CHIKARA: Never compromise, not even in the face of Armageddon

[Postman Dave]

If you're like me, you're still trying to figure out exactly what in the blue heck happened at the end of last nights CHIKARA iPPV. For the uninformed, the show was brought to an abrupt halt when security dragged Eddie Kingston, Icarus & Bryce Remsburg from the ring, and destroyed the set. The scenes are said to have caused a mini riot involving fans in attendance obviously upset at seeing the show ended so unceremoniously.

To try and understand the whole situation, I'm gonna go through the background of the whole thing to try and gain some perspective. I may not know what's going on, but it's fun to speculate!

Origins

In January 2011, CHIKARA is bought by Worldwide Media Development Corporation:

Spoiler

Worldwide Media Development Corporation (WMDC) of Reseda, CA is proud to announce the acquisition of CHIKARA, Inc./Five Star Promotions of Philadelphia, PA, effective today. Robert Lippincott, Executive Director for WMDC finalized the agreement of sale through the assistance of Karen Wright, acting vice-president of acquisitions.

"Karen (Wright) and Anton (Frady) deserve all the credit for bringing this exciting property to Worldwide. After nine seasons of reinventing an entire genre from the bottom up, CHIKARA is the premiere brand in its field, and it's time for the rest of the world to find out why."

It is expected that some of the directors from CHIKARA/Five Star will remain on during the transitional period. "I understand that Dave Coulier has an office there," Lippincott remarked, "and I'd really look forward to doing lunch with him (laughs.)"

Wink Vavasseur had been sent into the company prior to the acquisition to act as an internal auditor. Upon the acquisition, Wink replaced Dieter Von Steigerwalt as Director of Fun. Amongst Wink's decrees in the last two years are the creation of the CHIKARA Grand Championship ("I want it. You want it. Corporate wants it. The world wants it.") and CHIKARAbermetrics (a system for picking teams)

Early 2013

Derek Sabato was bored. His current role in CHIKARA was as a liason to the GEKIDO, the latest group of upstarts to "invade" CHIKARA. With the group as good as disbanded by February though, Sabato found himself with a bit of free time, so decided to try and get in contact with his employers. Except he couldn't....

Spoiler

2/14/2013: To Mr. Conrad Vavasseur,
We have never formally met, but I’d like to introduce myself to you. My name is Derek Sabato and I work in various capacities for CHIKARA…a subsidiary of Worldwide Media Development Corporation.
My current position for CHIKARA is one of a business liaison to a group that does not seem to exist anymore. I was assigned this position by your son, Wink Vavasseur, a little under a year ago. I have also been injured on the job more than once, and am still awaiting compensation for this incident (video below.)
I now find myself with very little to do - my talents as a referee are no longer being utilized. So other than becoming a respected blogger within the industry, my skill set is not really being employed since your son’s surprising ascension to the role of Director here.
A fellow blogger recently called attention to a group called Condor Security, which I understand is owned by the same parent company as Worldwide Media Development Corporation…the same parent company where you serve as an executive. Men from this security organization have staffed CHIKARA events. Well, they did. Apparently not anymore.
Now, I’ve been a victim of conspiracy all throughout my life. I know there are people that like to see conspiracies even where there are none. Do I believe all the stuff I read online? No, of course not, I’m realistic. I like to get all the facts and hear different opinions before I form my own.
But getting facts about the Titor Conglomerate has proven almost impossible. And Worldwide Media Development Corporation? No matter what time of day or night I call their offices, I get the same recorded message and no one ever returns my calls. I’d love to speak to someone directly, but that doesn’t seem to be a realistic option.
So I’ll have to take this to a public forum if I want any answers to my questions. What is it exactly that Condor Security does for the Titor Conglomerate? There are some outrageous allegations out there about the group. How do you respond to them?
Why is it that there does not seem to be anyone working at Worldwide Media Development Corp? I’ve used Google Maps and I can’t even locate a possible office site for them. If you are the Executive Vice President of Acquisitions for Titor, then companies like these are under your purview, correct? That is exactly your responsibility if I understand your job title. The operation, or failure in operation of these companies can be traced back to your role at Titor, right?
I am not one to be silenced on anything. If you get a chance check out my Twitter (@DerekSabato) and you’ll see I bite my tongue on nothing. Looking forward to your statement on this matter.
Thanks,
Derek Sabato

Not long after, the blog was removed from the CHIKARA website and Sabato found himself on the unemployment line. It appears that whoever owns CHIKARA doesn't like questions being asked. This was backed up a few months later when this happened involving CHIKARA bloggers Vince Morales & Kevin Ford:

Spoiler

So this is crazy. I received a mysterious email two days ago from a gmx.com account with the subject "Three Answers for Vince" that read:

Hi there. I am offering you answers about anything CHIKARA related, public or not. Anything at all from the last 12 seasons. Send me a maximum of 3 questions in the next 6 days. I'll answer them.
I didn't know how to take it, really. It didn't seem real, but the wording of it did so I replied with three questions. In retrospect, I wish I had taken more time to craft them. Or even sent one at a time. There are so many questions I have about all things Chikara, but I had to pick just three. After much deliberation I settled on these three.

1. Besides the financial aspect, what did WMD hope to gain by acquiring Chikara?

2. Has the Eye of Tyr been used to control anyone (or anything) besides Delirious?

3. Why were the Swamp Monster and Lance Steel at TWGP13 at the exact time that Archibald Peck traveled through time?

I wanted to cover the biggest issues in Chikara right now which to me are Archibald Peck, WMD/Titor Conglomerate and the Eye of Tyr. Maybe I'd have been better off focusing on one, but one morsel of information is more than we have right now so I asked these three. I didn't know what I expected in return, but I can say that I was surprised (and a bit shocked) when I got this email in reply:

1) Worldwide Media Development Corp. appears to be nothing more than a shell corporation erected by the Titor Conglomerate.

2) Absolutely.

3) They seemed to be discussing the properties of an ever-ripe banana.
Shoot.

I feel like I blew my first question as I already knew that. I should have asked something about Titor. Or Condor Security. Or OSSWE. Or SOMETHING. I knew what I wanted to gain from this question, but I don't think I asked it correctly. They dodged me a bit, but still. Blew it.

The third one, again, I feel like I blew it. I knew that. Yes, the answered dodged my question. I didn't ask WHAT they were doing, I asked why, but still I feel like I screwed this up. I wanted to ask what Archie has been doing since Chikarasaurus Rex 2012 and why we haven't seen him. WHY DIDN'T I ASK THAT?

But the second one? Now that's intriguing. Is whoever recovered the Eye (possibly someone associated with Titor) controlling members of the Chikara roster? If so, who?

I want to attempt to send a follow-up email to this person, but I'm not sure if they will answer. They promised me three answers and they gave me three answers, but I'm not going to do that until I figure out what I should really be asking.

***UPDATE****

I received a tweet from Kevin Ford who says that he got the exact same email. Here were his questions and their answer:

So I got the exact same email you did. Here are the questions I asked:
1) Will the answer to the Mysterium P puzzle ever be revealed?
2) What was in the envelope Mike Quackenbush was handed at "The Shoulder of Pallas?"
3) Who was 17?
Now for #3 I kept it vague. I didn't necessarily want the idea, but moreso what his point was in general? Anyways, here were the responses I received:
1) Mysterium Populous was an overt homage to the concept of Publius Enigma that was tied to the Pink Floyd album "The Division Bell." Unlike the Enigma, the Mysterium was given a very specific timeframe to prevent it from going on indefinitely. There were 13 phases to the Mysterium, each shorter than the one before it, leading to a final phase with just one clue, and one possible answer. The person that correctly solved the Mysterium would have been awarded a prize of every single CHIKARA DVD produced up until the day the Mysterium was solved. It would have also led to the release of a 4 minute video that foreshadowed much of Season 12. On the 365th day of the Mysterium game, no person or group had even progressed to the third phase, leaving the vast majority of the puzzle unsolved. The failure of the fans to solve Mysterium Populous means the video has never, and will never be released.

2) Information collected by a third party on the Vavasseur family.

3) A bitter nobody that spent time training under Skayde.
His email answers a question that I was just curious about, a BIG question about what was in the envelope and that combined with the third one hint at who the sender may have been. I don't want to front him out in public, but I think he probably knows a LOT of holds.

Did you get an email? Check your spam folder just in case. If you did, send it to vintown@olewrestling.com and I can share it here.

***UPDATE 2****

I shared the questions portion of this post on the official Chikara 101 message board in hopes of find others with a similar experience. Since then I was banned and the thread has been deleted. Clearly, WMD/Titor does not like the questions we are asking.

Since this update posts mentioning our post or our banning have been deleted. Someone is getting annoyed.

***UPDATE 3***

I emailed the mysterious person a follow up:

My correspondence with you has gotten me banned from the Chikara101 forums which makes me believe you even more. Clearly you are saying things that the Titor Conglomerate don't want to be exposed. I am on your side and would like to help get the truth out. Let me know if there is any way that I can assist you.

Vince
And received this response:

You must realize how sensitive this is. There is more to come. Look for me on Sunday.

Both Vince and Kevin are now banned from the CHIKARA101 forums.

Mike Quackenbush

At the conclusion of CHIKARA's show at Wrestlecon, Quack received a message from a gentleman wearing a hat with the initials "NPA". One day later, Quack was fired from the company, and he removed all reference to CHIKARA from his Twitter account. All of a sudden, the guy who goes hand in hand with the company was gone, over a message in an envelope? What did it say? We know Titor Conglomerate don't like people knowing too much already, it appears that whether he wanted to or not, Quack now knew too much.

Archibald Peck

Let's go back to Archie Peck's debut match against Eddie Kingston. During the match, Peck was struck with a Backfist to the Future, as many of Kingston's opponents are. Except Archie didn't have the usual reaction. Rewind back to a blog by Archie back in 2011....

Spoiler

On 12 March 2011, CHIKARA’s now-Grand Champion, Eddie Kingston, backfisted me in my CHIKARA debut. Deep beneath the surface of the Earth, in my lair known as "Archie’s Bunker," I have mulled tirelessly over this footage, studying the fateful Backfist from every angle. Why, I even contacted the Abraham Zapruder family to inquire about alternate angles they may have happened to record. Yet, for all my efforts, I have yet to find any sign of foul play or tape-doctoring. To the scandalously nude eye, it appears I simply absorbed the blow and crumbled to the mat. But I remember something different altogether. They can never take my memory...

Upon impact with our brutish Grand Champion’s clenched mitt, I was instantaneously transported to a place I had never before seen. It took me a moment to gather my bountiful wits but, when I did, I realized I had found myself, of all places, at a CHIKARA event. As with any CHIKARA live event, a virtual smörgåsbord of merchandise was on display, the likes of which can be seen at http://www.chikarapro.com/store.shtml. Of all the wondrous items, one stood out among the rest. Rather than reading 2011 Update as I had expected, CHIKARA’s Annual Yearbook read 2015! I had been whisked to the future! In a stroke of genius, I simply inquired and the helpful, strawberry-haired expectant mother behind the table kindly fished one out.



When I woke up the next morning, adorned in a pair of my sleekest Calvin Kleins, back here in good ol’ 2011, I no longer had the magnificent almanac but I did remember much of its content. I knew that, if I issued an Open Challenge at "King Of Trios," Colt Cabana would answer. So, I did just that, studied in preparation for Colt Cabana, and soundly defeated him. Things continued in this manner for many months until the meddlesome hand of Hurricane Irene intervened by condensing CHIKARA’s Young Lions Cup from a two-day tournament to a one-day disaster. In losing to Tadasuke of Osaka Pro, the first deviation from what I knew to be the future took place and, once the space-time continuum has been breached, things can never be the same.

My life, in many ways, has been a downward spiral ever since. I have been defeated in CHIKARA competition on more than one occasion and have even resorted to consorting with a treacherous rabbit. My only respite has been the always-warm consolation of my dear Veronica. I fear, however, that, if my losing ways continue, even that will grow cold.

Archie has always been something of an oddball, so the time travel comments were mostly taken in jest.

Then, during CHIKARA's second iPPV, Archie's more aggressive form "Mixed Martial Archie" was taken to the back in the middle of a loser leaves town tag match. Later in the match, Normal Archie would return in place, but would still suffer the pinfall loss and be banned from CHIKARA. But things weren't that simple.

The following video will explain....

[video=youtube;djqqgSEoW9U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=djqqgSEoW9U[/video]

So to summarise, the Archie Peck seen on the balcony at Tag World Grand Prix following "his" match with Eddie Kingston is the Archie seen wondering the world following his loss last year, the same Archie who is still technically banned from CHIKARA.

The popular theory is that by failing to win YLC 2011, Archie Peck accidentally messed up the timeline and has been the cause of some of the stranger happenings over the last few year in CHIKARA.

Titor Conglomerate

So to bring our selves full circle, we return to the original acquisition of CHIKARA by Worldwide Media Development Corporation. The corps. website is limited in info to say the least but thanks to Sabato, we know they are owned by Titor Conglomerate. Titor also own Condor Security, the heavy's seen around CHKARA events for the last year. Thanks to the No Private Army (remember NPA from Quack?) blog (found here, we know that Condor are essentially hired muscle, carrying out the dirty work of higher ups at Titor. The NPA blog also makes references to time travel (see Archie Peck) and Titor Conglomerate share it's name with the surname of one John Titor, a name used on several message boards in the early 2000's, all claiming to have travelled back in time from 2036.

Aniversario: Never Compromise

We bring ourselves full circle to present time. At the end of the previous season, a videod conversation between Wink and his father Conrad was released, showing Conrad warning his son to stop screwing up.

At last nights iPPV, Derek Sabato stormed the ring and tweeted a picture of Conrad Vavasseur and the rest of the heads of Titor breaking ground in Elohim City. The previous altercation between Wink and his Dad, plus Titor's dislike of info being revealed led to Condor Security shutting down the show before the Grand Championship match between Eddie Kingston and Icarus could conclude.

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To summarise, what we know is this. Archibald Peck messed up the timeline in CHIKARA, and Titor Conglomerate don't want us to know something about them. Whatever their secret is, it's effected CHIKARA big time, as for the first time in it's history, the Podcast A-Go-Go appears to be missing it's Monday schedule, and all future CHIKARA events have now been cancelled, with Gran Akuma & Leonard F. Chikarason being the first two to confirm needing bookings now that they have a lot more free time.

Something is very wrong in the CHIKARA universe.

I used the following websites for reference:

http://www.wmdcorp.net/
http://chikaraspecial.tumblr.com/
http://olewrestling.com/
http://www.chikarapro.com/
http://noprivatearmy.blogspot.ca/
http://www.titorconglomerate.com/titor/team.html

 

[Castiel]

Whoa. Amazing article, brother! A lot of information here but still so confusing and so many unanswered questions remain... time traveling Archie obviously fucked things up but what's with the secretiveness of the higher ups? I think you've assembled the pieces of the puzzle needed but we're still missing the answer, what are they hiding?

 

[Fuji Vice]

That's some really in-depth analysis man, excellent work.

To start off, while reading a lot of the source material last night I picked up on both the Titor and Publius Enigma hoaxes, which took me way back to a much simpler time on the internet. As far as debunking those particular things, I won't bother because there's a multitude of others who have already done so. The real question is why those particular names seem so prominent? The obvious answer to be gleaned from this is that the entire story is a hoax (of course, it's wrestling) and that there are much more practical reasons for the "death" of Chikara. I felt I needed to get this out of the way before the speculative fun begins in earnest...

Spoiler

I believe it is now pretty well known that the reason for this going down is that Quack is trying to re-brand the company to save from losing half of its assets in his impending divorce.

So, with practicality aside, the real question then becomes..."what the fuck happened yesterday?". Clearly Wink did something very bad leading up to the Under the Hood show earlier this year, as Conrad appeared and berated him about being a screw up. This clearly held deeper meaning than just Wink being a screw up (although that's also the case given his idiotic CHIKARAbermetrics system). So, what exactly is it that Wink did?

Next is the year 2015, as referenced in Archie's blog post in regards to finding a Chikara yearbook from that year. In John Titor's old internet posts, he mentioned that a nuclear war would take place in 2015, one that would decimate the rest of the world and separate the US into five warring states. Just exactly how does this 2015 connection come into play, particularly when given Titor's old posts?

These are just a few of the questions I have, but one thing I think I've figured out is that there is still hope for Chikara. By harnessing time travelling Archie's powers, perhaps Quack and some others can also travel through time and effect enough changes to stop the situation that occurred yesterday from happening in the first place. Maybe the entire season will begin anew, and our formerly beloved heroes like Jigsaw and Eddie Kingston will no longer be dark reflections of their past selves? Only time, will tell, but one thing is for certain, the ride on the way to whatever happens next is going to be awesome.

 

[Castiel]

With the way things are going the connections to Titor's posts could be a Chikara civil war scenario, ever since the start of the season when they removed the Rudo/Technico separation on the roster page the battle lines have been severely blurred. As for the significance of 2015, while I'm sure it's a longshot, maybe that's how long the Chikara we know and love is expected to be gone until? Just spitballing here. Playing with time travel leaves so many possibilities, I absolutely love the theory of using time travel to fix it so that none of this ever happened in the future. Genius!

 

[Postman Dave]

Thanks for the responses guys, honestly there's so much potential material to go through you can end up down the rabbit hole pretty fast. A couple of other points that have been brought up are Tim Donst's strangely prophetic blog just before Aniversario (seriously, read that second to last paragraph), The Eye of Tyr's current whereabouts (see the "Three Questions for Vince" part, and Not A Space Monster's Twitter).

In fact, Not A Space Monster's Twitter should be required following right now.

https://twitter.com/regularhumanguy

 

[Postman Dave]

http://chikaralives.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/chikara-is-it-really-dead.pdf

A 76 page article that goes through literally EVERYTHING that has happened leading up to these events, required reading if you really wanna get involved in this whole "storyline"(?)

Also, notice one of the columns they reference at the end.

 

[Castiel]

Read a bit of that the other day, all of this is really interesting and it's amazing having all the information available to read and follow.

 

[Fuji Vice]

Also, notice one of the columns they reference at the end.

Let's hear it for Linebacker and Wrestling Punks....hip hip hooray!!

 

[Castiel]

Whoa, very cool stuff indeed!

The Oak stuff interests me, it's probably nothing honestly but it could raise the question just how many Archie's are there? Or is Oak simply meant to be Archie 2 but hidden under a mask like The Mysterious And Handsome Stranger but on a smaller scale? I can't help but feel one of the missed references here is Community with their multiple timeline storyline. I know that's something that's right up Chikara's alley and could've influenced them.

 

[Postman Dave]

So at last nights Kaiju Big Battel show, it was revealed that not only is Dr. Cube alive (long story.....), but he has possession of the Eye of Tyr!

Also, Not A Space Monster popped up on Twitter again last night saying "They have my father's eye".

Now who are "they" and how is Dr. Cube involved? And does this "fathers" business mean that whoever this is is the son of Tyr?

 

[Castiel]

I never thought I'd see either of those things again. More interested in this Not A Space Monster character now...

 

[Kross Rhodes]

I could never watch this shit. It's like trying to figure out LOST all over again! :

 

[Castiel]

The ever-thickening plot is like a gift that keeps giving. It's crazy and hard to follow but it's also half the fun trying to unravel the mystery!

 

[Castiel]

[video=youtube;MpVSQCpT4yQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpVSQCpT4yQ[/video]​

 

[Postman Dave]

Not sure what this represents as the wrestle factory is considered a separate entity to CHIKARA nowadays, but still, first Quack wrestling-related appearance in months.

EDIT: Holy shit, just saw CHIKARA in the end there.