The Last of a Dying Breed?

Eddie Kingston vs Charli Evans St. Louis Anarchy 4/24/26

MD: Eddie Kingston is a scar upon the world. 

Last weekend was WrestleMania: influencers, polished entrances, plastic presentation. An astroturfed sheen. 

The triumph of sports entertainment.

This weekend? This weekend is something else. It's a reminder that wrestling, pro wrestling, is about truth, is about all the grime and the dirt and the grit and the glory that exists at the very bottom of the human heart. 

Eddie Kingston represents that. 

Pro wrestling saved him. Pro wrestling inspired him. It gave him purpose. It gave him identity. He's paid the price for it. You can see it in how he moves. You can see it on his face. You can see it in his eyes. Love is a wonderful thing and a terrible burden. 

That illusion of a perfect, plastic world? So long as Eddie Kingston lives and breathes and fights, it'll always ripple at the edges, always break down upon inspection, always fall apart under its own weight.

Eddie Kingston is a blemish upon the world.

But in being a blemish, he shows us things about ourselves, real things, true things, meaningful things.

In being a blemish, Eddie Kingston is beautiful and he reveals the beauty within ourselves.

And Charli Evans understands that better than anyone. 

Pro wrestling saved Eddie Kingston. He'd claim it was Misawa and Kobashi and Kawada and Taue, that it was Akiyama and the rest. When I look at him, I see Choshu and Tenryu. I see dissidents, revolutionaries, absolute miserable bastards that can't bear to just smile and nod and go along with the hypocrisy and falsehood before them. 

The difference? The only thing that has kept Eddie Kingston from tearing it all apart and burning it all down like they did? 

He just can't get out of his own way. They were perfect in their animosity. Eddie is Eddie in his imperfections. Maybe that's the only reason why any of this is still standing, but more important than that, it allows us to connect with him. Choshu and Tenryu will always be unknowable, unreachable. Eddie? He's so damn human, for all of our best attributes and all of our worst failings.

And Charli Evans understands that better than anyone. 

If Eddie had the pillars, she had Eddie. They were the Pillars of Heaven. You'd think maybe he was something else then, a Pillar of Purgatory? Something that represented the endless toil we faced but held up nonetheless. That's a thought, but I don't think it's the right thought. 

Eddie is just as structural as any pillar, but instead he's a Bridge. He connects their world with ours, helps us relate to everything he saw and felt that had been so larger than life, everything that saved him. He takes it, gathers it up, and then brings it to us in a beat-up burlap sack like some sort of put upon department store Santa Claus. It's Christmas Eve every time we get to see Eddie Kingston wrestle. Just don't tell him I said that.

Pro wrestling saved Eddie Kingston's soul, but in turn, he's devoted his soul to it. He respects it and reveres it like no one else. That means that even against Charli, even against someone he loves, he can't hold back. He said as much. He wouldn't listen to her words. He wouldn't see her as different from anyone else. Once that bell rang, respect would drive him, and it would be business, all business, nothing but business. Professional wrestling. 

And Charli Evans wouldn't have it any other way.

This is what she wanted. This was her dream match. She could say a thousand times that Eddie wasn't the last of the dying breed, that he would leave behind a legacy, that he had moved people, that they saw themselves in his fight. Through his struggle and through his genuine openness, he had inspired them to be like him where it mattered, to be the most that they could be no matter how hard life was, to get up when it knocked them down. He showed them that, even if sometimes, just like him, they were their worst enemies.

He would never believe the words. So she would have to prove it with her deeds.

Charli came out to the ring first, clad in gear meant to evoke Misawa, gear made for this moment, gear that had sat in her closet for years waiting for it. 

Eddie's entrance was ugly, a mad king holding court. Someone immediately started jawing with him, saying Eddie had broken his phone. That went about as well as you'd expect and soon, a couple of kids making up the scenery in the background, Eddie was shooting his mouth off. 

Still, after he walked around the ring and made his way in, things became all business. We were left with the image of Eddie looming over Charli as she was being introduced.

And then the fight was on. She was the one with something to prove and she meant to do it by taking it right to him. The problem was that Eddie had a massive size and strength advantage. She tried wrestling to begin, tried to pry off an arm. Eddie's absolutely no slouch when it comes to technique though and while Evans might have matched him, there was nothing pound-for-pound about this encounter. She wasn't able to gain an inch that way.

So, unable to lean on technique, she leaned with her chin instead. She bounced off him with a shoulder block, chopped away, threw forearms, and instead of chipping away at him, ran right into a brutal chop. The floodgate was opened and the water flowed through, a series of machine-gun chops in the corner. She had wanted Eddie Kingston, now she had him.

The question was what she could do now that she got him.

It wasn’t technique that was going to let her chip away at him. It was embracing the two lessons one learns from watching Eddie Kingston for as long as she has.

Lesson 1: When life knocks you down, get back up.

He stayed on her. She chopped back, hurt him. He flattened her with one blow. He stretched her, dropped down on her back. He went to suplex her. She made it difficult. She made everything difficult, as hard on him as possible. She tried to jam it with a small package and when that didn’t work, she just started to kick away. 

Later on, he’d cut her off with a neckbreaker, toss her hard into the corner. When he came charging in, she was up, had her elbow ready then jammed him face first into the turnbuckle and unloaded on him once more. Eventually, however, he was able to get under her, hit an exploder. 

The first time she had rolled out of the ring (after taking a hard chop) earlier in the match, she came back in forearms flying, throwing her body at him, even to no avail. The second time she tried to roll (after the exploder), he stopped her, grabbed her by her gear, pulled her up into a half and half suplex. She did make it out to the floor after that one, and it let her regroup, recover. Life had knocked her down again and again and she got back up every time. 

Lesson 2: Take victories wherever you can find them.

By this point she had her share of small victories. She had knocked him to his knees, to his stomach. She had dropped him in the corner, had hit a face wash, had done enough damage that she could actually look to the crowd and bask in her moment of control. These were victories. These mattered. 

Maybe they mattered a lot less after the exploder. 

But what she had been going for throughout the match, what had cost her each and every time she tried it, was a German Suplex. That would have been an entire different level of victory given the size difference, given Eddie’s supremacy when it came to suplexes. 

After she beat the count and made it back into the ring, something had to change. It was do or die, and if she knew anything, it was to never say die. She sidestepped Eddie on a charge in the ropes and locked those arms. He went flying overhead and another, more meaningful victory was secured.

He survived but she didn’t stop coming. She ducked a clothesline and started laying in ones of her own, staggering Eddie and then dropping him. A victory. Shaken, maybe even shocked, he followed her lead from earlier in the match and rolled out of the ring. 

To force Eddie Kingston of all people to retreat was its own special sort of victory, and if she’d gain nothing else from this encounter, she’d have achieved that. 

But she had one more thing to gain, one last hidden lesson to learn from Eddie.

Lesson 3: When life hits you as hard as it possibly can, roll with it and strike back.

She dragged Eddie back into the ring, engaged him. He shoved her away and she turned it into a version of Eddie dreaded Uraken. It crashed across his jaw but he moved with the impact, turning, spinning, hitting one of his own and causing her to crumble. Eddie stalked around the ring, hit a DDT and pinned her. 

After the match, Eddie got on the mic, declared his hatred for all of the people of the world, his love for her, and noted how far she’d go. 

And I was left wondering: did it work? Did she get through to him? She got her dream match. She got up every time life knocked her down. She gathered her small, meaningful victories to her heart like a magpie collecting the most precious treasures. She learned one last lesson, even if it cost her the match. But did any of it get through his thick head? 

Did he see it?

On the one hand, I just don’t think he can. To see it, to admit it, would be to admit a tragedy, for the last thing he’d want would be for her, or anyone he cared for, to be like him. 

But on the other hand, she had presented him with something undeniable. He knocked her down and she got up. She fought as hard as someone can fight and took her victories. 

Maybe he can deny it on the mic. Maybe he can deny it in a promo in the back. But deep down, in that creeping corner of his mind? 

He’s got nothing but love and respect for her. Nothing but regard. 

And if in the match she showed him a mirror of himself? And if he couldn’t help but like what he saw? Respect what he saw? Even love what he saw?

Well, what does that say about Eddie Kingston himself?

Whatever the answer, it, like this match, has more to offer the world than even the most polished plastic WrestleMania entrance. It spoke to something real, something heartfelt, something meaningful.

And if that's not a triumph of professional wrestling, I don't know what is.