2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Shire

3. Eddie Kingston vs. Thomas Shire Heavy Metal Wrestling 3/1

PAS: I had never seen or heard of Shire before, but holy hell what a first impression. He is a Dory Funk trainee, and he works a MUGA style, a lot of hard Euro uppercuts, simple powerful throws and solid matwork. Kingston is Kingston and he comes in to put over local guy, and they beat the every living shit out of each other. Lots of cool little Kingston grace notes, after the first big uppercut Kingston goes to fire back, but has a delayed reaction little stumble into the ropes, totally puts over the heat Shire is throwing, I also loved near the end of the match when Shire puts his hands behind his back to eat a chop, King just thumbs him in the eye. Kingston was really vicious in this, chops to the throat, punches to the liver, really hard and hot forearms, Shire gave as good as he got with just teeth rattling uppercuts, including one to the back of Kingston's head and one into a diving Eddie which looked like KO shots. We had some back and forth strike stuff, which normally I hate, but both guys selling really elevated. I really loved this, Kingston is really peaking right now, and Shire feels like he should be booked everywhere.

ER: This was tremendous, and rather unexpected. I had never heard of Thomas Shire before this, and "Dory Funk trainee" just makes me think we're getting Kingston working Adam Windsor. Instead we get Kingston working someone who is much more like "full potential reached" Jack Swagger + best possible Dory Funk Jr. That kind of sounds really uncool and unappealing, now that I type it out, but it really isn't. It's freaking great. At one point the commentary says the match is like All Japan happening in south Texas, and that's not a terrible description. Kings Road Kingston is great, one of the few guys to actually do justice to the appropriated style, and this is probably the finest Kings Road Kingston performance I've seen. Shire was no slouch either, and even though this was a lot of Kingston throwing mean as hell elbows and chops to the chest and neck, Shire's comebacks were integrated perfectly at just the right moments, always capitalizing on moments where Kingston started to treat him like a chump. The Kingston torture moments were great, with him breaking out a nice bulldog off the middle buckle (which set up a nice visual comeback for Shire later), big powerbomb, a wicked swinging fisherman's buster that is one of the cooler things I've seen this year, a jawbreaker to the BACK of Shire's neck (not sure I've seen that before), an awesome moment where he suplexed Shire and hit a boss lariat when Shire had the gall to fighting spirit his way back at him. But Shire is a big strong guy - long lanky legs and a bulked up torso - and he always has the power to surprise Kingston. King goes for another bulldog off the buckles and eats a big uppercut on his way down. Shire drops him with a German and sets up a dragon suplex, and when Kingston fights out of it Shire just snaps him over with a trapped arm German. Shire even hits this insane deadlift Karelin throw that looked downright back breaking. As Phil said, the back and forth and the tradeoffs were so good, played perfectly into the ebb and flow of their personalities, that every exchange just clicked. This was a real special find, the kind of match I watched and then wanted to watch again the next night. Shire is now a guy I'm going to actively seek out, and Kingston is somehow throwing out career best performances in his retirement year. Everyone needs this.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST