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.
HANDWERK 