Eddie Kingston vs. Green Ant, CHIKARA Battle Not With Monsters (5/3/2013)

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.

***1/2

Eddie Kingston vs. Hallowicked, CHIKARA The Shoulder of Pallas (4/6/2013)

This was for CHIKARA’s Grand Championship.

These two had one of the best feuds of the year in 2007, but outside of the brief Incoherence vs. Roughnecks feud in 2008-9 (which focused much more on Brodie Lee vs. Hallowicked), they’ve barely touched since then. Kingston’s reinvention since then as the blue collar face of the company gives this an entirely new feeling, so it may as well be a first time ever match. The value of booking with even just a little care is that you can just throw this out in a semi-main on a big show without a ton of build, and it still feels like a big deal.

It helps that Eddie Kingston recently hurt his right hand and wrist and has a soft cast on too from injuring a tendon punching a mirror. Real relatable stuff, that CHIKARA adapted and turned into a bigger deal and part of the story of King slowly losing his way and being corrupted by the responsibility of the Grand Title. Either way, know that I love that shit. Read the masthead.

It’s definitely limited and a step or three behind their two excellent 2007 singles matches (Aniversario? and Chapter 11, if you’re interested) because he’s real incapacitated with only one hand. So much of Eddie Kingston’s game comes from being able to use the right hand. The slaps, chops, all of that that he just can’t do. This is almost definitely a better match if he’s 100% healthy, although it’s a far far different match, because Kingston goes with it. It’s the great thing about Eddie Kingston and part of why he feels realer than 99% of other wrestlers ever, because he rarely ever lies to you. If he does, it’s based in something real and done well enough that it feels completely genuine, which is good enough for a genre of entertainment based on lying in the first place. People know about the hand injury, people can see the cast on, it would be stupid NOT to do something with it.

Kingston just has the one hand, his non-dominant left, and it’s incredibly interesting to see him adapt, and impressive as hell to see how well he adapts. At this point, I don’t think you need me to tell you that Eddie Kingston is one of the best ever, but it’s such a remarkable performance. He throws shots from the left to little effect, and starts headbutting the chest and neck in positions when he’s otherwise slapping or chopping with the right. Really cool stuff. Something I love about a guy like Bret or Punk or Bryan or whoever is that there’s a reason for everything they seem to do. It’s always more stately and dignified than the stuff Eddie Kingston is doing here, but it works in a similar way, there’s always a thought put into and a reason behind the choices that he makes. Selling the for real injury isn’t all that hard, but Eddie makes a ton out of it, and they build up to Hallowicked finally going to the bad hand and wrist really well. It’s another of these face/face CHIKARA matches to deal with a similar theme of a known Eddie Kingston weakness that someone is initially unwilling to go after because it isn’t morally correct, before they get desperate when King starts beating their ass. It’s one of my favorite CHIKARA subgenres. This is one of the lesser entries into it, but it’s still a super interesting and endearing match.

In the end, Eddie is forced to use the fucked up hand. Without it, he loses the title that’s now pretty much consumed his entire life. He is CHIKARA, and as it starts to crumble, Eddie crumbles with it. Eddie’s capable of just exactly enough to hang on, hurling Hallowicked on his stem with a Backdrop Driver, and using the left hand for a Backfist to the Future, coming from behind Hallowicked and around his neck to hit from an unexpected angle for the win.

Really only the third best meeting between these two, but one of the more interesting Kingston performances in a career full of incredibly interesting performances.

***1/4

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Jigsaw, CHIKARA Aniversario: The Ogg & I (5/20/2012)

This was for Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship.

The best sort of an Eddie Kingston match, outside of a brawl, is an Eddie Kingston knee work match. This briefly teases out that it might be that, but disappointingly just becomes a bombfest. Luckily, Eddie Kingston is better at pacing out an epic title match bombfest than all but maybe five people in the world at this point, and five might be a reach. He does it while always selling the knee despite Jigsaw abandoning it, and always selling the big shots as well as anybody. Jigsaw’s also pretty alright here. Nothing he does is all that exceptional in a match that also involves Eddie Kingston, but he does his best to not let the match down. You can probably trim three to five off the back end of this, as it’s hard to buy Jigsaw as a credible challenger at this point in the reign or at this point in CHIKARA, but it’s never a match I’d call less than great, even stretched to its thinnest points.

Not the match you use to convince (as if you should have to?) anyone that Eddie Kingston is one of the greatest of all time, but the sort of match you use to display that Eddie Kingston makes every single match he’s in that much better.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Brodie Lee, CHIKARA It’s How You Play The Game (3/25/2012)

This was for Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship title.

The name of the show is fitting in a way CHIKARA’s media themed shows rarely are, as this is Brodie’s last night in town, soon to depart for developmental. As such, he obviously won’t be winning the title, and it puts the slightest pall over the proceedings. Fortunately, it’s Eddie Kingston vs. Brodie Lee. This is both a must-see slugfest between arguably the two best heavyweights in independent wrestling at this point and a first time match with a ton of history and build up in CHIKARA, from their time together in the Roughnecks and Brodie’s gripe about having to leave the 12 Large Summit with an injury.

This is hurt, to some extent, by the atmosphere. I say that as a former long time and once-devoted CHIKARA fan. It’s the sort of match that deserved the Arena, or the New York venue. It’s not a church basement sort of a match. But, I get the feeling that this came about earlier than expected because of Brodie’s departure, and this show was booked. Again, you work with the tools you have.

Ultimately, that doesn’t matter all that match. None of that does. It’s Eddie Kingston vs. Brodie Lee, and while there are maybe contributing factors into it not being some absolute barnburner all time war, it still absolutely whips ass. Brodie Lee is the best big man of his generation and delivers a phenomenal beating. While CHIKARA commentary or story would never acknowledge something so real and something that isn’t some intricate comic book ass fifteen year backstory laden story of their own making, the two men in the match acknowledge and work to what’s actually going on. Brodie taunts Eddie and the fans about where he’s going. Eddie pisses him off by derisively calling him “entertainer”. Brodie’s mean as hell, he has a perfect right hand uppercut, but he gets a lot of simple stomping and dropping limbs across Eddie’s body too. It’s not as gutsy or emotional as his work selling a leg, but Kingston puts forth a great exhibition on how someone should sell an attack on the chest. Always wheezing, rolling away for space, rolling out over the apron like he might throw up. Another perfect Eddie Kingston selling performance in a much more low key sort of way.

They turn it up, and it’s good. It’s less interesting to me than the first half of the match, but that’s not an insult to the work they’re doing. Brodie lands a lot of great boots, Eddie dumps him on his head and swings for the fences. There’s maybe a thing or three too many at points. As rock solid as all the work is, it’s still a little hard to buy into certain things here, given everything we already know going in. Eddie eventually topples the Big Rig and hits a northern Sliding D for the win, lacking some of the punch and bombast of the regular version.

While it’s hardly the epic it could be, I cannot imagine someone not leaving this at least satiated to some extent. It’s a very satisfying pocket defense, great smaller show stuff. There’s a bully and the bully eventually fucks around and finds out. Not quite a pay per view level epic, but a great television main event. A heated early defense in a long reign, and as fitting an end as there could be to Brodie’s CHIKARA tenure given the departure of his greatest rival and his original running buddies. Perhaps a novelty to newer fans, and one absolutely worth seeking out.

***1/4

Eddie Kingston vs. Mike Quackenbush, CHIKARA High Noon (11/13/2011)

(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.

****

 

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Sara Del Rey, CHIKARA The Great Escape (7/28/2012)

This was for Eddie Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship title.

I didn’t intend on writing about this here. Really didn’t, hand to God. Some reviews go on a forum, some go on the blog. Usually length has something to do with it, but I try to put the stuff that matters to me or that gets something out of me up here, and not a lot of the 2012 CHIKARA stuff I’ve been watching has achieved that. To be honest, none of it has. Eddie Kingston’s been one of the only good things in the company at this point, and even he’s felt somewhat diminished in the hangover of one of the most emotional title wins of all time at HIGH NOON the previous year. Still, he feels like a star on the level that nobody else in CHIKARA really does anymore outside of Mike Quackenbush, and outside of his opponent here.

On that note, this is Sara Del Rey’s last weekend in CHIKARA. It’s not her last match in the company for some reason, and it’s not her last independent match (and match period) as ROH wasted her yet again on a mixed tag team popcorn match teaming with Eddie Edwards against Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis. That was a decent little match and a fun watch, but this is the one that feels like a culmination of everything she’s ever done. Sara Del Rey is the ultimate case of someone so far ahead of their time that it became a detriment. It obviously wasn’t entirely true all of the time, as there’s so much SHIMMER I haven’t seen, but for years whenever she fought another woman, Sara Del Rey seemed so far above everyone else she was wrestling. There wasn’t much debate about who the best womens wrestler on the indies was, because everyone knew. There were women around her who came close, and a few of the two thousand Daizee Haze singles matches were actually very good, but she’s someone who really could have been so much more if she came along five years later. A remarkable skillset as her better work showed, but as a result of the times and places save for the last year or so of her career when CHIKARA finally put her under the spotlight, she doesn’t have the resume that her skillset suggests she ought to.

Save for a very entertaining run through the 2008 Ted Petty Invitational, CHIKARA was the only place that really let Sara Del Rey wrestle her actual peers. It didn’t always turn out great, due to so much of that being in the BDK storyline and having to team with a sickly seeming Daizee Haze, or having the less than stellar opponents the crop up here and there in a fed/training school hybrid, or just the sorts of weird booking calls that handcuff people in CHIKARA from time to time. There was always something there though, and over the year coming into this, she was finally cut loose and allowed to work. She got to face and defeat Claudio Castagnoli, El Generico, Aja Kong, Meiko Satomura, and was the survivor of the 2011 Torneo Cibernetico, and every time she had a real chance, it delivered.

So, even if we only had this one final expression of what she could really do in a main event title match, they made the absolute most of it. Eddie Kingston’s had some fun title defenses, but to some extent, they all felt somewhat restrained. Eddie Kingston is great enough at all the fun little things as well as the big dramatic gestures that just about anything he touches and gets to control is going to deliver, but they were delivering in small ways, and felt more like great smaller matches that happened to be for a title.

This is an equally small show as any of them, but this is a big match effort. It’s one of the best examples in independent wrestling history of gigantic matches in small rooms. They had twenty plus minutes and they used it nearly perfectly. Sara outwrestles Kingston at the start and seizes upon his hesitancy to really lay it in by beating the crap out of him once she notices it. Eddie has a hurt right shoulder, and Sara goes after it when she needs to really make a point. She shit talks him, repeatedly asking if he thinks she’s joking now after an offhand comment Eddie makes after one shot. As you would have come to expect with any familiarity towards his work, Eddie’s so good at facially selling his frustration with not being able to do better, especially when Sara stomps in at the shoulder. Like always with King, he seems as mad at himself as he is at anything outside of himself.

He turns it up a little to do better, working the neck after a rare knee trembler off the middle rope. He returns every single favor with a receipt, and gets nastier and nastier. Eddie keeps selling the arm in little ways, and Sara goes after it whenever she needs an opening, and has to go there to make her initial comeback. They defy the setting and manage several really really big nearfalls, as Sara struggles for things and gets them later on for these select nearfalls that I completely bit on. I don’t bite on nearfalls that happen in matches I’m watching live, but these two got me to do it on a match that’s seven years old and change. It’s not just because of what happened in the match, so much as it is the retroactive frustration with a scene that so often failed to properly utilize such a remarkable talent, and the bittersweet joy of seeing her finally achieve something like this when the clock was seconds away from midnight, but I wanted this for Sara Del Rey so bad. I didn’t go into the match expecting a whole lot, but they absolutely got me. They completely got me, and I don’t know why I’m surprised that Eddie Kingston vs. Sara Del Rey under these circumstances got me like this.

Of course, that feel good moment doesn’t happen. It’s not just yet time for CHIKARA’s first female Grand Champion. Like Moses, Sara doesn’t get to enter the promised land, just to show the path and to guide everyone else there. Eddie had been denied these kinds of moments for years, and while he doesn’t appear to take any real glee in denying them to others now, he’s certainly not just letting go of it as he grows more and more used to actually being on top. Eddie guts it out through the minor injury and hits a few Backfists to the Future, with the busted arm lessening the impact so it takes more. He lands one to the back of the damaged neck at the end, and then disappointingly gets a Northern Sliding D to win. Not a horrible finishing move, but the match had worked itself to the point of having earned something more, so it felt abrupt in the moment. A real jarring and sudden loss. Maybe that was the point.

Incredible match. Sara Del Rey’s finest hour, one of Eddie Kingston’s all around best performances, and a really special match. One of the best intergender matches ever, and one of the last things CHIKARA ever did that really grabbed me like this. Eddie has a real long run with the title as its first champion, but if there was ever a time for a “thank you” win, it was here. Eddie Kingston doesn’t do happy endings though, if not on the way up, than certainly not when he’s actually on top.

One of the most gripping matches I’ve seen recently. Must see stuff.

****