On paper, especially at the point when it happened, was just for the maniacs out there.
Kingston and Yehi were, in 2018, maybe the two most underappreciated wrestlers on the independents. There’s always like five to ten people you can say that about based on personal preference or what you think underrated really is, but it’s real hard to go back to 2018 and find two men who fit the bill more. Yehi, who has been kicked into the cold once again with EVOLVE’s fourth wave not really having a place for him and him not really fitting in anywhere else, and Eddie Kingston, who despite the fact that he continues to make the most out of any opportunity (many of which, in AAW, I have not written about for reasons you can easily dig up on cagematch), is years removed in either direction from something he can really sink his teeth into outside of AAW. It is borderline criminal to see where they were in 2018, relatively speaking.
All of that despite, as this match will attest to, both men being among the best wrestlers in the entire world.
To their immense credit, while this could have simply been some deep nerd bait limbwork sort of a match so as to satisfy the bevy of people who wanted to see it no matter what, it is also a lot more than that.
Yehi and Kingston absolutely give you and I the match we wanted, as the absolute freaks out there in the world, of course.
They are a perfect match for each other in this way, as everyone with a spreadsheet would have told you, with Yehi’s unorthodox attack and mat focus allowing Eddie Kingston to stand out not only as a tough guy brawler (to which Yehi can also stand with him), but also to put on yet another great understated selling performance in the first half off of a hurt back. Yehi doesn’t stay on it long enough to really force an all-time selling performance, and it isn’t as if we get to see all-time great knee seller Eddie Kingston in his greatest element, but he is still so good at this more basic idea. It isn’t quite that kind of understated Bret Hart back selling, but there is a real working class quality to it that I immediately recognize as genuine. Not glory boy selling, trying to show off and garner sympathy, but someone gutting out a small injury and trying to get through until the end of their shift.
It is not a major part of this match at all, in terms of what happens and why it happens and why the match unfolds and ends the way it does, but it is again something I find so impressive.
Beyond the stellar mechanics of the thing, the usual crispness, energy, and fire you tend to find from Kingston and Yehi both, it succeeds in the other ways too. Constructed well, and all of that, especially in how they build to the bigger strike exchanges in the back half and the way those escalate as well, but mostly I mean that this is also a mean god damned match if there ever was one.
They aren’t carving each other up out there or throwing objects into each other’s faces or gouging the eyes or anything, but there’s a real dislike here that always feels just barely under the surface. It’s not above water and in your face, but these are not opaque waters, and you can really see it. All the mean little look on their faces, mostly when they trade shots but not exclusively, and the way everything feels thrown with a little more force than you might see out of them otherwise (in Eddie’s case, this is maybe true, and in Yehi’s case, it is absolutely true). That escalation in strike exchanges I spoke of earlier also carries a certain meanness of spirit with it a well, as once Eddie takes the batting glove off, and the hateful feelings finally peak their head above water.
While Fred Yehi certainly puts them to good use, he simply cannot do it like the King does. Not only in that he is less inclined towards striking in general, especially when trying to win a match, but in that he gets less out of his anger than Eddie Kingston does. Yehi tries to drop bombs and get out of his comfort zone, but simply cannot succeed long term. It’s a fascinating situation to me, someone totally holding their own in a Styles Make Fights sort of a match, but totally unable to ever actually win. Eddie might be getting his ass kicked, but while Yehi tries to figure out something that might do it (including a genuinely killer Dragon Suplex for a shockingly great nearfall for that move in 2018), all Eddie really needs is one opening.
Kingston finally gets the distance, and lands the Backfist to the Future to win.
One of the year’s great hidden gems.
HANDWERK 