2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

15. Eddie Kingston v. Silas Young AAW 3/21

PAS: Big match Eddie Kingston is still definitely an awesome thing. This is the kind of nasty fist fight wrestling he excels at and I love. They have an awesome set up video for this match establishing how Kingston attacked Young's wife when he was a heel, Young won the feud, Kingston came back to AAW as a babyface and Young turned heel on the fans because they were cheering him. Such a cool angle, the classic wrestling trope has everyone ignore the sins of a guy when he turns, I loved that Young couldn't do that. Kingston also cuts one of his greatest promos ever before the match talking about taking Zoloft to stay centered and how he worries about getting shot every time he walks out of his house. Match itself was really violent, but not from weapons shots, or even stereotypical stiff wrestling, but just every blow seemingly landed with a little bit extra thud and hate. Kingston torches his ribs on a guardrail early and spends a lot of the match selling shortness of breath and rib pain. Young seethes the entire time, he does a great job of conveying distaste and hate. Only really quibble was them setting up a avalanche Finlay roll as a huge spot for Young, and Kingston coming back to win pretty soon after, felt a little abrupt, otherwise this was right up there with the best stuff in the world. Its actually good enough to make me go watch the previous months Davey Richards title defense.

ER: I knew nothing about their feud before watching the pre-match video, and after just 3 minutes of video I was pumped for this match like I've been for few this year. Kingston is my favorite promo in wrestling ("You think I could work a 9 to 5 job!?"), and I liked Young's heel turn, yelling at the crowd for cheering a guy like Kingston. Young was pissed and Kingston is a guy who seems to thrive on people being pissed at him. As Phil said, big match Eddie Kingston is an awesome thing. Now, a couple complaints: Young cuts this mean promo beforehand, rightfully pissed at Kingston and rightfully pissed at the fans for still cheering him. It's a good turn that made a lot of sense. And so we cut straight from that to Young making his entrance to "Don't Stop Believing", even waiting for the drums to hit before coming out from the curtain. This is just pure eyerolling idiocy. You can't change your theme music? You can't come out to NO music? Or any other music? Your wife was injured by Kingston, you turned your back on the fans for still supporting Kingston, but you still come out to years-beyond played out, drunk sorority girl scream bait? Completely absurd. Is the song that important to your character of "The Last Real Man"? Is it so important, that after your wife was left injured, and the fans turned on you, you still thought "I'm coming out to MYYYY Journey song, and I'm going to sit behind the curtain until Steve Perry's first vocal break!" It honestly makes me mad just thinking about it. It seems SO OBVIOUS to not do ANY of this, but there it is. My other, second complaint, is that he didn't really seem to work the match any differently than any other Young matches I've seen. There were a couple of moments, one good one in particular, that tied into his angry promo, but other than that was just normal Silas Young. Also, the announcing was noticeably horrible for this match. Yeah, yeah, complaints about indy wrestling commentary. But for a match clearly positioned as a serious grudge, it was just so bad, and it was mostly from the guy whose voice I didn't recognize. Even beyond the usual horrible "shades of" calls (just yelling out Kobashiiiiiii during a series of chops) he kept trying to shoehorn in a horrible "SAVE ME JEBUS" gag throughout and just...no. I'm sure there's a time and place for yelling the same 15 yr old Simpsons reference numerous times, but out of all the matches on the card to do it...man it was just so bad.

Anyway...

So THANKFULLY Young was against Eddie Kingston here, who knows how to have a hateful brawl. Kingston knew what it took to make this seem like a blood feud and Silas brought it enough to make this work. The Young moment I really liked (and mentioned above) was when they brawled to ringside, and he fishhooked Kingston and said "This is the guy you cheer!?" to the crowd. It tied into the anger he showed in his promo, and in a great moment, Kingston used that break to pop him right under the eye. Kingston's selling throughout the match really makes Young look good. The way Kingston flies into the railing, his facials when Young has him in the modified surfboard, him holding his sides before charging into the corner, those kind of things really made me think Young was giving him a merciless beating, and I cringed every time Young smacked him in the ribs. Kingston brings some mean shots throughout this, I loved his mixed up punches to the head, the headbutts up top, his wild dive to the side of the ring with hardly any room. He set up a lot of Young's stuff real well, making it look like he wasn't just hanging out waiting for Young to hit something. Just a real nice match.


2015 MOTY MASTER LIST