Journey into Chikara on Wednesdays, As If That Day Wasn't Already Packed

It's coming... Graphics via ChikaraPro.com

Wednesday nights are the new it-night for pro wrestling. On WWE Network, one can find NXT, where favorites like Bayley, Samoa Joe, and Finn Bálor can be found. Destination America has a doubleheader of pro wrestling programming spanning three hours, one of Ring of Honor and two for TNA Impact. And the El Rey Network brings the world Lucha Underground with its fantastical take on episodic wrestling, lucha libre-style, with heavy elements of science fiction and primetime drama. And now, Chikara will enter the fray via its Chikaratopia streaming service and its YouTube channel.

The show will be called Journey into Chikara, and it will air live at 7 PM on Wednesday for a limited six week run. The powers that be have made it clear this is an experiment, but an experiment in what is a mystery. The rest of the project has been shrouded in secrecy. Will it be a live wrestling show featuring matches? Will it be a glorified Podcast-a-Go-Go featuring live analysis over taped footage? Is it going to be a riff on Tuesday Night Titans? None of those turns would really surprise me.

However, the viewing public will not have long to wait. The six-week trial period begins on Wednesday, July 29. Either way, it is an exciting time for Chikara fans. The promotion has always felt like it would play well in a serialized medium, and Lucha Underground has proven that a promotion with fantastical story elements and characters can play well on a week-to-week basis. Either way, this project is interesting, and it will be worth taking a gander at. And with it airing at 7 PM, it at least will have the common courtesy not to disrupt the rest of the night's wrestling action. For the first two weeks of the show's run, one could conceivably watch wrestling wall to wall from 7 PM through to 1 AM with the aid of DVR and video on demand. Forget Mondays. Wednesdays are where it's at.