This one’s on IWTV’s Best of C*4 Volume One compilation, if you’re like me and immediately ran to watch it once you found out that, yes, this actually happened.
Like with the El Generico match the previous year, this is not a fully realized Mike Bailey. He’s still a boy. He’s working in shorts. But he’s close enough to what he’ll become that an all time great can throw him into his match and it works. Perfect Eddie Kingston touring heel match, walking the line as well as possible so as to give Bailey something big while also not losing anything himself. He’s dismissive and has fun with the kid, because he’s not a threat. He turns it up here and there, pounds the hell out of Young Young Karate, but it never feels like it’s the best he can do.
And because I mean that in a kayfabe sort of a way, it totally works!
Because obviously, Eddie Kingston isn’t mailing it in. There’s Eddie matches I haven’t loved here and there, but he’s never felt like a dude mailing it in. He’s always there — like in this match — with enough little touches and really fun little moments that every match has something to it. A sense that he cared about this match, even if he didn’t kill himself in it or produce some kind of epic.
The sense that Eddie isn’t taking Bailey seriously and that he’s thrown off his guard is just enough to let Bailey come out of this feeling like he’s done something. Eddie begins to take him seriously more near the end, but while he’s not exactly flustered,he still doesn’t feel like he gets how special this kid is. One big thing isn’t going to do it, because Seedball keeps coming and coming, and surprising Eddie with fancier kicks or inventive (for 2012) twisting dives. Eddie never really gets going in the way that he does with matches he tends to win, and Bailey surprisingly chokes him out in a Triangle Choke for the win.
While this isn’t what you might go into it expecting, it’s impossible to imagine anyone being let down by this. Another early glimpse at how good Bailey can be, another great Eddie Kingston performance, and a textbook example of how to go about navigating a match and a situation like this.
The shame of this isn’t that it wasn’t some grand epic, the shame of this is more that this is the only singles match they’ve ever had.
An embarrassment to every US promoter in 2014-16 when Seedball was hot and available, and yet another embarrassment to every UK promoter over the last year.
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HANDWERK 