My 5 Crazy Experiences That No Other Wrestling Fan Has Had

5. The Time When Mike Quackenbush Signed His Book... To My Mum

I first became aware of Chikara Pro in about 2005, maybe a little later. I fluked across the small Pennsylvania-based promotion whilst using Limewire (remember that?) to find matches from the TNA PPVs, Ring of Honor and Combat Zone Wrestling. My first exposure to Chikara was a match between Men @ Work (Mr ZERO and Shane Storm) going against the duo of Larry Sweet and The Sharecropper, who were representing Sweeney's group; Sweet 'N' Sour International. The match started with a promo taped in the restroom of some local hall and I immediately fell in love with it. The in-ring stuff wasn't as crisp as I was used to, having watched ROH, TNA and various matches from the Orient, but the characters brought the whole thing to life. I'm a big kid at heart and Chikara really caught my attention for how insane and wacky wrestling really could be. Guys like Larry Sweeney, Mr ZERO, Ultramantis Black, Crossbones, Eddie Kingston and Jolly Roger quickly became my favourite wrestlers on the planet €“ mostly for their passion and just how much they were enjoying themselves. I soon discovered that most of these guys were on MySpace and quickly made it my goal to add the entire Chikara roster. Most of them accepted my requests, and I started to brag to people that I had wrestlers as friends. The thing that caught me off guard though, was how few friends some of these wrestlers actually had €“ you look at Twitter and how many people follow wrestlers in this day and age €“ to see the Chikara guys with only a couple hundred friends, it was weird. But it also gave me a confidence to speak to them and I began having disjointed conversations with some of the wrestlers, asking questions and, in the case of Larry Sweeney, going as far as to make some fan art for him (it's the first and only time I've done it, I swear). But, to his credit, he went and used it as the header on his page for quite a while.

That was pretty cool, but the big thing that came from all of this was being able to talk to 'Lightning' Mike Quackenbush, the joint creator and promoter of Chikara, as well as head trainer for their Wrestle Factory. Through talking to him, I was able to learn about the rarely-seen Alligator Clutch, his tastes in music and was even able to purchase his autobiography, Headquarters (available through the Chikara website - chikarapro.com), and various bits of Chikara merchandise, including DVDs, posters, pin badges and trading cards. Pretty nifty for a guy living in England, where very few people had ever heard of Chikara at that time. Or, at least I thought it was nifty, until I discovered that €“ after paying Quack through my mum's Paypal account €“ he signed the book to her in great big letters with a permanent marker. That took the wind out of my sails somewhat..