2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Park

1. LA Park vs. Eddie Kingston RPW 2/14

PAS: This was the most lucha of the LA Park indy matches I have seen. PARK comes in and right as he is about do his chair dance, Kingston jumps him and kicks his ass all over the arena. Kingston is full on Fuerza in this match, mocking the dance, unlacing the belt and making the ref hit him with it, just classic rudo stuff. We get some heel ref stuff, which pays off by PARK chairshotting him and then some really great hard hitting back and forth. Kingston is just lacing Park with chops, and Park fired back with this great looking headbutt. Lots of nasty chair shots by both guys too. I loved how aggressive Kingston was. This was a match with tons of shtick, but Kingston always made it a fight. Kind of mix of a PARK house show match full of stuff, and a PARK vs. Mesias brawl. I certainly do not follow Rev Pro, and don't know who Mad Kurt is, but his little run and low blow on Kingston worked in the spirit of the match, and lead to a sick spear through the table. I adored this, two of my all time favorites (and a relatively rare double C+A match) and it lived up to it's promise.

ER: How ridiculous is it that Park has been on his indy tour for a couple years now, and the first fed to give us this match between two of the best wrestlers of the past decade plus, who both work the same parts of the country...is RevPro. RevPro of all places gives us the gift of Kingston vs. LA Park, a genuine dream match, and it delivers in a way I definitely didn't expect it to. I have seen Park live working almost all of the comedy bits he does here, and I've seen him in other matches working these bits. And Eddie Kingston made these bits and this silly/violent shtick work better than anybody else I've seen. Kingston was a natural lucha foil for Park, because he filled in the rest of the match with violence. Most of the times I've seen comedy Park, there's no violence in between the bits. Usually, there is just mugging and standing in between the bits. But here we get all the most Monterey ref involvement, with the ref being called into action, helping the rudo, injured shoulder 2 counts, pulled in front of offense, all of that stuff that is absolutely THE WORST when it is done poorly (it is almost always done poorly). And Kingston turns some one of the worst wrestling tropes into actual entertainment, the perfect personality and skill to work this match.

Right at the start he jumps Park as Park is posing on his chair, and the fans boos, and before punching Park in the head and kicking his ass to the floor, Kingston looks to the fans with an expression that said "Who the fuck boos?" The brawling was all really good, with Kingston throwing punches much more for impact than for accuracy, which added to the atmosphere. Park takes a big bump into the guardrail (which was loose and goes flying into fans) and Kingston bashes him with hard chairshots. And by the time we get Kingston removing Park's belt and whipping his back and chest, it just gives Kingston another attack, as his chops were landing just as hard as his belt shots. Park has big shots of his own obviously, including a hard headbutt, a couple of cool sliding knee variations, and we build to the heaviest and hardest tope I've seen this year, with Kingston just absorbing all of that skeleton torpedo as it crushed him into the guardrail. Hats off to the overly involved referee, too, who worked everything with quick timing that never lingered on him. Nearly every time we get ref involvement like this, huge portions of the match stop or get completely derailed by the ref staying out on the stage too long during each of his moments. Her the referee kept things moving quick and never dawdled, and the guy has balls for staying in the way of a speeding Park tope for as long as he did (before Kingston expertly and kindly pushed him out of harms way to take it). Kingston is so good at mixing lucha comedy timing with violent brawling, a style you don't really get to see from him, and maybe we owe Chikara some credit for his lucha timing. He's always stood out as unique when compared to other Chikara trainees, but you see something like this and you remember how well he can do every wrestling aspect, and that came from somewhere. I, too, have never heard of Mad Kurt before this match (and a quick scan of RevPro's roster page revealed several other guys who looked like people posing for Spirit Store's catalog), but Kingston selling a big comedy ballshot was worth having to look at Kurt's sunken chest. Some of my favorite matches of any given year are ones that take familiar and even annoying wrestling tropes, and mine them for something special. This is a great example of what two legends can accomplish.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST