Miro vs. Eddie Kingston, AEW All Out 2021 (9/5/2021)

This was for Miro’s TNT Title.

I was at this show, and with regards to the Punk/Darby match, it was a wildly different experience watching it on tape a month later compared with watching it live. They’re very different experiences that often reveal different things about a match, and neither is specifically better than the other. What works live doesn’t always translate after the fact, and matches that are great with a lot of cameras and the benefits of production don’t always work quite so well a few rows or more back from the ring in-person.

I say all of that to say that this is a match that’s great both ways.

Watching it live, certain things stood out that you would expect to stand out. The moments of big time offense, the big twists and turns of the match, the work on Miro’s neck, and Eddie Kingston’s hyperdramatic back selling. Eddie’s the sort of a wrestler who works in just about every room and he’s able to get so much out of his hurt back and communicate that pain with big broad strokes, but also never losing any sense of realism in the process. The story of it all also worked incredibly well live, back vs. neck, and then also the character-based turns that the story took late in the match.

On film, it’s even better.

In the obvious ways, you get a closer look at everything. Every great little facial expression made by each man, but also at things that didn’t pick up quite as well from rows back, like biting the hand (thank you) and these little attempts to grab onto each other whenever possible. Particularly great in this regard was the way Eddie hurled himself into Miro on the apron to knock him off of it to set up a dive. From a while away, it seemed like a shoulder or an elbow, done on purpose. A lot closer up and from a new angle, it’s just Kingston recklessly hurling his body into Miro’s, which is both so much more exciting of an attack, but also conveys a sense of desperation in a much stronger way. It also lands with a much more emphatic thud when experienced this way.

In a purely auditory sense, this match gains so much on tape.

Not that this was ever a match that felt soft in person, but holy shit.

Hearing the blows from rows back is different than hearing them from up close, and the welts that form on Miro’s chest as a result of Eddie’s repeated chops added a good amount this go-around. The thud on Miro’s shots was also the sort of thing picked up a little less by the in-person experience than by cameras up close, and it adds a lot to this. Instead of Eddie just having trouble with this mountain of a man, there’s the added element that this is a mountain of a man hitting back just as hard. There’s the pure lizard brain element that I appreciate, but it’s also a match with a story that’s just slightly improved when one has a greater appreciation for the punishment inflicted, and that goes with every close-up visual I didn’t get to see live or every shot thrown that’s a hundred times louder on film.

Certain things about this work no matter what though.

Kingston and Miro have a remarkably simple story to tell, and tell it with tools just as simple. Miro’s neck is weak, but he’s still stronger and less beaten up overall than Kingston. It’s about chops and clubs and throws on the bad neck of Miro and the back of Kingston that Miro’s able to hurt early on.

More than just that, it’s yet another one of those classic Eddie Kingston stories. The neck work pays off, and he’s able to hold off Miro just enough to start to stack up damage upon damage. Unfortunately, in his effort to stop a German Suplex, he winds up yanking the top turnbuckle pad off. Eddie manages suplexes and the Backfist to the Future, and has Miro beaten, only to lose a second on the count because of the referee getting the turnbuckle pad out of the way. If he was still a villain and had removed the padding on purpose, it would be a classic piece of comeuppance, but as he’s not and as it results from a pure fluke, it’s a tragedy. Unable to help himself, Eddie then tries to utilize the advantage created in his justified anger, only to get stopped by the referee now. The rules once again seem to only come into play when Eddie tries to do something to get ahead, resulting in Miro sneaking in a low blow, before a round kick to the head and his all-time great bicycle Superkick for the win.

No longer facing consequences of actions, it’s down to just bad luck, and nobody has more of it and in worse places than Eddie Kingston does. He slipped up once, trying the old ways, and that’s all it took. Every great loss includes some lesson or a moral to the story, and here, it’s that Eddie Kingston cannot make a single mistake. He has to be perfect, and the moment he isn’t, someone is waiting on him. It’s a perfect match and story to throw into a larger career arc, Kingston having largely reformed and bettered himself, but ultimately unable to achieve because for the most fleeting second, he tried the shortcut. While the world was waiting for Eddie’s slip up, Miro was able to sneak in and actually cheat and steal the win. It’s not fair, but that’s Eddie Kingston for you. Once again, deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

Eddie Kingston is the best loser of a generation, and while this isn’t the best Eddie Kingston loss of the year, it is the most Eddie Kingston loss of the year.

It’s the best opening match of the year, but it’s more than just that.

This is an ideal sort of wrestling match to me. Both violent and dramatic, with every action being the result of two great characters being hurled at each other and reacting in natural ways. Not a long match, but one in which every moment has some point. Either it’s mechanically great or it’s going somewhere. One way or another, every piece of this match is one of consequences. A perfect story coupled with some of the best action you’ll find anywhere in wrestling all year, and it’s the best match on a really great show.

One of the best matches of the year, full stop.

***1/2

 

The Young Bucks vs. Eddie Kingston/Penta El 0M, AEW Dynamite ~ ROAD RAGER (7/7/2021)

This was a Street Fight for the Bucks’ AEW World Tag Team Titles.

I can imagine someone whose only exposure to The Young Bucks being AEW and maybe some New Japan stuff near the end might have really really loved this. There are a thousand things in a row as always, but now with weapons and blood and less schtick attached to it than in recent months. Outside of the title match against Moxley and Kingston a month and change prior (a classic “I have nothing to say about this” style great match), it’s their best match in a real long time.

The thing is though — and I recognize that this is gatekeep-y or whatever, and fine, I guess it is — there are so many better versions of this that exist.

Not just brawls, I mean specifically, these sorts of no rules Young Bucks stunt shows.

For years on the independents, it was the best thing they did, and would usually result in at least one of the best matches of the year when they did this in their prime. The 2011 Guerrilla Warfare match against Steen and Super Dragon is the highlight and really one of my absolute all-time favorites, but there’s so many more versions of this. Super Smash Bros, the famous Threemendous III ladder match, lots of Mount Rushmore stuff, the famous bloodbath against Candice LeRae and Candice LeRae only.

If you’re the sort of person who hasn’t seen much Bucks before this show came on the air, I really implore you to seek out those matches, because this sort of a thing really can be so great.

This is not those matches.

I’m not going to tell you that those weren’t also crazy stunt shows, but on the whole, they were assembled so much better. With more craft and with more care, with a greater understanding both of how these matches work best on both a mechanical and an emotional level than this has to offer.

It lacks the urgency, while at the same time, not quite feeling like it has the time to develop that those matches did. It lacks the brutality of those matches, while still using a lot of the same tools. As a result of things not getting to breathe as much, you lose the impact of a lot of what’s happening, all passing by in a blur. Maybe most importantly, while these were not exactly soulful matches, it does lack that certain spirit. It’s fair to argue that matches like these don’t translate to a big arena and that’s definitely true, but I think an equally big part of that is on the Bucks forgetting the root of why everything worked as well as it did in their 2010-2015 artistic prime. The Bucks might wear goofy outfits and have goofy little interference spots now, but at the root of it, one still gets the sense that they’ve forgotten that nobody is ever supposed to like them. The Bucks’ work fell off in late 2015 and on (save 2018, maybe a miracle year) once they forgot this about themselves, and started to think that they were actually cool. The value in those Reseda classics was as much in the crazy things they were doing as it was in seeing these guys pay for their many crimes and get obliterated. There’s some element of this here, but more than that, it feels like a great match on purpose. A wild stunt show on purpose, rather than one that feels like it naturally comes out of the issue in the ring. There’s a sense of performance to it that matches like these, led by this team in the past, didn’t use to have to them.

As always, the result of a match like that performed by people like the Bucks in 2021 is that instead of leaving with that thought of how cool the Young Bucks are, one actually winds up thinking about how cool the Young Bucks think they are instead.

To be fair though, this was their second best match of the year. I mostly liked it. What they do here is good. It’s a good match. I’m not turning down gross table bumps and thumbtack spots, but that’s about all this has to offer in the end. Eddie Kingston and Penta have some things to offer here, one much moreso than the other, but they unfortunately come off more like bit players in The Young Bucks Show than their own characters and/or wrestlers. An imitation of the best version of something like this, but lacking all the touches both big and little that turn matches like this into real gems. The result is a match that I wanted to write something about, since it’s bugged me a little since it happened and got this widespread praise, more so than a match I wanted to write about because of its positive qualities.

A fun enough match, but not quite a great one, and ultimately just one more waste of Eddie Kingston to come out of AEW in 2021.

Eddie Kingston vs. Dominic Garrini, AIW Is This Something You Might Be Interested In? (4/30/2021)

Obviously, this match fucks.

Eddie Kingston is one of maybe a literal handful of wrestlers who you can call the best wrestler in the world and not have me dispute it in any strong kind of a way. Garrini isn’t quite that, but he is one of the most purely watchable wrestlers in the world. It’s a quality both wrestlers possess in spades, the ability for me to see their name attached to a show and wanting to see it on that alone, often times with the opponent not mattering quite so much.

On paper, it’s the sort of match that’s just too big to fail.

In reality, it’s not everything I had imagined, or maybe all that it could be.

(of course, this is the nature of imagination.)

The ideal nature of the thing is King either working strongly from underneath or turning back into that old bully against Dom. Instead, this feels much more consciously like a Great Match, and a more even display. Not a match without friction, but one that never quite seems to have the friction one thinks of when seeing this match on paper. Something about it never totally feels correct as a match between two heroes, although given Eddie’s status amongst independent fans (especially in AIW), it’s hard to say if there was any other way this could have gone in 2021. In general, it feels like a match that spends its time reaching out for something just out of reach. A finger or two on it at times, nearly in hand at a few others, but a thing never entirely grabbed onto and pulled to the surface.

It’s a testament to the greatness of Kingston and Garrini both that this is as great as it is anyways.

What they have to offer is a big meathead match that isn’t quite dumb, but that retains all the hallmarks of that kind of a style. An increasing hostility. Big nasty throws. Awesome strikes in all forms, often exchanged between the two in both big and small doses, and modified in all sorts of ways. As always, it’s the sort of match made or broken by the little things in between those big moments. It’s the way they react both to things about to happen by fighting like mad, and the way that they react to things that have just happened, and maybe nobody alive has a better grasp on that than Eddie Kingston. From little stumbles to the failed attempts at fighting spirit moments to force a more human struggle into a match like this, he once again makes something work by eschewing any notions of being larger than life in favor of being as true to life as humanly possible.

Garrini isn’t quite Eddie Kingston in this regard, but what he brings to this are a match full of great little bumps and sells on things. Garrini can’t bring the emotional heft that Eddie Kingston can (few can), but he’s so impressive in this match at portraying himself as a dead weight. The way he bumps at just the exact right angle late in the match on a Saito Suplex is specifically just so perfect and adds a certain something to this match. The way Garrini takes things early on is markedly different from how he takes them later on.

Between the actions and reactions of both men in big and little ways, there’s a struggle to the proceedings here if nothing else. It’s not quite to the level that one may have imagined, but by the time the match draws to a conclusion, it’s one they find all the same.

In the end, Dom simply lacks the offensive arsenal that Kingston has. He lacks any one absolute kill move, whereas Eddie has four or five things he can use to put somebody down. Garrini pushes and presses, survives a few of them, but the match moves to a point at the end where Garrini has obviously lost. King just has to find the right set of things in a row to finally dull the lights just enough. Dom survives a few real gross throws, but three Backfists to the Future in a row finally put him down. An obvious result, but done in such a way that Garrini at least isn’t any lesser for it.

Not my favorite sort of a match, but one filled with enough of the little things that tie matches like these together to make it undeniable in spite of that.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Drew Gulak, CHIKARA Shock and Aww (6/14/2015)

While these two are no strangers to each other under another identity, this is disappointingly one of only two singles matches that they’ve ever had. With Gulak wrestling as himself, it’s the only one they’ve ever had period.

It’s hard to say this lives up to the pressure of being the only Eddie Kingston vs. Drew Gulak match that exists.

It’s even harder to say that this wasn’t great in spite of that.

While deliberately having a match that seemed more muted and restrained match, Kingston and Gulak are still such an easy sort of slam dunk easy math pairing that what they set out to do doesn’t matter quite so much at all. It doesn’t matter as much what the specifics are of what they do, because they’re so perfect at every little thing. It especially doesn’t matter because while they wrestle a quieter sort of a match, it’s still the exact kind of match that this pairing was always capable of excelling at. Gulak attacks a part of the body, and Eddie Kingston guts it out. It’s a sure enough thing that all of the little adjustments don’t affect this as much as they might affect most other matches and most other kinds of matches.

The only major impediment is that Gulak attacks the right arm of Eddie Kingston instead of Eddie’s left long, not allowing Eddie to do the thing he’s the absolute best in the world at, but it still means Eddie gets to sell. He’s not as great on the arm as he is on the leg, primarily because he requires the use of his arms later in a match more. Still, he’s beyond incredible in this specific role as the aggrieved and hobbled killer. People say Eddie Kingston is realer than everyone else and that goes for everything about him, inside the ring and out, but it always feels especially true with performances like these. He’s able to perfectly balance the actual physical pain with this sort of anger at himself for not being at his physical best with a believability and grace almost unmatched throughout wrestling history, only ever bested at times in the role by the man who King reminds me the most of and who he honors that that black and yellow (that’s right it’s Shane Douglas somehow?).

Mechanically, it’s perfect too. Gulak can tear up an arm in a lot of ways, and he turns up the brutality here to make a more believable Kingston foe. It’s the same sort of wrestling on paper, but there’s a marked difference between this and what he does in EVOLVE. It’s less science than it is combat, adjusting perfectly to the feeling present in every single Eddie Kingston match. The purely mechanical isn’t just the realm of Gulak in this match though. The most impressive things to me came out of Eddie Kingston and the small ways he furthered the story of a bad right arm. There’s a point early on where Eddie gets up shaking his arm, but does so with it extended to Gulak, as if to feed him it to keep the focus there and nowhere else. Eddie also takes the injured right arm to the next level by not grabbing his right forearm with the left hand when trying to grab a Crossface, but grabbing the right elbow instead, unable to put any pressure on the forearm, wrist, or hand on the damaged arm. It’s the smallest touches, but with wrestlers this great, it always is.

In the end, some things are unavoidable, sadly. If Eddie wins, he has to use his right arm, and this is absolutely a match Eddie should win at this point. Eddie lands a Backfist to the Future, and compounds the damage with a Backdrop Suplex to guarantee the win despite the bad arm, importantly always registering the damage to himself as well.

It’s not the sort of ending I love in a match like this, but few can likely do it better and smarter than these two.

Even working a decidedly undercard match in the middle of the card, talent simply finds a way. Especially when working a match like this that plays to almost all of the best things both men are capable of. It’s not what it could be or what it should be, but given the careers that both man have had and will go on to have, neither is any stranger to making the most out of table scraps.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Davey Richards, AAW The Art of War (2/28/2015)

This was for Kingston’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

STUNNINGLY this is not a great match.

They’re too different, and meeting in the middle basically never works like you’d want it to. Each man gives a little to the other, but it’s primarily Davey trying to do an Eddie match. He works the arm instead of the leg, but it’s good all the same. Eddie then cedes his own ground and they have a big dumb finishing run, resulting in the post-peak Davey classic, a match that’s only nineteen minutes but that feels closer to half an hour.

Mostly though, it’s yet another example from AAW of Eddie Kingston being the best limb seller in the country, if not the world, and how it can elevate a match. This was never going to be great, but by letting Eddie do one of the things he does best, it at least wound up being pretty good.

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Josh Alexander, AAW Chaos Theory (1/23/2015)

This was for Kingston’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

It’s too long and Josh Alexander is still too limited for this to be a GREAT match, but if you want a classic example of the way in which Eddie Kingston’s knee selling can elevate a match, this is it. It’s totally fine otherwise, it’s hardly a match that I hated watching, but Eddie’s selling throughout really brings it to a different level. It’s fitting that Kingston rocks the black and yellow during this, because it’s yet another reminder that the only other wrestler in history this consistently good at selling a knee injury wore the same colors in the 1990s, and I don’t mean Shane Douglas, although all respect.

Despite the flaws, it’s impossible to hate a match with a “You’re a Noggy” reference on commentary.

Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston, AIW Charge It To The Underhills (12/26/2014)

There are few things better in wrestling than a match that you know will be great, but that finds a way to be great in a surprising way.

If it isn’t one of the meanest matches of the year, this is certainly the dirtiest and grimiest great match of the year.

There’s a very weird atmosphere to this that does a lot for the match.

It’s been five years and the hate isn’t really there anymore. If it is, it’s under the surface. They no longer feel like their eyes are on fire when they stare at each other, this all consuming sort of a thing having settled back down into this dull sort of an ache. It’s what happens when you’re not around someone you hate so often anymore and then you run into them again. I lived with a horrible roommate once and when we were around each other all the time, there was nobody that I hated any more in the world. Years later, we wound up working in the same place, and while the feeling didn’t have the same sort of intensity, it never went away either. In a lot of ways, it’s their most relatable match to me. I can’t really understand a blood feud, but I can absolutely understand just detesting a co worker in this sort of nagging ache kind of a way where all you want in the world is to not lose ground. I have to imagine I’m not alone in that. It’s far more universal and adult than the 2000s stuff, no matter how much better some of those matches might be than this.

There’s nothing worse than seeing someone you loathe again and them clearly being better off now, and it’s clearly where Eddie Kingston is at here.

Hero is fatter and older, but he’s very clearly still CHRIS HERO. Kingston is one of the best wrestlers in the world still, but he’s not as prominent as he was. AAW and AIW aren’t exactly 2011 CHIKARA in terms of reach and influence, and Hero immediately went back into every place he was working when he left. Hero’s better off, Eddie and the world know it, so Eddie puts everything in himself into not losing. It’s another of these incredibly human moments from Kingston, the urge to simply not fail seeming to be stronger than the urge to really succeed. Eddie’s one of the best sellers in wrestling history, and I’m not talking about the knee here. He’s just as good at selling a knock out or simply being dazed for a moment, and he does it like five to ten times here, all in wildly different and equally fascinating ways. They all stand apart on their own, but each one of them is tinged with the same sense of desperation.

The match itself is so dirty and drawn out too, it’s not just about the story being more down to Earth. There’s not a lot of cheating, nobody ever really uses a weapon, but it still might be the best brawl of the year. There’s a sot of THEY LIVE kind of a quality to it once they get going. No pair of glasses can get these two on the same page, but in terms of the long and drawn out and increasingly grimy quality to the fight. Nothing is ever solved, but they absolutely will not and can not stop this. After an initial faster and more purposeful flurry, the fight begins to take a turn. It’s pettier and pettier, each man sinks lower, they’re audibly breathing heavy and grunting. There’s a desperation to the fight that I’m not sure ever quite existed between these two. While Eddie’s motivation here seems to just be not to lose, there are also these great moments in this match where it seems like they could easily go for a kill, but it seems like they’d rather keep fighting. It’s so different, not just from some of their other matches, but from so much of indie wrestling in 2014.

The only thing about this I don’t love is the final moments. Eddie’s a heel in AIW, so pulling the ref in the way to create an opening makes sense. It makes sense and it fits in with his increasing desperation throughout the match. What I don’t love is the finish itself, as Eddie hits four or five Saito suplexes in a row, a couple of Rolling Backfists, and then the northern Sliding D for the win. It’s not a finish I love, and especially not in a match like this. Eddie winning is the right call, he’s the one who needs it, but the flurry feels more like normal pro wrestling than anything else in the match, and in a match so brutal, I don’t love it ending on something that might not be the twentieth best or meanest thing Kingston did in it.

Still.

STILL.

An incredible and exceptional match, truly one of the best of the year. It’s the one major chance Eddie Kingston had in 2014 against another all-world talent, and a great reminder that he’s still one of the best alive. As great as Hero was at being a mountain, there are few wrestlers of the generation who I would rather see try to climb a mountain than Eddie Kingston, no matter what role he’s in. The fact that he was able to do it in his last ever chance (to date, 7/2/2021) at it makes a match like this all the more satisfying in the end.

It’s not like it was, but it still lands with the same force that it always did, if not more than ever with a more grounded approach. The best stories grow with you, and this is one of the best that independent wrestling has ever told.

***1/2

 

The Briscoes vs. Outlaw Inc. (Eddie Kingston & Homicide), ROH Raising The Bar Night Two (3/2/2014)

A god damned HOOT, as Homicide runs back into the Briscoes nearly a decade after those first incidents.

It’s a normal match which quickly gets entirely out of hand and is restarted as a nebulous sort of no disqualification affair. It’s in the first half of the card and ROH shows are still laid out in a relatively old-school way, even post-Cornette. What that means is that you can get the tone of a real fight and they can fight outside, but all they’re really given to communicate this with besides their physical forms are chairs to throw at each other and do a precious few things onto. Of course, this is outside of a wonderful little moment where the fans began chanting for tables, so Homicide and Mark Briscoe immediately moved things out to the apron so Homicide could take a bump off the apron and onto the table at ringside. Just a quick little thing to give the people what they want that only serves to win them over even more and keep them hot for the rest of the match. Outside of that, they’re limited in what they can really do.

Not that it matters.

Fortunately, these four are real high on a list of guys who can be trusted with a structureless sort of chair throwing and hitting but ultimately bloodless fight. They’re all insane. Each chair is thrown with a real reckless sort of motion and virtually never blocked in a way that makes it seem phony. It doesn’t always go right, but this is the sort of match where the accidents only make the match better. Then of course, all four of these guys are psychotic and did some real gross stuff in the end, particularly Kingston coming down a little far out for a Spinebuster on a chair and his head collapsing the seat instead. Following that, Homicide got hit with the Jay Driller and it was over.

The whole Outlaw Inc. run is a real weird thing, as nobody seemed to have any idea exactly what to do with these guys since they weren’t brought in to ever win the titles. They floated around a lot and it was sometimes fun and mostly a real weird clash of styles. This was the one time it seemed like everyone got on the same page about what they could be, and accordingly, it’s the best thing they did in ROH by a thousand miles.

An incredibly fun little brawl.

***

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