There’s something so beautifully intimate and deeply personal about music. The aural sensation of instruments and voices carrying over through digital clouds to feed melodies into your ears can leave you feeling something beyond what most things in life can. It can accelerate your pulse with fury or excitement. It can cascade tears down your cheeks and leave a lump in your throat. Music is intimate and powerful and infectious if you let it in. It can make you smile as the hairs on your body stand on end and you feel a shiver that causes the shake called a dance.
It may have taken a few decades but in the past three years, Eddie Kingston has learned to dance, waltzing like he’s never seen a dance floor before. Once he got into the swing and groove, however, he moved so compellingly that we’ve been in the sway within the parallel planes of performance art and combat sports.
From the day he slammed Cody Rhodes into thumbtacks in Daily’s Place, The Mad King won the hearts of the AEW fanbase. He had the bluntness, aggressive nature layered with brutal and painful honesty of a man who’s lived in poverty and adversity, yet he kept walking to the tune of The King’s Road.
Seeing the Four Pillars of Heaven in All Japan Pro Wrestling in the 90s and the Three Musketeers in New Japan Pro Wrestling, he fell in love with controlled violence that would soon quell the need for typical violence in itself. It was here, in the sights of the Tokyo Dome and Korakuen Hall and other venues of the Japanese wrestling scene that he found the love of beautiful things. Something woke inside of him, and he wished to go see the chanting crowds and the towels of their favorite wrestlers, explore new styles and territories, and wear wrestling boots instead of tennis shoes.
What makes Eddie Kingston a remarkable babyface isn’t that he’s some altruistic, irreproachable superman, some paragon of morality and virtue. He’s a hurt human being, like the rest of us. Scars that we can’t see, scars that he’s spent his life learning to try and heal. For many who battle this unseen thing, it takes a lot of care – and even then it might not be enough. It gets the better of him at times, as he has a short fuse and white fury overtakes him like a demon possessing mankind. Opponents that are wise and unfair have been known to use that against him. In order to live a life where dealing with these wounds, miracles, luck, and mutual effort is needed. So, Eddie Kingston needed this; and the opportunity came a-knocking. Do you remember it?
Ever since AEW took a shot at debuting him during Cody Rhodes’s TNT Open Challenge reign, his life was never to be the same again; he went on the greatest adventure, to there and back again.
Kingston stood toe-to-toe with his former bully in CM Punk, hung out with Sting, and allowed to be himself whilst facing off against legends like Chris Jericho, Minoru Suzuki, Naomichi Marufuji, and Tomohiro Ishii.
However, since his time under Tony Khan’s payroll, he’s encountered two white whales that seemed unattainable to him once upon a time – his dream match against the Fifth Pillar of AJPW, Jun Akiyama.
What a circle time traps us in, eh? This is one of the more stunning ones. Eddie, after so long, has his heart and love seen by a world ready to accept it, and his dreams would come true.
His match with Akiyama…it’s a memorable one. I’m getting chills just remembering it. Both men struck each other in a testament and tribute to that which is puroresu and the emotion visibly wore on Kingston as the match progressed. Tribute was paid to AJPW and Pro Wrestling NOAH; tribute was paid to Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Akira Taue, and Toshiaki Kawada. When all was said and done and he stood tall over his idol who so bowed before him, he teared up. A man who is known to be tough and abrasive became vulnerable and small. I say this in the best way.
A childhood dream came true. I don’t know how much that match meant to Jun Akiyama, but I know damn well it meant the world to Kingston.
Following up on that, Kingston would fall out with his friend Ortiz, “quit” AEW, and put on a memorable match with Claudio Castagnoli at 2023’s Supercard of Honor that rekindled their Chikara rivalry. It wasn’t until the episodes of Dynamite that lead to Forbidden Door that he came back, joining former enemies in The Elite against the Blackpool Combat Club.
With Kingston and the Elite side by side with Tomohiro Ishii, the five men put on the best ten-man tag team match in the history of wrestling against The Blackpool Combat Club, Shota Umino, and Konoskuke Takeshita. His exchanges with Jon Moxley and Claudio Castagnoli in this match were so superb and fraught with pain and anger and malicious intent.
But in this time, he’d also been on the American side of New Japan Pro Wrestling, in their NJPW Strong branch. In the autumn of 2021, he first stepped foot in the prestigious promotion alongside Jon Moxley against Minoru Suzuki and Lance Archer in a Philadelphia Street Fight. He’d dip in and out of the western branch and put up a hell of a fight with anyone he’d step in the ring with, be it Gabriel Kidd, Tomohiro Ishii, or Jay White, the latter of which Eddie would defeat in a stipulation that would see the loser leave NJPW at the Battle in the Valley event in San Jose, California.
It seemed Kingston would’ve been content with this, with helping a promotion he loves to branch out in a country he was born in.
But something heartwarming in professional wrestling happened.
Eddie Kingston was announced to be a participant in 2023’s G1 Climax event, officially in a main NJPW ring. Before that, however, he would have to defeat Kenta on Night 2 of NJPW Independence Day, the first NJPW Strong show taking place in Japan, for the Strong Openweight Championship.
Eddie Kingston fought this match with as much honor as he could, displaying a fighting spirit that was a perfect foil to the bastard Kenta and his devious ways. Using Eddie’s history of a bad temper and the tunnel vision that follows, the Bullet Club member takes joy in ripping the man from Yonkers with whichever dastardly tactics he could employ. What made Eddie cool throughout the match despite his boiling anger was the pain to center all the emotion and anxiety. It was through this that Kingston was able to overcome Kenta, it was through this that the crowd at Korakuen Hall cheered him on to push him further. He won over the hearts of people that respect and love what he wants to give. His resilience was a gift to them, and to himself; he stuck to his moral compass and stayed the course, no matter how hard. Even when presented to deliver a receipt to Kenta via a belt to the face, he didn’t take it – he’s not going out that way. This means too much to win dirty.
He fought and he fought; when he deployed a Northern Lights Bomb on Kenta, and the meal was right for the taking, Eddie Kingston covered Kenta for the pin.
As he held that pin, with the three counts that felt like three cathartic years, his face was clenched so as to keep the waterworks from running.
Dazed, worn out, and unbelieving of the situation, he held aloft a championship for a company he loved, in a country he loved. It’s one thing to go to that place, and it’s one thing to see the things in that place, but it’s another thing entirely to do the things in that place. That night, Eddie Kingston danced and was rewarded heavily for studying the music.
Homicide, a man Eddie loves and respects, embraced him and helped him to the back, as the tender Mad King started to process that this moment was certainly real. Backstage, he explained how much this means to him (as though the world hadn’t just seen that in the ring), and about realizing this dream, he said that “If I can do it, anyone can do it”. The man was fighting so hard to keep the tears from coming. I’m sure they slipped out anyways.
This is what wrestling moments are made of. This is what makes it real to us, even at its silliest – because we get to invest in someone who is good and receiving good things. That we get to see hard individuals become soft, letting themselves be vulnerable in front of God and the legions of people who love this sick shit.
For years now, people have been wondering why Eddie Kingston hasn’t won a championship in AEW yet. After NJPW coronated the Mad King with the Strong Openweight title, they were still asking that question. While I think it may still be in the cards for Eddie, I strongly feel that this was his destiny in the first place. His Promised Land. It only feels right.
He’s walked the King’s Road for decades and that road took him to where it all began for him. That same child who watched Misawa and Kobashi take on the Holy Demon Army and who saw Jushin Thunder Liger vs The Great Sasuke stood on the same soil where they all once planted their feet.
Defeating Jun Akiyama and winning an NJPW belt sees a lifetime of work vindicated. Maybe he’ll win gold in the West for a big promotion, but this is among some of the greatest things to happen for Eddie.
To think that one of the most compelling characters in wrestling today who is at the heart of so many goings on in the industry is a normal everyday man from Yonkers, New York, I can’t help but see him as the unlikely hero who conquers what needs conquering, despite being so grounded and like everyone around him. He’s an international talent now, and he’s bigger than he could ever have imagined; imagine how he’ll grow the further he works to be the best version of himself. All because he said yes to beating up and losing to Cody Rhodes. Because he told one of the greatest stories of the pandemic with his close friend. Because he took a chance and it paid off.
And with the speech he gave backstage, about how if he could get “here”, you could get “there” too, that’s hope in a special form. At least to me, anyway. One foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking across the floor. Where my “here” is, is probably still far enough down the road, but if I keep walking it, I’ll get there. Sure, I may have a ceiling, but I’ll never get there if I don’t stay at it like Eddie Kingston stayed at it and he found his song. As someone who grew up mistakenly thinking something was “wrong” with me as I stared at the dark ceiling every night, I live in days of bright sky, knowing I’m perfectly fine and capable of so much more. Stories like Daniel Bryan, Kofi Kingston, Adam Page, and Eddie Kingston – they reinforced that. His July 5 victory will stand out in my memory for time immemorial.
These are the stories that leave us buying in with all the emotions, heartache, and pain. This is why, to us fans, wrestling is real.
