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

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MLJ: Cavernario vs Titan 1: Blue Panther, Cachorro, Titán vs Cavernario, Felino, Mr. Niebla

Aired 2014-07-12
Taped 2014-07-08 @ Arena México
Blue Panther, Cachorro, Titán vs Cavernario, Felino, Mr. Niebla

I'm dropping everything I've been doing for this. Thus was the power of the recent Barbaro Cavernario vs Titan title match. People really talked it up and while I haven't had a chance to see it yet, I figured it was about time I did a focus on something very up to date.

I'll be honest that Titan is a tecnico that I've seen a bit of, but just a bit, and in what I've seen, I didn't really have the strong need to look for more. I know I'm less high on people like Valiente than most (and certainly Volador, Jr., but I think none of us are super high on him).

I'm sure he hits his moves well, that he's smooth, that he's dynamic. What I don't know is whether he hits the marks I really care about too though, his character work and making those moves matter, and storytelling. I haven't seen enough though, so I don't know, but hey, he's touted highly by a lot of people and I'm looking forward to figuring it out.

I wanted to start after the Busca last year because that's been covered heavily and some of these mid-card trios haven't as much. I'll probably be avoiding tournaments because no one wants to watch tournament lucha. So the plan is to watch everything that they've done  together in the last year or so ending with their recent title match.

First on the docket is Blue Panther, Cachorro, and Titan vs La Pesta Negra. I'd rather we have Casas in this instead of Felino or Niebla, but neither were too offensive here. Felino had his working boots on and Niebla's stooging was a little more tightly focused than usual due to Panther reining him in.

A lot of these matches are going to be fun, mid-card lucha trios and that was the case here. The primera was enjoyable enough. Felino and Cachorro did well together, with a few leglocks and clean breaks. BP and Cavernario did as well (And I liked that they put the young guys in with the vets instead of just matching them up), with their share of limb grabbing and positioning. The second Blue Panther got the advantage the rudos swarmed (Starting with a nice Niebla punch). Titan didn't get a spotlight here save for his bump into the railing on the outside as Cavernario hit his mid ring Vader Bomb to pin BP. This was a pretty standard start, some game, competitive matwork and rudos being rudos.

Between falls the rudos goofed about, with Felino kissing a woman and Cavernario doing goofy kissy faces. Goofy but kind of awesome too:

The lucha equivalent of southern tag ref distraction is absolutely "goading the tecnico in and having your partner ambush him from behind." And Pesta Negra does it really well in the segunda. At one point Felino drew Titan in only to roll away so his partners could get him. At another, Panther came in only to immediately get double teamed by Niebla and Cavernario; then they danced:

Niebla is a bad example for Cavernario. Case in point: the tecnicos come back because Niebla's so busy slapping everyone that he accidentally hit his partner. To make it up, he kissed Cavernario. This distracted everyone in a two mile radius and let the comeback begin. Titan didn't get to do much here, just a plancha into the ring, but he did finish it with a great headstand into a roll up.

And I think that's evidence towards quality. The body language of Cavernario made that work but he couldn't accomplish it without something worthwhile to react to. I think it does show why the two of them are potentially so great a pairing.

They reset for the tercera and there were a number of pairings. Cachorro and Cavernario worked well together with a lot of elaborate but organic stuff. Titan vs Felino was interesting since Felino, more or less went into business himself, trying to get the crowd to boo Titan. The payoff here (and I'm not convinced this payoff would exist without Panther in the ring to control things) was BP working with Titan and getting the crowd to boo Felino big. I'm sure they've done that spot a lot of times, but I think without Panther as the equalizer, Titan's crowd-favor would have been eaten alive by Felino. Panther in general showed me a bunch of character, containing Felino and then clowning for Niebla's strikes:

Especially masterful is how BP manages to sell his belly after getting punched in the face a bunch in order to do a Shocker-Style pulling of his tights. A real maestro, folks. As you can imagine the spit spot followed and then BP clocked Niebla, because that's what he does. It's amazing how much the crowd loves that stupid spot.

Titan vs Cavernario followed and I thought Titan worked the crowd well in a chop exchange. This was followed by an awesome ducked clothesline/hangman's clothesline, crazy stomping and even crazier Cavernario-ing. Great stuff:

Cavernario ended up the top rope but was bicycle kicked off by Titan who then had to contend with Niebla (he did this by matrix-ing under a clothesline so Niebla could go sailing through the ropes). It was a fun little Titan vs the World Segment tht ended with him backflipping over the top rope for fun (which was impressive bug cognitively goofy).

The finish was fun. I always like when it looks like it's going one way and veers another. Here, the tecnicos had set up an estrella, with Titan about to victory roll Niebla in the middle, but Niebla dropped him right on his partner in sort of an unintentional assisted splash. The falls came quick after that, first with a rudo double press slam and Felino elbow drop, then with a Cachorro Fujiwara arm bar out of nowhere, and then, finally due to the numbers game, the press-up into a Cavernario missile dropkick, which is probably the most underrated finisher of 2014.

This was definitely good for what it was, which was a sort of disposable Pesta Negra match. I was impressed by how well Titan and Cavernario worked together, with Titan's impressive agility bouncing well off of Cavernario's outlandish ferocity. Both of them showed a good deal of charisma too.

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