(ANOTHER DISCLAIMER: nothing I say here should be read as praise for Mike Quackenbush the person. This is going to be an overwhelmingly positive review, so let’s get it out of the way very early on. Fuck him. It doesn’t erase a remarkable body of work, and while I’m not ever going to tell someone to go out of their way to watch someone’s work if it makes them uncomfortable, this is perhaps the Quackenbush matches that holds up the best out of all of them because of the result. Again though, not praise for anything but the professional work. If that’s a problem, x out of this one, it’s fine. I’m not upset, it’s a valid thing to do. You might be a little bummed about the 2011 YEAR IN LISTS too because he had a hell of a year, but also that’s just gonna be like a thing this decade when the British scene gains more and more prominence in the middle of the decade. I don’t know what to do about that. Sorry.)
This was the finals of the 12 Large Summit and the inaugural match for the CHIKARA Grand Championship.
Before watching this, one should watch The Eddie Kingston Promo. THE Eddie Kingston promo. It’s the realest, rawest, and most emotional piece ever put out by a guy renowned for cutting real, raw, and emotional promos. It’s one of three to five promos that I would call the best of the decade. In the right frame of mind, you could tell me it’s the best promo of all time. No argument. It’s that good.
The idea of a “money promo” is sort of lost on people of my generation. It’s a cool concept, the whole “talk them into the arenas” thing, but I never really felt promos like that. I’ve been brought to arenas by angles that made me want to see something. I bought a ticket to my first ROH show because I wanted to see CM Punk murder Jimmy Rave in a steel cage, etc. Promos have never really done that for me. I had fallen out of CHIKARA over the last year or two, between moving two states over, a brief drug addiction, not having a great computer or internet connection or money for DVDs like I did as a teenager, throwing myself into college, tutoring, work, all of the things that get in the way of tertiary parts of a hobby. But, I saw this and I needed to see Eddie Kingston do this thing.
I bought the show because of this promo.
It’s an important match, to say the least. It’s the biggest match in CHIKARA history, as its longest delayed major singles match, the first match for the debuting singles title, the finals of the most important tournament CHIKARA ever ran, *and* the main event of the company’s first ever iPPV. It’s so overwhelmingly important that “payoff of a years long redemption story for the company’s all time greatest hero” isn’t a guaranteed number one reason. That is still a hell of a reason though. Having it come against Quackenbush is maybe the greatest little touch in all of this. Eddie Kingston could have done this by finally overcoming Claudio Castagnoli (and was maybe supposed to?) or another student, but it’s the ultimate validation to instead have it come not only against his trainer, but against this guy, this monolith of what CHIKARA is, this monument to How Things Are Supposed To Be Done. Bryan is gone, Hero is gone(ish), all these people are gone, and Mike Quackenbush is all that’s left of the now-old unemotional technical genius archetype that used to be the trademark of all the old kings. It’s always been the contrast to the wild emotionality of Eddie Kingston. Every outburst, turn, bender, and step over the line Eddie’s done in and/or around CHIKARA has stood out in contrast to the calm consistency of guys like Quackenbush, Castagnoli, and Hero atop the promotion in the past. If this is Eddie Kingston’s official and formal ascent to that position, it’s also Quackenbush formally becoming the last of a dying breed himself. This match is the closest thing we ever had to a real and proper changing of the guard match from style to style and era to era, even if that change already happened (I would put the marker down here at the 2011 BOLA, for the main event, Generico finally beating Claudio, and the Kings putting the Young Bucks over).
It especially stands out as such because of how literally they take that, and how literally they take the styles clash. Each man has a definitive style they want to wrestle and while they are both completely capable of meeting in the middle, the most interesting approach is to make the subtext the actual text. The best part of the match for me might be the first minute, where Quack casually tries to go into his usual wristlocks and Eddie immediately asserts himself with an elbow out the first time and a chop out the second. The trademark level head allows Quackenbush to keep at it, but when Eddie’s leg gives out running off the ropes, Quackenbush wastes no time getting serious. It’s a major strength that they not only take no more than a minute or two to really get into the meat of the thing, but also that it’s a moment with real weight behind it if someone’s been following along.
A month ago, Mike Quackenbush fought Sara Del Rey in the de facto semi finals. Sara had no history of leg injuries, and Quackenbush similarly made a decision early on to target the knee, stuck with it, and won as a result. Eddie Kingston has a history of knee problems. They’ve cost him against Castagnoli. They’ve cost him against Danielson. They’ve cost him a lot of times in a lot of matches, it’s not just about these losses to wrestlers like Mike Quackenbush, but it’s also a lot about this familiar situation coming around again, now with a little more recent history to hang over it. Of course, Eddie Kingston’s selling is terrific. I’ll say it until people accept it as a truism, Eddie Kingston is the best knee seller of his generation. I only fail to call him the best knee seller of all time because Toshiaki Kawada was a little better, and he was the best wrestler of an entire decade. Eddie is so good at this. All the little touches, all the big touches. I wrote about Moxley vs. Regal that aired a week before this that Moxley’s arm selling felt real because at every point that a pro wrestler might do something minor because it’s how you do a thing, Moxley would do it in a way that a man with one arm would do it. Eddie Kingston is the same way with the leg, and he succeeds for all the same reasons, because he feels realer than everything else around him.
Just as much credit belongs with Quackenbush for how great this match is. I know that’s…you know, whatever. Feel how you feel, it’s all valid. Being a piece of shit doesn’t erase the work done, all of that, it’s not a conversation I feel the need to put into print here, so I think we can leave it there and in the disclaimer. But he’s so great here. The little facial tics reacting to not only not being the firm favorite, but a crowd and the increasing mass at ringside, mostly students of his, all being 100% against him for any number of reasons. The mechanical work itself. He also gets meaner and meaner, not just about the hurt knee, but in general. He goes to the eyes at a point! It’s perfect for Eddie’s big moment, validating every point he ever made about CHIKARA’s superheroes/Super Friends.
It’s a fascinating performance that not only takes him further than he’s ever gone as a character, elevating the situation beyond what it already was, but turns him into a representation of something else. An old order to be torn down, this symbol of everything Eddie still has to get past and overcome. I think this match ages incredibly no matter what, but with everything that’s gone on in 2020, it’s the aspect of this match that ages the best. It would be one thing for me to hold this up given what’s gone on, but with the match turning Quackenbush into a monolith to be torn down, it’s entirely possible that for some people, this might be an even better match now because of it. I don’t know. It didn’t factor into the latest viewing of this classic, but I’m not you. Give it a shot.
The match, essentially, is Mike Quackenbush trying to plug a damn. He can’t let Eddie get moving and do Eddie Kingston stuff. Quackenbush can win in his match, and absolutely cannot win in Eddie Kingston’s match. Once the dam breaks, he’s fucked, and he knows it. When it breaks open finally, the match is over within a minute. It’s incredibly cool to see how totally correct that little estimation is. It’s a little touch that, in the background of Eddie Kingston’s crowning moment, puts Quackenbush over as this old little genius who had the complete right read on a situation. Eddie does too though, even if he has to make a concession to the old ways just this once. Eddie knocks Quackenbush off the top rope near the end with a Backfist to the Future to the legs. It’s a magnificent bump by Quackenbush, and while he’s not quite Eddie, he does a nice little job selling the damage to the leg. It’s the opening Eddie needs to begin to unload, and he does. It’s a concession to every complaint about Eddie never stopping to think, but a concession ultimately doesn’t mean shit if Eddie wins anyways.
A barrage of suplexes leads to two Backfists to the Future in a row, and Eddie Kingston wins the 12 Large Summit, the Grand Championship, and so much more than that which cannot be summed up within a trophy or a belt.
It’s the emotional high point of the entire company. It is the long long long overdue catharsis for one of independent wrestling’s all time great characters and heroes. It’s a match that you could realistically call the best singles match in company history. I wouldn’t, this is a Fire Ant vs. Vin Gerard loyalist blog (and Kingston/Castagnoli III in 2009 beyond that too), but it’s the sort of thing someone could say to me and I wouldn’t argue with it or be mad at all. It’s a completely logical thing to say and to believe in. Beyond what it means, it’s also just an incredibly tight match. It’s among the most efficient epics in the history of U.S. independent wrestling. It’s pared down and austere as hell (like most of the tournament, which is SO cool to have reflected in the finals), but it’s all great — every goddamned second — so it doesn’t matter. There is a point to to everything that they do, everything in the match matters, and there is stunningly little fit on it. Every piece of this matters and has value. It matters, it’s perfectly constructed, and beyond that, it feels good as hell.
This match is both great and Important, and you should absolutely make the time for it if you haven’t yet somehow.
****
HANDWERK 