Obviously, this match fucks.
Eddie Kingston is one of maybe a literal handful of wrestlers who you can call the best wrestler in the world and not have me dispute it in any strong kind of a way. Garrini isn’t quite that, but he is one of the most purely watchable wrestlers in the world. It’s a quality both wrestlers possess in spades, the ability for me to see their name attached to a show and wanting to see it on that alone, often times with the opponent not mattering quite so much.
On paper, it’s the sort of match that’s just too big to fail.
In reality, it’s not everything I had imagined, or maybe all that it could be.
(of course, this is the nature of imagination.)
The ideal nature of the thing is King either working strongly from underneath or turning back into that old bully against Dom. Instead, this feels much more consciously like a Great Match, and a more even display. Not a match without friction, but one that never quite seems to have the friction one thinks of when seeing this match on paper. Something about it never totally feels correct as a match between two heroes, although given Eddie’s status amongst independent fans (especially in AIW), it’s hard to say if there was any other way this could have gone in 2021. In general, it feels like a match that spends its time reaching out for something just out of reach. A finger or two on it at times, nearly in hand at a few others, but a thing never entirely grabbed onto and pulled to the surface.
It’s a testament to the greatness of Kingston and Garrini both that this is as great as it is anyways.
What they have to offer is a big meathead match that isn’t quite dumb, but that retains all the hallmarks of that kind of a style. An increasing hostility. Big nasty throws. Awesome strikes in all forms, often exchanged between the two in both big and small doses, and modified in all sorts of ways. As always, it’s the sort of match made or broken by the little things in between those big moments. It’s the way they react both to things about to happen by fighting like mad, and the way that they react to things that have just happened, and maybe nobody alive has a better grasp on that than Eddie Kingston. From little stumbles to the failed attempts at fighting spirit moments to force a more human struggle into a match like this, he once again makes something work by eschewing any notions of being larger than life in favor of being as true to life as humanly possible.
Garrini isn’t quite Eddie Kingston in this regard, but what he brings to this are a match full of great little bumps and sells on things. Garrini can’t bring the emotional heft that Eddie Kingston can (few can), but he’s so impressive in this match at portraying himself as a dead weight. The way he bumps at just the exact right angle late in the match on a Saito Suplex is specifically just so perfect and adds a certain something to this match. The way Garrini takes things early on is markedly different from how he takes them later on.
Between the actions and reactions of both men in big and little ways, there’s a struggle to the proceedings here if nothing else. It’s not quite to the level that one may have imagined, but by the time the match draws to a conclusion, it’s one they find all the same.
In the end, Dom simply lacks the offensive arsenal that Kingston has. He lacks any one absolute kill move, whereas Eddie has four or five things he can use to put somebody down. Garrini pushes and presses, survives a few of them, but the match moves to a point at the end where Garrini has obviously lost. King just has to find the right set of things in a row to finally dull the lights just enough. Dom survives a few real gross throws, but three Backfists to the Future in a row finally put him down. An obvious result, but done in such a way that Garrini at least isn’t any lesser for it.
Not my favorite sort of a match, but one filled with enough of the little things that tie matches like these together to make it undeniable in spite of that.
HANDWERK 