Eddie Kingston Don't Do Math, Eight Million in Ice

Eddie Kingston/Penta El 0M vs. The Young Bucks AEW Dynamite 7/7/21 - GREAT 

ER: I didn't like this as much as their straight tag the week before. That was a really well built classic tag with some hot moments. This was a full bullshit stunt show, with WAY bigger spots but not really any kind of satisfying build. This was a stunt show, and they hit some big stunts. It was clear there would be a ton of BS from the start, when they work Michael Nakazawa into an early superkick spot and Brandon Cutler is running around with cold spray, so there was always this weird mix of stooge comedy and violence. It's odd to have guys taking really dangerous bumps while seconds later having Cutler make dangerous bumps look silly by making funny faces through them, but the frenetic energy also added to the presentation. This was closer to a big ECW tag where tertiary people run in throughout just to take bad bumps, and the bad bumps here were bad. There are nasty small things, like Nick landing with a thwack into a chair on a drop toehold, up to bigger things like Kingston getting powerbombed onto a flat table, and then up to Matt Jackson taking a flipping piledriver off the apron through a table. I like smart dumb stuff like Nick hitting a 450 on the referee when the Bucks were falling behind, real fun dumb guy logic that buoyed this whole thing. Kingston brings thumbtacks and he takes the nastiest stuff, like getting a big handful of tacks thrown into his face, or tacks shoved into his mouth before a double superkick. The whole thing was a runaway train and part of a great show finishing fireworks display. 

Eddie Kingston/Jon Moxley vs. Minoru Suzuki/Lance Archer AEW Rampage 9/22 (Aired 9/24/21) - FUN

ER: A Lights Out, Anything Goes match where 75% of the combatants just hit each other with uninspired weapon shots. Eddie Kingston was the only one who was bringing any kind of passion to this fight, jumping and tearing his shirt, rushing headlong into a fight with Suzuki. Seeing the personalities of Suzuki and Kingston opposite each other is a large part of this match's thrill, so obviously I'm going to love seeing Suzuki kick Kingston through a table, but it wasn't enough. A lot of the match had such a huge disconnect, with Archer being unsurprisingly the biggest problem. Much of this Anything Goes fighting felt more like guys throwing really bad strikes while waiting for someone else to get into position for something that wasn't going to look that good. It's a series of false starts without any of their ideas building to a satisfying payoff. 

Moxley gets chokeslammed to the floor into a bunch of guys who came out to catch that chokeslam to the floor; Archer wraps his belt around Moxley's neck but when we come back from break Moxley's hands were tied and the belt was no longer around his neck. Suzuki spent a lot of time grabbing half ass submissions before letting them go, like a lightly applied single leg crab that Moxley wouldn't have even been able to defend, but it goes nowhere. Kingston's fire is the only thing that keeps this watchable, bursting back into the ring with his arm hanging limp at his side (I love when King charges into a fight brazenly wearing his injuries) and breaks a hold with an eye poke. We get a great moment where Homicide returns but then immediately fumbles around with a chair (I swear Homicide always has the absolute worst luck with inanimate objects in big moments), and Archer manages to make the finish look like, ahem, trash. When Kingston has Archer inside a trash can lid and Archer doesn't start selling kendo stick shots until the 4th one in, you know you're just dealing with a guy who has no idea how to work a match like this. Some fun moments, but a major letdown.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON