AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/20 - 11/26

AEW Collision 11/25/23

Eddie Kingston vs. Brody King 

MD: I ask you to bear with me a bit here as I'm slightly under the weather. Maybe the subject matter at present is enhanced by a mild fever. Maybe not. The real joy of writing about Eddie Kingston is that, unlike just about every other wrestler out there, you're actually better off writing about it like it's all real. There are times where I use the phrase "textual approach", like when discussing French Catch, but even then, I'm trying to look for narrative tropes and patterns, trying to get into the wrestlers' heads, trying to express why they might have made one creative decision or another and the impact on those decisions. It's examining the text but not taking it literally. You can't really do that most of the time without it being a dry recap. Even a sensationalized recap is just a summary, right? For these AEW matches especially, most of you have seen the match. You don't need to read it too.

It's different with Eddie though. He leaves so much out there, leans into it all so thoroughly, is so true to the character he portrays (to the point of never breaking it even interviews, even when he probably thinks that he is) that delving into motivations either becomes a little superficial (like color coded gear or specific callback spots to 30 years ago) or just something that the character of Eddie Kingston would do anyway. That is to say, the character of Eddie Kingston would wear that get and try to fit in those callback spots because either it meant something to him emotionally that trumped reason and common sense or he thought it would be effective and strike gold twice. 

So where as for any other match with any other wrestlers, it'd be more interesting to delve into the narrative pieces of the puzzle and the effect they created, I just want to talk about Eddie here and what I think, he, the character, was up to and trying to accomplish. I've written a lot lately about Ace Eddie Kingston, a guy out there to defend a title and to carry the flag for a brand. He wrestles more sports-driven, honorable encounters, always informed by the chip on his shoulder but not defined by it like all of his other matches. Having defeated Claudio of all people, and facing opponents who tend to be beneath him in the hierarchy, all he has to prove is excellence. He doesn't need to prove he deserves a seat at the table. He's already at the top of the mountain. It's unlocked a level of confidence and focus in him while still allowing him to tap into all of his usual aggression and aggravation and fury, all of his grievance. He owns it instead of it owning him. And it's made for interesting, different, unique matches in his lexicon. I've certainly welcomed them.

This is something different however. This is a tournament, akin to the J-Cup and more specifically the G1. He was just able to compete in that earlier this year though he wasn't victorious. He's put it all on the line in order to give credence and importance to a new American Triple Crown. This is an Eddie Kingston chasing dreams: to make it to national TV, to meet and even battle the heroes of his youth, to stand tall in Japan as someone who means something, to become a world champion. Despite his depression, despite his doubts, despite the odds always being stacked against him and all the setbacks, he's accomplished one dream after another, and now he sees one that he couldn't even have imagined decades prior in sight, and he's risked everything just for the chance at it. And the odds are against him once again.

Basically, this is an Eddie Kingston who, despite all of his success, again has something to prove. 

And boy does that ever make him prideful and dumb (and fascinating, of course). He could have faced off against an absolute beast Brodie like Inoki might have, controlling the mat, kicking at legs, chopping him down. That's how ROH champion Eddie Kingston might have faced this, serious and clinical. Instead he put his head down and he charged. He had to ramp right into King, had to prove to the world that he could move him. It went just about as well as one might have expected. Eddie tried and tried and maybe even made some slight headway and then Brodie shut him down, controlling the first half of the match with relative ease, even when Eddie would get a finesse shot out of the corner or with a dodge on the outside. 

Eddie deserves every accolade, however. He might not have been able to get a suplex out of the corner, but he can throw that backfist at any point and it can change everything in a match. In fact, I'd so far as to say in the way he came back, in how he finally got King over, in how he had him on the ropes towards the end, he did in fact prove something. Good for Eddie. Unfortunately, through leading with his pride and ending up in such a deficit early on, he lost the match, and in losing the match, he ended up in a deficit for the tournament as a whole. And this is a tournament that Eddie can't afford to lose, for the sake of his pride most of all.