Eddie Kingston vs. Anthony Henry, IWA-MS Ted Petty Invitational 2018 Night One (9/21/2018)

This was a 1st Round match in the 2018 Ted Petty Invitational tournament.

Here we have a match with a few things to like a lot.

First, the venue.

IWA Mid-South has been finding new charmingly low-down and filthy venues for two decades at this point, and this basketball barn in Indianapolis is another welcome addition to the collection. The white paint on the wooden walls, the exposed wood ceiling structure, the hoops set up, the fact that — and this is crucial and really the IWA Mid-South specialty — that it is a reasonably sized independent wrestling venue that this company specifically just cannot fill, giving it that classic IWA emptiness that really lets you take everything in.

The second thing to love is that, shock of all shocks, Eddie Kingston vs. Anthony Henry is a pretty great wrestling match also.

Certainly, it is not the most in-your-face obviously great match that they could have, these are two wrestlers who have a real proper epic in them. Instead, it is the sort of match that guys with some experience in larger and more noteworthy promotions, to say the least, probably should have in a barn for IWA Mid-South in 2018. Instead of the bombast (mostly, of course, Henry is still a Davey Richards fan at heart, and it peeks its way through a few times unfortunately, including a decidedly not great fighting spirit bit in the finish where he no-sells two Backfists to the Future before being knocked out by a third to the back of the head in something that feels both unearned and like the finish of another entirely different match between the two), this is a much more grounded match, both literally and then also figuratively, one of those more guttural and dirty feeling Kingston matches from the back half of the decade.

Additionally, and maybe most importantly, this also has the benefit of being an Eddie Kingston Knee Match, and there are few things in wrestling better than that.

Second to only Toshiaki Kawada, Kingston is maybe the best knee seller in the history of pro wrestling, and while that case isn’t made by a 2018 IWA Mid-South match, it’s yet another example of why. It’s not just limping and staggering, it’s everything. The way he gets into it is even unique, going out after an early grappling run leads to a Henry knee bar and adjusting, always with his back to the ring to try and protect it from sight, if at all possible. Henry prefers his striking and his bombs, so the match is never one hundred percent about the leg, but Eddie also takes great pains to never forget it, and more importantly, to never allow you to forget it.

Kingston’s every movement feels painful, even if that pain is more of a dull ache and a nagging sort of a thing than something leaving him immobile and robbing him of any chance. In a way, I prefer that more, this minor hindrance he has to gut through. Even in a smaller dose, Kingston again comes at it in a way few others even consider, not just getting the nuts and bolts elements of the thing right, but also always adding in this other element to his selling, annoyed with his body for betraying him. Even in a match where he always feels like the better wrestler/fighter and still goes on to win, that annoyance is still there, made even more interesting because of that, feeling less like something to be apoplectic about, and more like a fly that got into the house that he just can’t seem to track down. It’s not as dramatic as other big Eddie leg selling performances, but as a result, arguably, it’s one of his more human ones ever.

It’s not an exceptionally flashy match, far more of a show of more basic ideas, but when you have two wrestlers with such a command of all of those ideas, that doesn’t matter one bit.

The exact match people who will seek it out will enjoy.

***

 

Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston, CZW Out With The Old, In With The New (4/7/2007)

Commissions continue, this time from Eamonn. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

This was a Loser Leaves CZW match.

It is the end of one of the great feuds in wrestling history, or at least the main branch of it. They will have another match in IWA Mid-South in 2007, they will have a very strange feeling feud in Ring of Honor in the last third of 2009, they will have weird little offshoots in PWG and Beyond and they will have that wonderful epilogue in AIW that was one of the best matches of the next decade. (You can read all about all that came before and after this over at Brock Hates Wrestling, where a better writer than I explored the entire feud in detail in an invaluable read.) But more or less, this is it, and it feels like the one that counts the most, certainly the one with the most poured into it.

You can argue — and more than most feuds, there is real room for a long discussion and argument — over what the best Hero/Kingston match is. They’ve had so many different versions of this thing with different tones and slight character differences, and I think it comes down to what you value the most as a wrestling fan. Among the absolute best they put together (this, IWA-MS TPI 2007, ROH Final Battle 2009, AIW), there isn’t truly an answer that I would be upset for somebody for.

Personally, I waver between two of them.

I just know that the best Hero/Kingston match took place in 2007.

Part of that is the live experience. Being there in Midlothian, Illinois and seeing and hearing all of that up close in a sizeable-but-not-that-large rec center (aka The Midlo-Dome) at seventeen years old leaves an impression that never quite leaves, but it does not have the specific strengths that this match does. Hero and Kingston’s last match in a two year CZW feud lacks the bombast and spectacle of their Last Man Standing match in IWA, but something more primal about this has always appealed to me just as much, if not more.

It’s not perfect. Not completely. They arguably go a little long, and because of the way it’s wrestled and paced, immediately all back and forth and a whole lot of striking, it begins to wane at points once they get past twenty minutes and a few things find themselves repeated. It proudly has a more spartan nature than their bigger show gimmick matches, and the sorts of nonsense they got into in IWA or ROH has a way of helping to avoid the lulls this occasionally wondered towards.

However, of all of the Hero/Kingston matches, this is the one with the most feeling.

King and Hero also have, of all their matches, the one that I think feels the most desperate and frantic, and down to Earth, so to speak. I mean that literally, as much as I do figuratively.

This is a dirty match.

I don’t mean that they cheat a lot here, or that they get especially hardcore. There isn’t a weapon used in this match. What I mean by that is that there is just something kind of disgusting about this match on a human level, as we see the different depths that both wrestlers sink to and the different ways that both men go about reaching their absolute moral bottoms.

The way this reveals itself through the match is also a fascinating contrast. Everything that happens here is enormously mean-spirited and rude and petty, and as insulting as possible whenever there is a split path before either man. For Hero, it means trying to insult Eddie as a wrestler, doing things he knows will make him unbelievably mad, like using the Kenta Kobashi machine gun chops, or breaking out a rare Lariat. Hero also beats the shit out of him and taunts Eddie when he shows weakness, it’s not all some mental warfare using Eddie’s established favorites against him, but they’re these wonderful attacks on him as a person. In contrast, when Eddie goes low, he goes low. He is desperately gouging eyes, swinging for the fences, biting, cursing up a storm, all of that. It feels just as hateful as everything Hero does, but in a totally different way.

Another big thing this has going in its favor for me is that it is the one match between these two in the 2000s in which Chris Hero feels like the protagonist.

Kingston isn’t purely antagonistic, the villain to Chris’ hero, but as the crowd has embraced Hero following a double turn months earlier involving the best and most unhinged and most realistic choking angle in independent wrestling history, it feels more even than it ever has before or ever will again. When things get tough, Kingston is the one choking and reaching for the eyes. He is still naturally likeable enough and Hero still just sort of offputting at times, as mentioned above, that you can go for Kingston if you want, but what this match does so well is that, really, you can support anybody.

Between these two, things have simply broken down enough that there is no right or wrong anymore between them, and while I would usually find such a concept an unbearable eye-roller, between Hero and Kingston, it feels completely correct.

In the moments where Hero shows off a rarer protagonistic side, it is a genuine blast. Not just because it’s novel at this point, not really having come out in a major match since his summer/fall 2005 feud against Arik Cannon in IWA Mid-South, but because he is now genuinely good at it. There’s a confidence to his appeals to the crowd that wasn’t ever there before that makes it work better than it ever had, and in contrast with this rabid animal in Eddie Kingston, it’s genuinely appealing on some level.

There’s a moment maybe midway through the match on the outside of the ring, where both men have been cracked open seemingly hardway (if not, don’t fucking tell me, the beauty is in the illusion) and Hero fires off a string of real gross headbutts, before Eddie grabs him to try his own, and cannot. He collapses, while a blood soaked Hero lets out this kind of guttural scream as the CZW crowd fully embraces him and chants his name. Hero cups his ear and then points to them, and there’s something beautiful about it. Not just in the sense that Hero had always been hated by this crowd and learned quickly to play into it and now he gets this response at the very end, but within Hero’s larger career, finally learning how to be a genuinely awesome babyface.

As much fun as it is to see Hero live up to his name like this for the first time anywhere in over a year and a half, Eddie Kingston is maybe even better on the other end.

This is Kingston-as-Kawada through and through.

Not just because he gets booed by a chunk of the fanbase against a guy throwing elbows who keeps adjusting his pants, but the anger and hostility and the struggle above all, before he brute forces his way through at the end, only to be completely unfulfilled by what he though he wanted the most.

I write all the time when talking about big dumb wonderful heavyweight bombfests that nobody gets why some of that stuff works like it does, but Kingston in this match (and in general) gives one of the best performances ever in terms of clearly actually getting it. It is never that he gets up or stands and takes it that works alone or even just that he himself returns fire in ways just as violent and as disrespectful as his opponent’s attacks, it is all about the moments in between. Eddie struggling to stand and take it, exhausting himself solely to avoid giving Hero an inch of satisfaction, the way he looks angry at himself when he eventually does go down or register any kind of pain, that stuff. Eddie Kingston has made a career out of moments like this, and while he may have maybe better individual selling moments throughout his career, I don’t know that any one match has more great individual Kingston sells than this one.

The best of them comes right before the moment previously mentioned where the crowd embraces Hero, where Eddie tries to grab onto him to return fire, as he had done all match, but simply cannot anymore.

Hero and Kingston carry on like this for some time, taking the match in unexpected directions with less familiar offense, delivering the expected hits, and largely expanding upon every strength already mentioned, while also expertly showing the effects of the exhaustion in a match like this, and the toll that such vulgar displays of power exert in the end.

There’s another choice at the end that I find really interesting, in which there is never any one hard momentum shift or transition spot at the end, so much as there is the result of pure attrition.

Kingston simply is better in a low down and disgusting fight like this than Hero is, and in a match all about him going to lows Hero won’t and him struggling to hang on, it just feels right that in the end, he just very casually wins out. Hero eventually crumbles forward after another headbutt, and either through luck or divine providence of just being at the right place in the ring at the right time, Kingston finally the opening. A backdrop driver leads to a short-range Lariat in its own little bit of vengeance, and finally, Eddie’s Backfist to the Future nets him the victory he’s spent years hunting at the expense of everything else.

Of course, nothing this good at this point in CZW can stay that way for long, even like five minutes.

Famously, after Hero has his farewell speech thanking everyone, Zandig gets into it with Eddie Kingston, before Eddie storms off and shouts at him for ruining their moment. Zandig fires Eddie, and both men are effectively done with CZW barring a handful of guest appearances years later. It’s a hell of a thing, CZW willingly and unwillingly losing its two biggest stars not just in one night but in one five to ten minute span.

It also, super accidentally, feels like the finish that they deserve.

Kingston wins, he finally gets his legitimate win over Hero, but it only comes after totally alienating everyone with how far he was willing to go leading up to it, resulting in Eddie having to leave as well, to far lesser fanfare. In the process of getting what he wanted most, Eddie Kingston ensures he loses what was, up to that point, his home promotion. Nothing feels more like Eddie Kingston than this, his greatest victory absorbed by a heavy loss and mass applause for his opponent anyways, a Pyrrhic victory through and through, leaving Eddie Kingston more upset and aggrieved than ever.

As such, what’s meant to be the end between these two is really only the beginning.

Nothing ever ends.

A must-see, all-decade level great, chunk of violence, as two of the best to ever do it hit arguably their apex both as wrestlers and as characters. A mother fucker in every way that a match can be, spiritually correct professional wrestling on a generational level.

****

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Fred Yehi, AAW Take No Prisoners 2018 (5/25/2018)

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.

***1/4

Eddie Kingston vs. Tracy Williams, GCW Matt Riddle’s Bloodsport (4/5/2018)

(Photo credit to Scott Lesh Photography.)

As with all matches on this show and other Bloodsport shows to follow (I do not feel the need to repeat this bit for every match on this show, but as it’s dropping first, hey), there are no ropes around the ring, and you can win by submission or knock out only.

Bloodsport, over the last five years and counting since this first show, has been maybe the surest thing in professional wrestling.

The set up not only makes for more unique wrestling in a bell-to-bell mechanical sense than you often get to see anywhere at this point (no disrespect to a concept like WXW’s AMBITION, but they still have the chance to use the ropes, still tethering itself somewhat to professional wrestling), let alone the U.S. indies, but also allows for a really unique visual. Without the ropes, there is very little visual barrier between the combatants in the foreground and the audience in the background. Especially with the  shots that get up close in real high quality, it’s beyond visually impressive and, at least speaking on a personal level, grabs one in a way wrestling matches often are not immediately able to in that way.

Out of all of the different Bloodsport shows that GCW’s put on following the immense success of this one, this is still probably my favorite.

Yeah, it doesn’t have the absolute highs that some of the later ones do. No match on this show is as great as the 2022 Jon Moxley vs. Biff Busick match, and probably not the 2019 Masashi Takeda vs. Jonathan Gresham match either. It is also not perfect. MASADA gets to have a match on this show, you know? It’s not flawless. However, there is so much less on this show. Less matches, shorter matches, less nonsense on this show, and in terms of the entire thing, it has probably the highest success rate of any of them. Beyond that though, it has that special kind of freak show element while also having that kind of consistent quality. Wrestlers like KTB or Nick Gage or, in this case, Eddie Kingston shoved into these spots is so much more interesting to me than one hundred guys who are all good at these sorts of matches.

Maybe it is sloppier and maybe it is not as great, technically, but it is a thousand times more interesting to see all these weird people in half freak show early UFC style fights, trying to adapt to the style in either the sorts of matches that they would normally not have and/or against opponents they would not otherwise face. It’s not all guaranteed and it might get messy, but that’s half the fun.

All things considered, I prefer the mess.

Kingston and Williams have the former of the two options, not a new match specifically, but a newer sort of match for them to have. Their AIW work is about roughly the same thing in a narrative sense, the brawler against the technician, the classic Puncher vs. Boxer story, but the rhythms are entirely different. Those matches are wrestling matches, but this is very much a BLOODSPORT kind of a thing, and that division is transformed into a match where Eddie needs to stay off the mat to have a shot, and Tracy needs to get him down to have a shot.

Eddie maybe doesn’t have the hours in matches like these like Tracy’s built up over the years, but he has a quality that feels far more important, which is that everything he does feels genuine, and he makes this feel the same way. He cannot do ten thousand holds or flow between them perfectly, but everything he does in this environment feels like what Eddie Kingston the wrestler and character would do. Swinging wildly, trying to turn the match into a stand-up one that he can win, showing desperation whenever Tracy almost gets him, all of that. Tracy Williams is always going to have a decent match within this system, but it’s Eddie Kingston — not only how he conducts himself, but how the match organizes itself around him — that makes this great.

Wonderfully, the match stays completely true to its premise, and as soon as Eddie is able to get to his feet and stay there, it doesn’t take long at all.

Following a delightfully shocking high kick to the head, Kingston reels off the Backfist to the Future for an immediate KO call.

Oh, also, it does all of this in just a hair over six minutes, making it this incredibly efficient thing as well as a deeply interesting one. It’s not only a hell of a six minute match, but the perfect mission statement for this show (it is not the opener, but KTB vs. Dom Garrini went three and a half minutes and wasn’t much, so effectively, it is), and going forward, every one of these to follow.

***

Matt Tremont vs. Eddie Kingston, GCW Joey Janela’s Spring Break (3/30/2017)

This was for Tremont’s GCW Heavyweight Title.

Obviously this rocks.

Tremont and Kingston is a sort of pervert’s dream match, and it delivers on all of that.

It’s in the middle of the card and so it’s not like this twenty minute epic that combines the best things that both wrestlers can do, it’s something closer to a Tremont match than a Kingston one as a result. Rather than the ideal version of the thing, it’s a simpler ten minute brawl with Eddie Kingston serving as a challenger of the month for Tremont.  That being said, (a) a classical Tremont brawl is still a pretty great thing for a match to decide to be & (b) Eddie Kingston is an unbelievable challenger of the month. He’s mean and violent on a level that matches Tremont, if not surpasses him, and he is just as hostile as humanly possible.

(My favorite part of the match comes early on when Tremont first brings doors to the ring. Kingston reacts as many of us did watching this, and as many of us did watching these early GCW shows when independent wrestling still had enough sensibility to use actual tables, and looks confused and disgusted and gestures to it while making a face like “what the fuck is this?”. It was a simpler and a better time before this sort of a thing became so widespread, and I find this reaction so charming in retrospect.)

A match like this is ultimately defined by what they choose to do in the bigger moments, beyond just mean little moments of brawling, and Tremont is as deranged as ever. He bleeds like a faucet as is his custom, creating a few real wonderful visuals as he hobbles around bleeding in front of the large FLO SLAM banner on the wall, but also takes a few real real gross bumps himself. A missed tackle through the door early on, and then the match’s great moment, where King yanks him by the shirt and hurls him off the middle rope through a door platform over the apron and the railing. Tremont lands there, immediately staining the door with blood droplets, and looking absolutely dead, the ideal Tremont spot that’s messy and beautiful and so memorable and gross.

Being the villain of the month though, Eddie Kingston continues to be just a little too dismissive about Tremont and about the GCW thing as a whole, and just barely eats enough shit to count in the end. He doesn’t press Tremont after that, enabling the champion to just barely get him up and run full speed in with a Death Valley Driver through the last remaining propped up door in the corner for the win.

This is not a match that necessarily sets out to be about anything, it’s two of the greats putting on a neat little show in the middle of a wrestling event that is functionally just a circus (in the most complementary way possible), and just happening upon one anyways. In the middle of all the blood and violence, a classic little morality tale about hard work and talent and what happens when you take your eye off the ball.

On a show for WWN’s Mania shows otherwise marked by seemingly obvious hits falling short, this feels like a clear show of force from two of the best wrestlers in the world. An obvious success that knows exactly what it is and should be and that delivers that in spades. It’s the exact match one conjures up when dreaming of Matt Tremont vs. Eddie Kingston, and the greatness of these two lies in delivering on that promise, but doing so in interesting, brutal, and viscerally satisfying ways like this.

***

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Shigehiro Irie, AIW Against the World (8/26/2016)

Hell yes.

Outside of AIW commentary real unfortunately repeatedly seeming to refer to Shigehiro Irie as “Shinjiro”, this is the exact match one would conjure up between these two on this stage. To a t. Not the most dramatic or wildest match that wrestlers like these two could have, it’s hardly a KO-D Title match or a Grand Championship match, these stages on which these two have done some of their largest scale work, but it is an absolutely delightful sort of AIW match.

From the start, Irie is in the role he fits best, the brick wall for Our Hero to struggle with and eventually chop down.

Kingston, as always, is one of the best wrestlers ever at conveying struggle. It’s not quite the best or deepest work of his career like that, but he’s just so great at communicating this concept of something he’s not ready for or that he has issues moving past. Irie isn’t mean, he’s not domineering, but he’s such a good obstacle. In terms of being someone who it is very easy to root for in a struggle against the larger Irie, Eddie Kingston is the American HARASHIMA (perhaps the greatest joy this match offers up is allowing me to type “Eddie Kingston is the American HARASHIMA”). We see the way he fights, we see the gears turning and the adjustments he makes, and in the end, he makes it such a fun and feel-good victory when he’s able to move past it. 

Irie headbutts his way through two earlier tries at the Backfist to the Future (yes, I loved Eddie’s hand selling after this. is there a reason you’re asking?), so later on, Eddie catches him moving up with it instead of straight on in an obvious way the tank can see coming. His hand’s still hurt and so Irie wobbles instead of collapsing, forcing King to double up with a Half Nelson Suplex for the win.

Yet another great match like this from the sorts of guys who always wind up having great matches like this. Simple wrestling, but with enough heart and guts to always make it worth the watch. Eddie’s struggle here isn’t the most monumental one in the world, but slowly finding ways to shut down someone who he couldn’t for the first half of the match still has a way of landing right in that special sweet spot.

Lower stakes sort of dudes rock wrestling, but a match that offers all of those same thrills nonetheless.

***

Silver Ant vs. Eddie Kingston, CHIKARA Evil Ways (2/28/2016)

Eddie Kingston comes into this match with a kinesio-taped up and injured neck from an angle the night before. You could honestly tell me anything and I would believe it and then also forget about it entirely. CHIKARA never opened again in my mind, any angles or stories that happen are to be regarded with an extremely suspicious eye.

ANYWAYS.

The point here is that Eddie comes in hurt, and nobody in wrestling this century, save a few Kawada performances, plays a better wounded animal than Eddie Kingston.

Commonly noted fortes of Eddie Kingston as a seller are the knee injury and the head injury. I’ve gone so far as to call Eddie Kingston one of the best knee sellers in the entire history of wrestling, I’m not alone in that, and I don’t and won’t ever take it back. He also sells a concussion better than almost anyone else in the world. His last match against Silver Ant (then Green Ant) asked him to sell a hand, and it was one of my favorite CHIKARA matches of the entire decade.

This match asks something slightly different of him in selling the neck, but predictably, Eddie Kingston does just as remarkable a job with that as anything else. Eddie seems to be another adherent to that Bret Hart school of thought, selling a general stiffness or tightness when moving rather than rolling around in pain. He also dips his toe into the old nerve damage selling pool, which is especially effective here, registering the pain it takes to throw a chop or an elbow here or there. A match like this, all about one injury, can sometimes grow grating as a result of repetition, but part of the genius of Kingston is the way he switches between a few different ways to communicate the pain he’s in. It keeps the match interesting while not only communicating the larger story, but it also has the effect of making Kingston all the more sympathetic. If someone’s just holding their neck a lot, that sucks, but there are limits. What Eddie does is not only that, but show the way it impacts his offense and his mobility as well, creating a much fuller and more well-rounded picture of all the ways in which this injury is affecting him, making it so much easier to find one’s self just a little more invested.

Once more, Eddie Kingston sells in vibrant color and in 3D.

Silver Ant is something of a passenger here, but that undercuts how great he is too. In a strictly mechanical sense, everything he does is very cool. His strikes all land with the sort of smacks and thuds you hope for every time, his holds are all great, but there’s more to it than just that. It’s a hard thing to do, being in a face/face match like this and not getting swept up by the sympathetic nature of Kingston’s performance. Silver Ant has a fine line to walk here, being both likeable himself, but also delivering the hurt, and he does a really great job. He gets fired up, really full of Hot Sauce (look how smart i am), when Eddie begins to come back and swing for the fences with his narrow window, and makes sure to shut it down real emphatically.

It’s the sort of match that would do a lot for someone, has everyone watching this not already known by now and known for years how great Silver Ant actually is. I doubt too much thought was really put into this ten minute opening match, it could have been anyone, but I’m real glad that Silver Ant got to be the one here, one of the few CHIKARA guys left who can deliver both the story elements necessitated by this company, but also deliver a match worth watching years later.

At the end, the damage is too much, and Eddie winds up passing out in a Triangle Choke, with Silver specifically grabbing onto his back foot and pulling it down into the hurt neck.

Maybe not all it can be, especially when one considers the man under that mask, but a thrilling ten minute opener. An indictment on CHIKARA that it wasn’t even more than that, but there are a thousand other indictments of CHIKARA out there already. As it is, a real hidden gem here worth carving out ten minutes here or there for.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Daniel Garcia, AEW Rampage (11/26/2021)

A shorter and more made-for-television version of what these two can do together, but such a promising match up.

While not all that a match between two of the best wrestlers of the year can be, it’s still an audacious little crap.

At all times, this is a remarkably hostile match, and it does so much for them. Constantly throwing out the meanest and pettiest shots that there are to be thrown. King responds to his body again failing him by lashing out as he always does, shoving Garcia off a cover after already kicking out, swinging whenever he’s near, unloading these gross punts to the body while Daniel is getting up. A focus on punishment above all else. Garcia doesn’t have the same kind of hostility as Eddie Kingston, but being tinged more with desperation against this established guy colors it in its own way too. He’s as cagey as he’s been in all of his great work throughout 2021, only now with a better reason for it than usual. Nothing against JD Drake, but this is Eddie Kingston. Garcia’s panic whenever something goes slightly wrong and his frantic assaults, such as targeting the ear of all things, whenever a window is open just a little bit make a lot more sense here and feel much more true-to-life, making for a better match.

Eddie Kingston also once again elevates a match by being wrestling’s greatest seller of the knee. He tweaks it on a flying knee trembler he 100% didn’t have do to, and spends the rest of the match in that beautiful all-time-great zone where he’s selling the pain of his historically bad leg as much as he’s selling a kind of anger at himself and his own body. Garcia’s work is good and fine, this isn’t really the match to deeply explore that, but Eddie’s selling is so strong — and again, has that true-to-life feeling — that it makes the match more complete anyways.

The match winds up with a wonderful ending that embodies the contest preceding it and the two characters in it perfectly. Garcia ducks one Backfist to the Future, pops his head up like he’s done something big, only for Eddie spin through and land it on the second time. An impressive prodigy, but one only like ninety percent as great as he thinks he is, bested by the persistence and force of Eddie Kingston.

A big difference, to me, between good wrestlers and great wrestlers comes in smaller moments like these. Situations in which someone could one hundred percent get away clean with giving a lesser effort or playing the hits on a smaller and less-watched television show. The great ones don’t, the great ones not only still try, but give their best efforts in spite of all a match isn’t and can’t be.

If the difference between good and great wrestlers is these moments, then in this match, Eddie Kingston and Daniel Garcia show once again that they’re not just great, but two of the very best wrestlers in the entire world.

***

CM Punk vs. Eddie Kingston, AEW Full Gear (11/13/2021)

No match better sums up AEW in 2021 than this one.

First of all, it is so god damned cool that this got to happen.

Of all of the many weird and wonderful matches that AEW booked at a breakneck pace in the last third of the year, this is the weirdest and most wonderful. A genuine fucking dream match. It’s not like a Bryan Danielson vs. Dustin Rhodes or an Eddie Kingston, either people who had been in a shared space for a while at one point or met up before. They haven’t shared a locker room (or a commentary booth) since June of 2005 and had never shared the ring before this match. On top of that, they’re perfect for each other. Two of the realest people in the history of professional wrestling who have many of the same gifts and strengths, and whose best work succeeds for many of those same reasons. There’s also just enough history to create something real based around that with Punk as a Chris Hero friend on top of Eddie’s point about Punk spending 2004 IWA Mid-South shows on commentary being very mean to a lot of people who had bad gear or were fat or anything else that didn’t live up to his standard.

As a feud, the build up to this was as great as a feud thrown together in a few weeks can be.

It’s very classic sort of storytelling that usually results in the best and most realistic stuff, with neither man seeming totally incorrect. Naturally, the root of that problem comes from some real shit, and works on the classic rule of con work, which is to start with something we all know is true and go from there, calling everything into that beautiful grey area that pro wrestling can hit when it’s done right and that both Punk and Kingston have been able to hit with more regularity than just about anyone else in the last twenty years.

“I know this is all bullshit but this specific thing might not be entirely bullshit.”

It’s a funny sort of thing here, as from someone who’s watched almost every single IWA-MS show from 2003 through 2008, Punk was nowhere near as harsh to Kingston on commentary as he was to a lot of others, and those criticisms of Kingston weren’t entirely unfounded, as a clearly talented guy but also one who didn’t immediately do all that he could have to live up to that. At the same time, CM Punk was really a dick in 2004 and 2005, clearly being the King of the Indies along with Samoa Joe in a way that few others (Bryan Danielson, Kevin Steen, maybe El Generico, and The Young Bucks alone can say the same thing, really) ever have been, and throwing his weight around a lot. The famous criticism being that Punk was the “HHH of ROH”, which has grown to be so much funnier in the time since it was a criticism first levied. Everyone’s heard the Kevin Steen story from ROH, but IWA-MS shows are full of little moments where he’s a real shithead on commentary to wrestlers who were real young, as if he wasn’t in those same duct-taped-together filthy rings three or four years earlier in basketball shorts.

At the same time, Eddie Kingston is being an asshole about it in 2021.

Barging into Punk’s interview time, being a shithead to him without much provocation in the last fifteen years, and generally acting like a crazy person. As characters, nobody is really wrong. Punk’s correct to take offense to Eddie being a maniac like he was at the start, Eddie’s correct to get mad at Punk once again seeming like he’s big leaguing him by demanding an apology, and both cross lines in the ways that they always have with everyone else they’ve ever come across. An old grudge explored through the needling of newer sore spots, exploding in the ways it always has when either one of these two is involved, despite the efforts of both men in recent years to change.

Cheer for who you’d like, but there’s no high ground here to be found.

Despite only lasting three or four weeks (or perhaps because of that), it really may be the best feud AEW’s ever run. Nothing happens that doesn’t make sense, no part of it feels fabricated, and more than any other convoluted way to get to a match, it feels like the natural reaction that both characters would have to these circumstances.

The match itself is incredible.

A genuine work of beauty, and a near masterpiece.

If not for a major Bryan Danielson performance in a capital-i Important Match on a gigantic show, this would easily be the best AEW match of 2021. It’s still great enough that if someone wants to put it at #1, I am absolutely not interested in fighting them on it. Fair enough, they earned it.

From start to finish, it is a fight. A wrestling match that feels like a war, a genuine and major conflict, and just about every moment of it is perfect in every sense from the mechanics of the thing to construction to how everything fits the story.

Before anything else, both men are so incredible here in the ways that they adapt their offense to something more dirty and guttural like this. CM Punk wouldn’t springboard in a fight, and so his big clothesline spot comes first desperately off of the middle rope to stop a charging Kingston, and then later off the apron to the floor. It’s hit in two different ways than usual, both tinged with a kind of panic and desperation that makes it mean more than the usual comeback spot. They’re also able to fit in a lot of big match trademarks like repeat finisher spots and a strike trading sequence in ways that fit the tone of this perfectly.

This is a match that not only whips ass, but that totally sums up the feud and the characters and just about everything else, and it wastes no time in doing so.

Eddie Kingston strikes first, probably objectively wrong, but so charming that it doesn’t matter all that much. There’s a moment here in which King has Punk up top and strikes at his back over and over with such vigor that he wears himself out and has to lean on Punk to stay up, and I don’t know if you can find a better Eddie Kingston thing all year than that. Where Eddie’s spite comes out in these moments that seem to land 50/50, like trying an unnecessary Piledriver outside, only to eat shit, Punk’s comes out in a different way, and sometimes feels even more hateful as a result. Be it his use of the John Cena sequence in response to parallels drawn to the famous feud there, using the Three Amigos as equal part earnest tribute and equal part sly little reminder that Punk got to wrestle Eddie Guerrero, or responding to a moment when the crowd 100% goes for Eddie by raining down blows more excessively than he needed to in that moment, Punk just has more success in his more hateful moments.

Beautifully, this is the real statement of the match.

While Eddie Kingston’s hate makes impedes his progress, CM Punk is actually better in the moments when he gives into his own spite, and proudly displays the all-time huge chip upon his shoulder.

It’s a beautiful contrast between the two that’s spelled out in the match as well as it has been throughout the individual careers of each man, with Eddie Kingston first focused on making a point and beating up CM Punk, putting that before winning to his detriment on a small and large scale. CM Punk, on the other hand, is focused on his own survival, but unable to resist the temptation to get down in the muck with Eddie Kingston when provoked, getting just as petty in all these different ways.

They have different aims, but ultimately when thrown together like this, both make each other worse, boiling each other down to their ugliest elements.

As went the feud, so goes the match.

In addition to drawing the figurative first blood to open the match, Eddie then draws actual first blood and cuts Punk open for the first time since returning to wrestling.

Punk happens to be one of the great bleeders of his generation, and this is no exception to that. After getting posted, he quickly hits a gusher and while it’s not a cut that stays flowing for the duration of the match, it’s one that immediately pays off by adding to the already ultra-tense atmosphere. Kingston’s entire thing here has been about taking Punk down a notch, bringing him down with the rest of them, and there’s no better way to prove someone’s human than by leaving a mark like this. He bleeds like the rest of us.

Or, in other terms, Eddie shows that his arms are just long enough to box with God.

Unfortunately, part of the match going as the feud did and perfectly exemplifying these characters and wrestlers is that, once again, Eddie Kingston falls short.

It’s not like All Out or his match against Bryan Danielson.

Eddie Kingston isn’t a victim of circumstance here, but entirely a victim of his old destructive tendencies, tragically reverting to the guy CM Punk and Bryan Danielson and others used to criticize as always getting in his own way instead of the guy he’s spent the last year starting to become. Genuine tragedy, some of the best stuff in pro wrestling in years and years and years, frustration mounting and mounting until a heartbreaking reversion to form, the most relatable thing in the world.

At the moment when Eddie probably has this won, after emphatically winning a strike exchange, Eddie cannot help but steal Punk’s pre-finisher taunt, before making the classic jerk off motion. It’s a beautiful, hateful, and unbelievably petty gesture. It’s also one that allows Punk the time to recover and hit a desperation Go to Sleep.

From that moment on — and really from the moment where Eddie finally gave in like that — it’s over.

Eddie isn’t immediately beaten, fighting up again, but Punk dodges the Backfist to the Future this time. Like so much of this match, it works on more than just one level, serving both as this beautiful spot that shows that Punk’s won the match before he’s officially won the match, but also another example of the ways in which Eddie’s worst tendencies work against him. He hit it before the match even started, throwing his biggest shot out there as an immediate middle finger, thus impeding his ability to do it a second time when it counted against someone as smart and experienced as Punk. On top of that, it also creates a brilliant contrast, his failure to hit his move a second time as the immediate transition into Punk hitting his own finisher, successfully, a second time in what gives him the win.

Punk’s second Go to Sleep is hit now right out in the middle, more as an emphatic statement than the Hail Mary that the first was, and Punk wins.

After the match, Punk tries to finally give Eddie the respect he didn’t seventeen years ago, only for Eddie Kingston to do the most Eddie Kingston shit in the world and deny him the satisfaction at his expense.

(For as much Bret and Austin as there’s been throughout this whole thing, and there’s been a fair amount, it’s nice to see something like this taken from a feud between spiritual predecessors of the two. One’s mind is sent back to Homicide refusing to shake Steve Corino’s hand after WAR OF THE WIRE, denying the issue a conclusion for the time being as a matter of pure and petty principle.)

And somehow, that’s that. The end of it, at least (hopefully) for now.

There’s that other thing about AEW in 2021 too, when I say “as great as a feud thrown together in a few weeks can be”.

One of the major weaknesses of AEW is that they never seem to know when their pay-per-view events are. Sometimes, they do and things reach their peak at the right time so as to make people pay for it. A lot of the times though, we get situations like this, where something is thrown together weeks before, and it all feels kind of rushed together. Another of AEW’s major weaknesses is their refusal, much of the time, to run rematches or continue things. Between the way this went and Eddie’s refusal after the match to shake hands and give Punk anything, this is a match begging for follow up.

At the time the final bell rang, this was the hottest thing in the company, and it hasn’t continued. Punk’s gone on to work with another one of AEW’s golden boys, while Eddie Kingston became the latest hot act to mysteriously wind up in a program with Chris Jericho.

It might be something they come back to one day. I’d certainly hope so.

It also might not be.

The shame of this is that even three months after the fact, there’s not a concrete answer there. Of all their many failings, one of AEW’s largest mistakes may have come here. Both in doing the match at this point in time, where it felt like Eddie Kingston very badly needed a win and in a spot so early in Punk’s return, in which they were unwilling to continue something that badly needed to continue. The easy comparison at the time was Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin at the 1996 Survivor Series, for good reason, but the reason that’s remembered so fondly is that on top of being one of the best wrestling matches of all time, it was the start of something instead of being what this feels like months later, which is simply a way to fill time. It’s one of the best time-filler programs in recent wrestling history, but all the same, something capable of being so much more than it was.

Everything I love about AEW can be summed up in the build up and the execution of this match. Everything I don’t can be summed up by the failure to follow up on this, and directing both men to far less interesting and satisfying programs with far worse wrestlers instead. It’s beautiful that they were able to book Eddie Kingston vs. CM Punk in 2021. It also explains the more recent fall-off for late 2021 and early 2022 AEW that they reacted to that by using the energy created by this feud and by this match to help out Chris Jericho and MJF instead of seeing where else this could go.

If not a perfect match, a perfect synopsis of this company at this point in time.

As such, a very deeply weird match to consider, but also an undeniably great match.

One of the best of the year, from two of the best to ever do it.

***3/4

Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston, AEW Rampage (10/29/2021)

This was a semi-final match in the #1 Contender’s tournament.

It’s yet another one of these weird and wonderful Peak AEW booking choices, throwing this out there a mere three days after we already got Danielson vs. Dustin Rhodes, of all things. This isn’t QUITE the novelty that that was, since it already happened once before. It’s one of the best wrestling matches that I’ve ever seen in person, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone who’s seen it speak an unkind word about it outside of that we all wish it had a slightly better finish. A beloved match among those who’ve laid eyes on it. However, that’s only a fraction of the audience for this match in 2021, and so I completely understand why to newer fans or more casual fans, this is a dream match and one of the absolute best of the year. I don’t quite feel that way, but I get it.

More than a pure dream match, it’s yet another entry into one of the big themes of 2021, which is rematches of early 2010s independent gems that aren’t perhaps as great as the original versions, but more thoughtful and grown up, and maybe, a little more impressive.

What’s so impressive about this is that it’s a match that kind of teases out the sort of match they had in 2010, but uses that as a foundation to go forward.

Bryan early on targets the left arm and occasionally tries for Kingston’s notoriously weak left knee, in the ways he usually would. The brief work he does there is as great as it’s always been, and not all that different from what he did to Kingston back in that CHIKARA match. There’s more hostility here in both directions following their backstage altercation where Danielson expressed frustration with Kingston’s lack of success, middle fingers thrown in from Bryan when Eddie tries to bow up at him in the early moments, but the root of the thing is the same.

The progression over eleven years though means Eddie Kingston is so much better at stopping this kind of an attack than the version of him that Bryan remembered.

Eddie hits him as hard as possible in response, tenderizes Bryan’s chest to leave him looking like he’s back fighting 2005 Roddy again, and winds up controlling Bryan for a good chunk of the match. There’s loose work on the neck, but not in a real deliberate kind of a way. It’s the ultimate credit to Eddie as a character and these two as wrestlers that despite that, Eddie still manages to come off as the aggrieved underdog in response to Bryan for the duration of the match, despite probably controlling more of the thing than Bryan himself. As a whole, the match reads like a text on Bryan having to deal with the ways all of these people have progressed and evolved since he last encountered them, dealing with a much leaner, more focused, and (slightly) more cool-headed Eddie Kingston. Not the sort of wrestler he can so easily lead around by the ear and force into his style of match, instead being forced into an Eddie Kingston style of match.

In that sense, this match serves as a brilliant companion piece to the previous week’s Bryan/Dustin match in this way, again putting Bryan against someone who knows him and is ready and forces him out of his typical game and into something more specific.

Unfortunately for Eddie Kingston and all his personal and professional growth, Bryan Danielson is still the best wrestler in the world, as he was eleven years ago.

The result is that the match winds up in the end operating as a complete slugfest in the end. Bryan gets punished whenever he tries to take Eddie back down and force his match in the later moments, just as he was early on for trying the old stuff. They manage two or three real terrific nearfalls, with Eddie Kingston somehow managing to get thousands of people to bite on a DDT as a potential finish in 2021. Bryan stands and trades with King, but lacks the firepower that Eddie has. At the very least, in a phone booth, one of these guys has a move (Eddie’s Uraken) that can win and has won big matches before. Bryan can live there, but it’s not a place he can win, he needs to run for the knee or charge up for a kick. Eddie manages his shot, but cruelly, he takes just enough damage in the process of opening Bryan up for it that he falls down and back, and Bryan has the time he needs.

Crawling over, Eddie finds himself trapped in a flash Triangle Choke from Bryan. While he couldn’t take Eddie down to the mat himself, once down there, all he needed was Eddie in close range, and he gave it up himself. Eddie echoes Bryan’s middle finger from earlier while trying to fight, but that stupid and wonderful gesture isn’t quite enough. While Eddie slugs at Bryan’s body, Bryan rains the elbows down on the top of King’s head, and one naturally has more effect than the other. Eddie passes out, and the referee stops the match.

It’s another big loss for Eddie, but it’s one that once again feels totally and completely correct. Bryan Danielson once again adjusts to an opponent who spends the match thinking they’ve adjusted to him, showing how hard it is to ever really nail him down or force him into this match or that match. Eddie Kingston once again loses because, for a moment, his perfect game plan slipped.

Bryan doesn’t cheat like Miro did and there’s no tragic circumstance like in that match that costs him. He just slips for a moment, willingly stays on the ground with Bryan when he goes over to him, and pays the price. A great enough effort to beat anybody else, but eleven years later, Bryan Danielson is still the best wrestler in the world and all he needs is a second that Eddie Kingston isn’t the absolute best possible version of himself.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It was eleven plus years since they last met, and as much as both men grew in that time, it was beyond endearing to have a match that felt like it grew just as much as the men having it.

***1/4