AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 11/13 - 11/19, Part 2

Ring of Honor 11/16/23

Eddie Kingston vs Dalton Castle

MD: It's tough to work off of just one or two data points. I picked up a definite impression from Eddie between the Rocky match (wrong title, same idea), the Komander match, the Angelico match, but these weren't the only matches he had in that period and something like the Suzuki match was exactly what you'd expect it to be, right? These other defenses have been something new and I've discussed them as such. It's been the debut of Ace Champion Kingston, shifting gears to operate with more of a "sports/competition" feel than just the endless weight of grudges and enemies and grievances that Eddie always carries with him to such great outcome.

We've hit the point now where I think that even if it's not intentional, it's undeniable. I'm not getting "fighting spirit" from this stuff, so much as I'm getting "real sports feel," in the same way I do from 86 NJPW with the UWF guys or from old World of Sport. That's not to say the details are the same, but I'm getting that same sense of gamesmanship and of competition. That it's playing out with Eddie, who is such a heartfelt and distinctive wrestler, and with such variety from opponent to opponent, while still achieving that same overall effect, is providing me with something I can't get anywhere else in modern wrestling and, to be honest, I'm not sure I've gotten quite this way from any wrestling ever.

For this match, much of that was driven by the strategies at play. Dalton Castle, not unlike Eddie in theory though completely unlike Eddie in the details, is entirely unique. You could compare him to someone like Goldust or Orange Cassidy, but given how he carries himself, a better comparison might be a Terry Funk or a Roddy Piper (or yes, an Athena). With someone like Cassidy, it's about mind games and getting an advantage. Dalton is more of a force of nature, a fey creature out of A Midsummer's Night Dream, some primal fairy lord. He operates on his own set of rules, but they're nothing any mere human could ever understand. You can't treat him like a rational actor; at any point he might do something you'd never expect. That is who he is. What he is? In the ring? An amazing creature of leverage and perseverance, someone who can get under you and heft you over at any moment.

He came in to wrestle, and Eddie, the ace, the champion, had him scouted. He'd been training for someone like Castle and and was his equal on the mat, could match him suplex for suplex. So what did Dalton do? He hit any number of nasty back elbows. He couldn't outchop Eddie, couldn't out punch him, but he could spin backwards and jab one of the hardest parts of the body into Eddie's skull. It worked for a while too, but Eddie can spin around and knock your soul out of your body at any point too, and ultimately, he did just that. Dalton, an entity strong enough to have overcome a broken back to win his greatest victory, held on, but Eddie kept coming; that what he does. That's what a champion does. That's what the pillars did.

So Eddie overcame, beating back the unnatural, holding the forces of entropy and chaos at bay one more night, carrying the weight of the company on his shoulders and not at all afraid to tell it to the world. And we got another interesting, one-of-a-kind defense out of him. And I have enough data points to tell you that this is a trend, and it's the most interesting one in wrestling. I can't wait to see where it goes next.