Team CHIKARA (Eddie Kingston/Hallowicked/UltraMantis Black/Frightmare/Tim Donst/Gran Akuma/3.0) vs. Team ROH (Kevin Steen/The Briscoes/The Young Bucks/Jimmy Jacobs/The Bravado Brothers), CHIKARA The Cibernetico Rises (11/18/2012)

This was the yearly Torneo Cibernetico match. For the uninitiated, there are two teams of eight wrestlers, with a specific batting order of who can tag in first, second, etc. Eliminations happen until only one man is left.

This isn’t quite as heated as the 2010 BDK vs. CHIKARA classic, but it’s much more heated and intense from the start than your usual Cibernetico. Most of that is the Steen and Kingston issue but the ROH team has some incredibly goons on it too. The Bravados and Young Bucks are perfect cowards in different ways, The Briscoes are goddamned animals at points here, and Jimmy Jacobs is somewhere in between those poles. The CHIKARA team is weaker, and the match suffers for building around Tim Donst, a total nothing, but the booking and work on the other side is largely good enough to make this stand out anyways.

The chaos first claims Frightmare, dealing with a lingering knee injury that Team ROH exploits for five to ten minutes in the second cycle, leading Big Kev submitting him with the Sharpshooter. The match then gets incredibly frantic in the next cycle, in all the best ways. My favorite thing about a Cibernetico, which you see in the best ones (2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, this) is that you can keep a fast pace up for a long time without blowing anything immediately. You have sixteen people to start with, no reason to not be able to do this and keep it fun and feeling consequential. This has more behind it, but it’s the same philosophy done to perfection. Everyone’s great here, but a few guys really stand out in this phase of the match, especially Eddie Kingston.

UltraMantis Black also goes on an absolute tear. There’s a phenomenal sequence with Jimmy Jacobs, but he also just about runs through the Bravado Brothers too. Mantis is cool as hell, but every once and a while, you get an UltraMantis Black performance where he wants to remind you that, yeah, he’s genuinely really great at this.

Mantis eliminates Harlem Bravado first with the Cosmic Doom and then Lancelot with a Wrist-Clutch Regal Plex of sorts. On a more micro scale, the booking here is incredible too. UMB immediately feels for real again and like an actual force, so when Jay Briscoe comes in and steamrolls him to put it back at six-on-six, it helps Jay Briscoe and also serves as this crushing elimination. The Briscoes also easily handle Akuma and take advantage of rules to get rid of him, before our hero Jagged/Scott Parker manages a roll up on Mark Briscoe (called repeatedly “Brother Mark” by the dullard Gavin Loudspeaker on commentary for some reason) to put it to five on five.

These matches can very rarely be wall to wall insanity either though, unless they’re spotfest masterpieces like 2009’s or are only thirty-something minutes like 2010’s. Once it’s down to five on five, the match calms down significantly, and it’s wonderful. Kevin Steen is a big asshole who keeps running from Eddie Kingston. The Young Bucks, Jay Briscoe, and Jimmy Jacobs all play to their strengths, with the three cowards making Jay now do much of the work in this period. And it goes fine! Jay totally handles everything, and gets another elimination off with the Jay Driller on Hallowicked. Sadly, Donst then sneaks in and grabs his weird From Dusk Til Donst (ugh) hold on Jay to eliminate him, before getting out of there. The match exists in a very weird space where it constantly serves to highlight Tim Donst, but also seems to accept that he isn’t anywhere near as good as the other people he’s in the ring with at this point in the match.

The final run is pretty exceptional too. What it might be lacking in some areas is made up for the overall feeling they’ve built up, the heroics of Team CHIKARA, and the SCUM-my nature of Team ROH. Eddie Kingston has to finally get in and go on a run himself to get it done, and the result is a Backfist to the Future on Jimmy Jacobs and Team CHIKARA having its first lead of the match. The Young Bucks suddenly turn it on to stop his run, and instead of fighting them, Tim Donst dives onto Eddie, turns on him, and begins pummeling him instead. It’s better than Donst wrestling, but something about it just still feels off. You’re not going to get me to want to see this match outside of the year 2007. You’re not. The 3.0 vs. Young Bucks stuff here is better than any of their tag title matches due to the short length and how much of the set up work has already been done. Both Bucks get eliminated by 3.0 members, leaving Steen in there at the end with Shane Matthews. BIG MAGIC forces Steen to use his real finisher on him to eliminate him, and Steen effectively wins, outside of this other CHIKARA story.

King is able to roll up Steen because he won’t stop talking shit, and Team ROH is gone.

But one man always has to win the Cibernetico, and if it’s multiples left on the same team…again, one man has to win.

Kingston kicks out before Donst uses his manager’s loaded European man purse on Kingston for the win.

The first 95% of this is really really great. It came off much better now than I had remembered it. Everyone involved does a terrific job, the pace is blistering, and every single person in this rises to the occasion. Save for the guy who won. The problem I still have with this is the ending, where a big payoff is sacrificed to build up to a match that’s a thousand times less interesting and which highlights the least interesting, entertaining, and all around worst guy in the match.

It’s the sort of bargain that CHIKARA has always made, serving characters and stories first and foremost. It wasn’t such a hard bargain to make with good characters and great wrestlers. Very easy to track the decline of CHIKARA to the moments when these moments began serving stories, characters, and wrestlers who weren’t capable of holding up their end.

Luckily, the 5% of this that wasn’t so good or interesting didn’t wash out everything that came before it. One of the all time great CHIKARA Cibernetico matches, likely the third or fourth best one.

As always, if you want to know everything you need to know about CHIKARA in a given year, watch the Cibernetico. Some big problems, the magic touch is slipping if not gone entirely, but there’s still such an enormous level of talent with most of the top guys that in big situations, it doesn’t matter quite so much.

***1/2

Kevin Steen vs. Eddie Kingston, ROH Boiling Point (8/11/2012)

This was for Steen’s ROH World Title.

It’s your usual Kevin Steen no rules ROH gimmick match, but now with Eddie Kingston in there to do the things that Kevin Steen has trouble with (really good selling, being an all time great sympathetic babyface) to even everything out and elevate things just a little bit. Eddie is almost stretchered out following a powerbomb through an upside down table bridge, but when Steen says that Larry Sweeney would think Eddie was a pussy, Eddie comes back in and the match has a lot more to it suddenly.

Kingston’s back selling is top notch.

It’s not quite all time level stuff, but it’s the sort of performance that shows WHY Eddie Kingston is an all time great wrestler, if that makes any sense. Nothing happens from that point on where his back doesn’t play a significant role in how or why it happens. He can’t cover immediately after the big moves he hits, and then has to deal with an interfering Corino and Jacobs on top of that. Steen goes directly after the back when he gets a chance, and the combination of the rare focus and of how great Eddie Kingston is in this role means it’s the rare time in ROH where Kevin Steen is someone actually worth hating.

Real nasty F-Cinq on two open chairs, side by side, gives Big Kev the win.

It never quite felt like these two had the best match that they could have ever had, but when you look a little closer, you might realize that such a thing was maybe never possible. ROH is ROH, things don’t get to be as great here as they could be elsewhere, but Kevin Steen also isn’t busting his ass anywhere that isn’t ROH or PWG. Eddie Kingston will always bring it, his performance is never the issue, but he’s an outsider whose reputation ROH doesn’t care all that much about. He’s here to lose and get heat on Big Kev. Mission accomplished. Eddie would be more protected in CHIKARA, but Kevin Steen won’t be inclined to try quite so hard there and they certainly wouldn’t get to do everything that Steen needs to do at this point to have a great match. So, this is the best we’ll ever get from this pairing, and it’s still a pretty great match.

Not blowaway great, but a super fun and gripping Kevin Steen Weapons Brawl, elevated by happening for once against a non-masked all time great sympathetic character. Come because you heard about how good Steen used to be, stay because Eddie Kingston is the absolute best.

***1/4

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

This was for Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship.

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

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

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Mike Bailey, C*4 Triumph (4/21/2012)

This one’s on IWTV’s Best of C*4 Volume One compilation, if you’re like me and immediately ran to watch it once you found out that, yes, this actually happened.

Like with the El Generico match the previous year, this is not a fully realized Mike Bailey. He’s still a boy. He’s working in shorts. But he’s close enough to what he’ll become that an all time great can throw him into his match and it works. Perfect Eddie Kingston touring heel match, walking the line as well as possible so as to give Bailey something big while also not losing anything himself. He’s dismissive and has fun with the kid, because he’s not a threat. He turns it up here and there, pounds the hell out of Young Young Karate, but it never feels like it’s the best he can do.

And because I mean that in a kayfabe sort of a way, it totally works!

Because obviously, Eddie Kingston isn’t mailing it in. There’s Eddie matches I haven’t loved here and there, but he’s never felt like a dude mailing it in. He’s always there — like in this match — with enough little touches and really fun little moments that every match has something to it. A sense that he cared about this match, even if he didn’t kill himself in it or produce some kind of epic.

The sense that Eddie isn’t taking Bailey seriously and that he’s thrown off his guard is just enough to let Bailey come out of this feeling like he’s done something. Eddie begins to take him seriously more near the end, but while he’s not exactly flustered,he still doesn’t feel like he gets how special this kid is. One big thing isn’t going to do it, because Seedball keeps coming and coming, and surprising Eddie with fancier kicks or inventive (for 2012) twisting dives. Eddie never really gets going in the way that he does with matches he tends to win, and Bailey surprisingly chokes him out in a Triangle Choke for the win.

While this isn’t what you might go into it expecting, it’s impossible to imagine anyone being let down by this. Another early glimpse at how good Bailey can be, another great Eddie Kingston performance, and a textbook example of how to go about navigating a match and a situation like this.

The shame of this isn’t that it wasn’t some grand epic, the shame of this is more that this is the only singles match they’ve ever had.

An embarrassment to every US promoter in 2014-16 when Seedball was hot and available, and yet another embarrassment to every UK promoter over the last year.

***

 

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

This was for Kingston’s CHIKARA Grand Championship title.

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

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

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

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

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

***1/4

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

(ANOTHER DISCLAIMER: nothing I say here should be read as praise for Mike Quackenbush the person. This is going to be an overwhelmingly positive review, so let’s get it out of the way very early on. Fuck him. It doesn’t erase a remarkable body of work, and while I’m not ever going to tell someone to go out of their way to watch someone’s work if it makes them uncomfortable, this is perhaps the Quackenbush matches that holds up the best out of all of them because of the result. Again though, not praise for anything but the professional work. If that’s a problem, x out of this one, it’s fine. I’m not upset, it’s a valid thing to do. You might be a little bummed about the 2011 YEAR IN LISTS too because he had a hell of a year, but also that’s just gonna be like a thing this decade when the British scene gains more and more prominence in the middle of the decade. I don’t know what to do about that. Sorry.)

This was the finals of the 12 Large Summit and the inaugural match for the CHIKARA Grand Championship.

Before watching this, one should watch The Eddie Kingston Promo. THE Eddie Kingston promo. It’s the realest, rawest, and most emotional piece ever put out by a guy renowned for cutting real, raw, and emotional promos. It’s one of three to five promos that I would call the best of the decade. In the right frame of mind, you could tell me it’s the best promo of all time. No argument. It’s that good.

The idea of a “money promo” is sort of lost on people of my generation. It’s a cool concept, the whole “talk them into the arenas” thing, but I never really felt promos like that. I’ve been brought to arenas by angles that made me want to see something. I bought a ticket to my first ROH show because I wanted to see CM Punk murder Jimmy Rave in a steel cage, etc. Promos have never really done that for me. I had fallen out of CHIKARA over the last year or two, between moving two states over, a brief drug addiction, not having a great computer or internet connection or money for DVDs like I did as a teenager, throwing myself into college, tutoring, work, all of the things that get in the way of tertiary parts of a hobby. But, I saw this and I needed to see Eddie Kingston do this thing.

I bought the show because of this promo.

It’s an important match, to say the least. It’s the biggest match in CHIKARA history, as its longest delayed major singles match, the first match for the debuting singles title, the finals of the most important tournament CHIKARA ever ran, *and* the main event of the company’s first ever iPPV. It’s so overwhelmingly important that “payoff of a years long redemption story for the company’s all time greatest hero” isn’t a guaranteed number one reason. That is still a hell of a reason though. Having it come against Quackenbush is maybe the greatest little touch in all of this. Eddie Kingston could have done this by finally overcoming Claudio Castagnoli (and was maybe supposed to?) or another student, but it’s the ultimate validation to instead have it come not only against his trainer, but against this guy, this monolith of what CHIKARA is, this monument to How Things Are Supposed To Be Done. Bryan is gone, Hero is gone(ish), all these people are gone, and Mike Quackenbush is all that’s left of the now-old unemotional technical genius archetype that used to be the trademark of all the old kings. It’s always been the contrast to the wild emotionality of Eddie Kingston. Every outburst, turn, bender, and step over the line Eddie’s done in and/or around CHIKARA has stood out in contrast to the calm consistency of guys like Quackenbush, Castagnoli, and Hero atop the promotion in the past. If this is Eddie Kingston’s official and formal ascent to that position, it’s also Quackenbush formally becoming the last of a dying breed himself. This match is the closest thing we ever had to a real and proper changing of the guard match from style to style and era to era, even if that change already happened (I would put the marker down here at the 2011 BOLA, for the main event, Generico finally beating Claudio, and the Kings putting the Young Bucks over).

It especially stands out as such because of how literally they take that, and how literally they take the styles clash. Each man has a definitive style they want to wrestle and while they are both completely capable of meeting in the middle, the most interesting approach is to make the subtext the actual text. The best part of the match for me might be the first minute, where Quack casually tries to go into his usual wristlocks and Eddie immediately asserts himself with an elbow out the first time and a chop out the second. The trademark level head allows Quackenbush to keep at it, but when Eddie’s leg gives out running off the ropes, Quackenbush wastes no time getting serious. It’s a major strength that they not only take no more than a minute or two to really get into the meat of the thing, but also that it’s a moment with real weight behind it if someone’s been following along.

A month ago, Mike Quackenbush fought Sara Del Rey in the de facto semi finals. Sara had no history of leg injuries, and Quackenbush similarly made a decision early on to target the knee, stuck with it, and won as a result. Eddie Kingston has a history of knee problems. They’ve cost him against Castagnoli. They’ve cost him against Danielson. They’ve cost him a lot of times in a lot of matches, it’s not just about these losses to wrestlers like Mike Quackenbush, but it’s also a lot about this familiar situation coming around again, now with a little more recent history to hang over it. Of course, Eddie Kingston’s selling is terrific. I’ll say it until people accept it as a truism, Eddie Kingston is the best knee seller of his generation. I only fail to call him the best knee seller of all time because Toshiaki Kawada was a little better, and he was the best wrestler of an entire decade. Eddie is so good at this. All the little touches, all the big touches. I wrote about Moxley vs. Regal that aired a week before this that Moxley’s arm selling felt real because at every point that a pro wrestler might do something minor because it’s how you do a thing, Moxley would do it in a way that a man with one arm would do it. Eddie Kingston is the same way with the leg, and he succeeds for all the same reasons, because he feels realer than everything else around him.

Just as much credit belongs with Quackenbush for how great this match is. I know that’s…you know, whatever. Feel how you feel, it’s all valid. Being a piece of shit doesn’t erase the work done, all of that, it’s not a conversation I feel the need to put into print here, so I think we can leave it there and in the disclaimer. But he’s so great here. The little facial tics reacting to not only not being the firm favorite, but a crowd and the increasing mass at ringside, mostly students of his, all being 100% against him for any number of reasons. The mechanical work itself. He also gets meaner and meaner, not just about the hurt knee, but in general. He goes to the eyes at a point! It’s perfect for Eddie’s big moment, validating every point he ever made about CHIKARA’s superheroes/Super Friends.

It’s a fascinating performance that not only takes him further than he’s ever gone as a character, elevating the situation beyond what it already was, but turns him into a representation of something else. An old order to be torn down, this symbol of everything Eddie still has to get past and overcome. I think this match ages incredibly no matter what, but with everything that’s gone on in 2020, it’s the aspect of this match that ages the best. It would be one thing for me to hold this up given what’s gone on, but with the match turning Quackenbush into a monolith to be torn down, it’s entirely possible that for some people, this might be an even better match now because of it. I don’t know. It didn’t factor into the latest viewing of this classic, but I’m not you. Give it a shot.

The match, essentially, is Mike Quackenbush trying to plug a damn. He can’t let Eddie get moving and do Eddie Kingston stuff. Quackenbush can win in his match, and absolutely cannot win in Eddie Kingston’s match. Once the dam breaks, he’s fucked, and he knows it. When it breaks open finally, the match is over within a minute. It’s incredibly cool to see how totally correct that little estimation is. It’s a little touch that, in the background of Eddie Kingston’s crowning moment, puts Quackenbush over as this old little genius who had the complete right read on a situation. Eddie does too though, even if he has to make a concession to the old ways just this once. Eddie knocks Quackenbush off the top rope near the end with a Backfist to the Future to the legs. It’s a magnificent bump by Quackenbush, and while he’s not quite Eddie, he does a nice little job selling the damage to the leg. It’s the opening Eddie needs to begin to unload, and he does. It’s a concession to every complaint about Eddie never stopping to think, but a concession ultimately doesn’t mean shit if Eddie wins anyways.

A barrage of suplexes leads to two Backfists to the Future in a row, and Eddie Kingston wins the 12 Large Summit, the Grand Championship, and so much more than that which cannot be summed up within a trophy or a belt.

It’s the emotional high point of the entire company. It is the long long long overdue catharsis for one of independent wrestling’s all time great characters and heroes. It’s a match that you could realistically call the best singles match in company history. I wouldn’t, this is a Fire Ant vs. Vin Gerard loyalist blog (and Kingston/Castagnoli III in 2009 beyond that too), but it’s the sort of thing someone could say to me and I wouldn’t argue with it or be mad at all. It’s a completely logical thing to say and to believe in. Beyond what it means, it’s also just an incredibly tight match. It’s among the most efficient epics in the history of U.S. independent wrestling. It’s pared down and austere as hell (like most of the tournament, which is SO cool to have reflected in the finals), but it’s all great — every goddamned second — so it doesn’t matter. There is a point to to everything that they do, everything in the match matters, and there is stunningly little fit on it. Every piece of this matters and has value. It matters, it’s perfectly constructed, and beyond that, it feels good as hell.

This match is both great and Important, and you should absolutely make the time for it if you haven’t yet somehow.

****

 

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Fire Ant, CHIKARA Martyr Yourself to Caution (9/18/2011)

This was a Block B match in the 12 Large Summit to determine the first CHIKARA Grand Champion.

If not for, at very worst, the second greatest CHIKARA singles match of all time happening only two months later, this would be the best singles match to happen in CHIKARA in 2011.

Long time CHIKARA fans will know that while it’s a first time one on one encounter, it’s not a NEW pairing, but it’s also been something like four years since those Colony vs. BLK-OUT tags that put The Colony on the map. It’s been a long enough time with enough significant changes that it may as well have never happened before. It certainly feels like it’s never happened before. It definitely feels like a big deal. CHIKARA’s all time most endearing babyface wrestler takes on CHIKARA’s all time greatest character.

Beyond simply that it’s a first time match up between two exceptional wrestlers and two of the all time company MVPs, it’s an incredibly interesting match too. The crowd loves both men, and they could easily produce an exciting and cool fifty-fifty sort of a match without doing anything but wrestling. Instead, it being New York, Eddie Kingston takes offense to some people not totally loving him. He does some crowd work, gets very specifically mean with a few people, and gets more and more aggressive as the match goes on and Fire Ant doesn’t let him get away with things. The best stuff is about transformation, and Eddie Kingston initially taking this very lightly, before getting more and more pissed off is so much more interesting than another face-face match. Because while Eddie Kingston is a tremendous babyface, he’s just as good if not better when he get mean as hell.

It’s been a long enough time since he got properly mean as hell in CHIKARA, against someone this beloved, that it’s special again. It matters so much more now because it’s a rarity, relatively speaking, and the entire match feels bigger and more important for it.

Fire Ant is, once again, an all time great sympathetic character. He’s specifically expressive in the ways that all great full mask wrestlers are, but always aggressive fighting back too. Like in his effort against Jigsaw in July, there’s a very specific route that he could take, which he doesn’t for a while, only reinforcing what a good person he is. It stood out then, but against a guy like Eddie Kingston, who so willingly and gleefully gives in when he gets even just a little bit mad, it especially stands out. Eddie limps around early on on his historically crummy leg, but Fire Ant stays away from it. Even initially coming back, it’s not something he does. He fights back and beats the hell out of Eddie too, but he avoids the leg initially. Fire Ant isn’t the type to try and hurt anyone, but he’s also not ever going to take anybody’s shit and eventually the leg not only becomes a way to return fire and be mean to King in return, but also a pretty easy way to try and win the match. The result is that, like the Jigsaw match, it means a lot more when he’s pushed to a point where he does go after it. The difference is both that now he’s doing it against one of the great leg sellers in the history of wrestling and that it feels a little cathartic too after the way Eddie’s treated him. Jigsaw was sympathetic. It was hurt and there and Fire Ant did what he had to. The same is true here, but Eddie brings it on himself a whole lot more with the way he treats Fire Ant in the first half.

Comparatively, it’s another classic Eddie Kingston match where he only brings the problems upon himself by pushing it to that point, for the most part. It’s hard to say Fire Ant is wrong for going after the leg when he gets a chance to, because Eddie was such an overbearing prick to him in the first half. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel for Eddie. He pushed Fire Ant to the point to do something about it, but it’s still this constant nagging injury yet again being exploited. It’s a beautiful thing when a match this great can develop not in a way that suits the action, but in a way that suits these specific characters. It’s not a great match that happens to involve Eddie Kingston and Fire Ant, it is a great match that very specifically feels like only these two could have had this exact match.

Sadly, it’s not a perfect match, and like usual, it’s a booking concern.

Following a series of terrific Fire Ant crowd dives, Vin Gerard attacks Eddie Kingston’s knee while he’s down, before being ejected by security. It feels out of place within the match itself, as Fire Ant’s already fought back on his own and hurt Kingston with the dives, but also has no real value, because Eddie Kingston is able to fight through it eventually to win the match. It had no value in the match and only served to diminish (even just slightly) what they’d already accomplished, and as a feud, it’s not worth pursuing. This sole piece of booking is what holds the match back from being an all-time great CHIKARA match.

It’s such a shame too, because the third of the match following that is incredible. Fire Ant walks the tightrope perfectly by not immediately going for the leg but uses it as an anchor once and then as a last prayer when the Beach Break doesn’t work. The leg is damaged enough to slow King and to put some doubt into the match when he begins bombing out poor Fire Ant. Final minutes are some of the best in wrestling anywhere in the world at the time. Fire Ant delivers a master class on how to handle a one count kickout spot, feeling less performative than it does desperate and mad as hell, and the three or four big nearfalls are triumphant and hopeful, and never ever overwhelming. Eddie never lets up once he’s come back in the end though. Fire Ant survives the Backfist, a Backdrop Driver, but when he kicks out of the Sliding D, King follows up with the Northern Sliding D to knock him out for the win.

It feels very weird that he won, honestly. Following the way he wrestled this match and with the booking in the middle of it, and the way the knee was handled, it felt like a match that he probably should have lost. The match feels like it’s leading to a Fire Ant victory that never actually comes, and it’s a very un-CHIKARA like problem. CHIKARA, despite the bevy of behind the scenes issues, worked so well because it tended to punish characters for mistakes they made. The booking of the interference muddied those waters, before the match then lets Eddie escape learning any sort of lesson when he just wins anyways. It’s all a little off. Eddie Kingston rules so much because he’s very much one of us, so when he has something of a Superman performance like this, where he comes close to paying for his mistakes only for that lesson not to be learned after all, it stands out so much more. If I have a complaint, it’s this weird tonal issue there that the bad booking only exacerbates.

Still, this is quite an exceptional match before that. One of the great Eddie Kingston performances ever, marrying his gift for realistic and sympathetic knee selling with his gift for just being a difficult person in the first half. You get the face-face match this was always going to be, but in a much more interesting way, where both men are completely correct in the actions that they take, and you can side with whichever one you’d like to. They could have bombed each other out for fifteen minutes, and instead did something far truer to the characters involved and that carried so much more weight because of that, even with the very very weird booking choices in the final third.

The fact that they had something so easy and still made the choices they did is what makes this match so interesting, so great, and what makes a guy like Eddie Kingston one of the best wrestlers of all time. This is the best match of 2011 that nobody ever talks about, and it’s completely understandable. The booking is weird and it’s very easily hidden underneath the gigantic shadow cast by the other best Eddie Kingston match of 2011. Have a little faith though and seek this out.

***3/4

Eddie Kingston vs. Akira Tozawa, CHIKARA King of Trios 2011 Night Three (4/17/2011)

The most impressive thing about this match is how I came away from it almost entirely thinking about Eddie Kingston.

Eddie Kingston is one of the best slugfest style wrestlers of all time. A lot of people can throw out great shots or have great shorter matches but very few have his respect for the finer details of the thing as Eddie does. Something as simple as selling his own hand briefly after throwing a particularly hard chop is the littlest touch that elevates the entire thing up just a little bit. Beyond simply that it makes the chop itself look better, it’s one more of these small touches that humanizes Eddie Kingston so much. Everything is a fight and a struggle for Eddie, even his own offense.

This is a wonderful match, as Akira Tozawa is an absolute machine at this point. He’s magnetic and manic, and even if he’s not the second coming in Philadelphia like he is in Reseda, there’s something here. Across his excursion, Akira Tozawa has had very few singles matches that I left thinking about anyone else. He cannot help but devour every single piece of scenery he encounters, he’s a gigantic presence that puts other people in his shadow simply by standing up straight and fighting. It didn’t happen to Eddie Kingston though. Eddie Kingston isn’t a manic sort of fighter in the way Tozawa is, but he’s magnetic enough that for the first time in a while, Tozawa feels like he’s in somebody else’s match and not the opposite.

Like usual with Kingston matches in CHIKARA, and with most things in CHIKARA, they rarely just happen. Eddie Kingston is mad about losing to Castagnoli again and being unable to pursue immediate revenge because of Castagnoli’s final NOAH tour happening at the same time. He’s given another big singles opponent, like Generico three months before, and is allowed to try and punch his feelings out. There’s an interesting little bit here that’s at least a little bit fanwankery, as Kingston uses some rarer moves here, even trying to go to the top rope. Given that he doesn’t have a lot of issues with Tozawa and probably was always going to beat him, it reads more like frustration and an attempt to change things, because something here isn’t working.

It ultimately doesn’t matter all that much, as following the Backfist to the Future and a Backdrop Driver, Eddie wins as he was always going to. It’s another small little touch in an Eddie Kingston slugfest though, the sort of thing that makes this just a little more than twelve great minutes I’ll rarely think about again. Akira Tozawa rules. Eddie Kingston is the best.

***

 

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Arik Cannon, CHIKARA King of Trios 2011 Night Two (4/16/2011)

i was a highwayman/along the coach roads i did ride

with sword and pistol by my side

Hell of a match to talk about.

This match is not this match. Eddie Kingston and Arik Cannon have a great little sprint of a fight but this is about the entrance, and the tribute, and all of these other things.

Still though, great! Arik Cannon and Eddie Kingston are two great wrestlers and this is a sort of heavyweight slugfest that Kingston in particular excels at. Mechanically, it’s wonderful. They’re constantly hammering each other, and like their tremendous 2006 match, Kingston sells neck damage through selling of pain in the shoulder following a big landing on the floor, and it’s the best. He’s the best. Eddie wins with the Sliding D. That feels secondary, because there was absolutely no way Eddie was losing this match. What matters is how airtight this was and how good it felt.

Of course, the actual thing about this match though is that it’s happening at all. This was Eddie Kingston’s first match following the suicide of Larry Sweeney five days earlier, and everyone is feeling every type of way about it. We’re still feeling some type of way about it. Eddie comes out to “Highwayman”, one of Sweeney’s favorite songs so it’s said, and in an old Sweet & Sour shirt. Eddie turns on the game face when the bell rings, but the crowd is with him like they’re rarely with anyone. It’s a part of this match. It’s also the beginning of the greatest story CHIKARA’s ever told, and I do not say that lightly.

***

Chris Hero/Necro Butcher/Candice LeRae vs. Human Tornado/Necro Butcher/Claudio Castagnoli, PWG All Star Weekend 6 Night One (1/5/2008)

This is in the middle of one of the great feuds in independent wrestling history, as Human Tornado turned into an EVIL PIMP and Chris Hero finally became a hero and saved Candice LeRae from his ire. In the process, Tornado turned Castagnoli against a now distracted partner and brought in Hero’s top nemesis as well. Hero doesn’t often get to actually play the hero, especially at the time here when he’s left CHIKARA, is sparser and sparser in IWA Mid South, and is horrifically underutilized in ROH. I can’t credit the feud with PWG’s ascent or anything, that’s a result of ROH’s drop off post-Gabe as much as anything else, but as a fan in 2008, I was incredibly willing to give my money to the only company to correctly utilize one of the best wrestlers in the world, and I know I wasn’t alone in that. The feud as a whole is among the best things Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has ever done, and this is one of my favorite matches

It’s not some spectacle of violence, but it’s quite the enthralling little fight in its own right.

Of course, you have three of the best brawlers in the history of independent wrestling, even if Hero is a small level below Kingston and the all time-king Necro, but the others hold their own. Human Tornado could be viewed as dragging it down with his more textbook independent junior heavyweight offense, but when he’s portrayed as the cowardly top heel using Claudio and Kingston as protection, that’s a lot more okay! Claudio is also out of his element, but this match belongs much more to the other two members of his team and Castagnoli commits no harm and thus no foul.

At a point, this memorably goes out of the building and into the rain. They fight for several minutes outside.

The god damned Necro Butcher begins picking up small rocks off the ground and starts throwing them at his opponents. As much as digging a CVS bag out of his pocket, this is the Necro Butcher in one spot. It’s fucking wild, it’s brutal in its own way, but there’s such a charm to it at the same time. I’ve been thinking about it with some regularity since I first saw this show in 2008.

If there is such a thing as a perfect spot, this is it.

Claudio Castagnoli adds something to it when he eats shit on the wet pavement and has rain water poured out of a recycling can onto him, but this is the Necro Butcher’s moment.

The match becomes something more normal back inside the building, but never loses this sort of fury. Candice LeRae is here trying her best, because there’s nobody else for Chris Hero and Necro Butcher, and because she deserves to get her own revenge. There’s a fine line here, before intergender wrestling was all that common (this is her first try at it in PWG, actually), and she walks the tightrope perfectly. She’s good enough to catch people off balance and pissed off and gutsy enough to keep going for her revenge, but eventually gets rocked yet again by Tornado. Hero is a tremendous face in peril. Chris Hero was )is) so great at everything that he often found himself working as a bad guy to help out people without his natural aptitude, but he’s as good as face as you could ask for in this. Beyond just hitting really hard and doing cool stuff, he’s got that fire in his belly in the first third of the match, but then adheres perfectly to the Steamboat Principle when he’s getting beaten down.

All hell breaks loose again, and it’s terrific. This match is mean as hell and consistently out of control, but they also keep up such a frantic pace to it. This is a match with a segment involving a man throwing rocks at three other men, but it is still a PWG match, and I say that in a nice way for once. It can hold both things at once, without losing the entire value of each thing. It’s a brawl with the pacing and layout of a 1996 Michinoku Pro match, even hitting a dive train of sorts near the end. The finish is perfect too. Candice shows the heart to fight her way back into it, and almost gets on a roll against Eddie Kingston, except that she stops being on a roll. Chris Hero intercepts the Backfist to the Future to protect her and Hero’s nemesis defeats him again with the Backdrop Driver. This is a vicious match with an incredibly mean spirit to it, but that’s an ending with real heart to it. Our heroes fought the good fight and had it won, but Hero chose the immediate moral good over a professional victory. f it was the end of this all, it would be incredibly bleak and nihilistic. It isn’t though. It’s something to avenge, a tremendous character beat in the middle of PWG’s greatest storyline.

The strength of this match is how much it manages to be at once. It’s a brawl, it’s a spotfest in its own way, it’s some classic pro wrestling. It’s everything. This is not a bloodletting or a match with the intensity of one of the bigger Necro singles matches of a Hero/Kingston encounter of the year past, but it’s just so much god damned fun. It’s violent, mean, part of maybe PWG’s all time great feud, but at the end of the day, I keep coming back to this because it’s such a blast. I can’t imagine watching this and not having the time of your life.

An ageless pick-me-up. Give it a whirl.

***1/2