Tuesday 26 April 2022

Kingston v Garcia

Eddie Kingston v Daniel Garcia (AEW Rampage, 22/4/22)

This was the business. Kingston might be one of my three favourite guys in the company and Garcia might be one of my five favourite, despite me having seen all of about three matches with him in it. Eddie was a surly menace and I thought Garcia going after his stomach was an awesome bit of work. The transition spot on the ring steps was great and I like how Eddie took it right in the hip bone, then Garcia was dropping knees to the gut and ribcage, throwing strikes to the midsection to cut Kingston off, just going after him like he was trying to make deep inhalation an arduous process. There was one part where Eddie got to the ropes off a submission and Garcia milked the full five count before releasing, but Kingston kept selling the hold the whole time, shouting "get him off me!" through gritted teeth. Usually when someone gets to the ropes they'll just sort of stop selling the pain from the hold they're in, like the ropes themselves provide a mythical healing quality that leaves one impervious to pain, even if the applicant of the hold hasn't actually released it straight away. Kingston felt every second of this though, and his attention to vulnerability endears him even further to us all. He was also the most scrappy imaginable, how he'd throw strikes from his knees or back, sometimes just chopping Garcia in the thigh because it was there to be chopped and he couldn't reach his chest. A bit of it rubbed off on Garcia, who at one point fought fire with fire and started biting Kingston in the forehead (to which Kingston responded by trying to bite his ear off). They worked some hierarchy into the strike exchanges and I dug how Kingston sold one chop like it about caved his chest in, before inevitably caving in Garcia's because that young laddie is not about to be out-chopping Eddie Kingston at this juncture in their lives. 

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