiting for our ride.  I go outside and catch some air after being in the building all that while.  A bunch of people where trying to get people to go the zoning meeting that Chikara ended up losing about running shows in the building, so I guess it will get interesting to see where they go from here.  I'm hoping they get something fixed as I did enjoy myself and the show was cheap, $5. The only drawback for me is the location as it was like 2 ½ hours to get to and from the show. A good time was had by all.

PP: This was fun as hell and it's a shame they lost their case with the zoning board. Hopefully they can find another building and restart. Postshow we watch Shun Yamaguchi and the other photographers get group shots of Sakai with the other girls on the card. Based on all the pics Shun took during the show and of Joanne while the card was ongoing, you have to think that booking Sakai was the smartest thing she could've possibly done if it meant the chance of getting some exposure across the pond as well as other joshi workers stopping by in the event they come over. As it stands I usually pick my spots when it comes to buying the weekly mags, but now I'll be buying the Gongs weekly until I see those K-Pro pics in there. We watch some of the workers leave and I am repulsed at the horrendous breach in kayfabe by one of them. Someone needs to tell "Brad" not to reveal his real name while he's in full gimmick. We wind up hitching a ride with Dani (JAPW photographer) and I eventually crawl through my door at 3 in the morning, where the dog drops her chewbone on my foot. *OW*