This was for Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship.
In an interview before his match with an embarrassingly Q-pilled NXT referee in 2008, Eddie Kingston said that he’s a man who needs a war, a thing to go after and devote himself to trying to tear down. It was Chris Hero, it was all these veterans, it was Hallowicked, it became the BDK and ROH and Kevin Steen and all these other enemies for a long time, and for a long time, his war was fought against people who everyone wanted to see Eddie Kingston wage war against. By this point, all of those enemies are gone. CHIKARA beat back the BDK, they beat back ROH, he dethroned Quackenbush as the #1 guy when he won the title. The instinct doesn’t go away when the war is won. A guy like Eddie Kingston needs an enemy, and should they stop presenting themselves, he’s going to find a way to create one.
Inching closer towards his year and a half mark as CHIKARA’s inaugural champion, Eddie Kingston has started to become meaner and angrier and a much more desperate wrestler. Most of that comes as a result of the rise of Green Ant, and repeated “NEXT WORLD CHAMP” type reactions to the kid, giving Eddie Kingston just enough of a reason to make this more than it ever had to be.
The match itself is tremendous, one of the most underrated matches of the decade. I can see how many people would be confused though, as this show is in the CWF-MA venue, and the fact that they manages to have a gritty, intense, and compelling title match main event in only fourteen (14) minutes and not forty and an hour and forty is enough to cause some brains to short circuit upon realizing such a thing was actually possible. Best to just not speak of it. I get it.
Eddie still has a bad hand, but with a full-hand Copperfit glove on the right hand, it’s not a major deal. Eddie still doesn’t use it as much as he might otherwise, but he can use it now. It’s not a debilitating injury. The match still plays with the idea solely through the idea of the glove and Eddie having to parse out when to use the hand, but the major focus is actually Eddie’s knee. It’s a great choice, both because of all the history with Eddie Kingston’s historically bad leg, but also because Eddie is one of the best knee sellers in the history of wrestling. Any match that allows him to show this off is a far far better match for making the decision.
It’s hard to say any one Eddie Kingston leg selling performance is THE best, but this belongs up there with the best of them. All the stuff you want and expect, but there’s also a blowaway little thing where Green Ant shoves him back from the apron when Eddie is in the ring, and Eddie crumbles down just off the step back, because logically the pressure on the leg would now be different and that’s the sort of thing someone with a hurt leg understands. Some people sell a limb like they grew up watching pro wrestlers sell a limb, and some people sell a limb like they grew up watching real people have a bad knee or some home from a long shift hurt, if not having experienced it themselves. Eddie Kingston’s selling has always felt far more like the latter, and it’s what’s made him the best at it.
Just as impressive is how well they walk the line. Eddie Kingston isn’t a full on villain yet, but the fun is in the slow drift towards that. We never totally got it again in CHIKARA while he was champion, sadly, but he’s so great at peppering in little touches. A choke to keep Green Ant in the corner, aiming for a count out, these little cut offs that always feel JUST a little more mean spirited than the moment calls for. He reaches for an eye at an especially desperate moment. And yet, these are just small moments in a match where Kingston is otherwise majorly behind the eight ball and dealing with two different injuries. It’s a hard thing to get right, one that few others could. The challenge isn’t just to sell the leg well, it’s to sell the leg in sympathetic ways while also having these moments of desperation. If someone was to switch between ideas, it wouldn’t work half as well, but what Eddie Kingston is able to do is to hold them both at once, perfectly balanced in each hand.
The longer it lasts, the desperation turns to anger, and Green Ant starts to get really hurt. To his end, the selling is outstanding. Nothing quite so dramatic and grimy as Eddie Kingston’s leg selling, but sympathetic and energetic. It’s very easy to want to see him succeed, even against a guy like Kingston. The benefit of Eddie walking the line in the way he does, but something that also would have failed if Green Ant wasn’t so good at it. Green Ant pushes Eddie go reach further and further, and always in ways that make Eddie seem worse and make Green Ant seem tougher. A Powerbomb on the floor is especially brutal, leading to the big near count out, which CHIKARA once again does better than any other company with regularity. One Backfist to the Future doesn’t work, but King is finally able to shut down the kid with a second for the win.
One of the sleeper matches of the decade, which should be talked about in much fonder terms than it is. Alternately, I would settle for people outside of one or two others talking about it at all. Green Ant is perfect. Eddie Kingston is even better. An interesting story told in an even more interesting way in a stunningly efficient package.
I’ve enjoyed making people mad online by saying this is actually the best title match to happen in the CWF Mid Atlantic Sportatorium in the 2010s. I don’t actually believe that . You can calm down.
It’s only the third best one.
HANDWERK 