[2007-04-07-CZW-Out With The Old In With The New] Eddie Kingston vs Chris Hero (Loser Leaves Town)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[BigVanCrush]

Just rewatched this  and man, what a match. Super hard strikes for almost the entirety of the first half, just really nasty shots from both guys. It's really surprising seeing this level of violence from Hero, especially after seeing so many years of latter era Hero leg slap elbow fests. He really brings the intensity and a palpable sense of hatred here and almost matches Eddie Kingston in both regards, which isn't easy to do. There's some absolutely ghastly headbutts thrown here, mostly by Hero. I'm not squeamish about those, but there were a few that made me say, "goddamn that probably wasn't fun on either end." Hero makes use of the cravate (the most dangerous hold in wrestling) multiple times and down the stretch, Eddie makes use of the backdrop and other big suplexes. In a weird way, this feels like the closest to a real king's road epic that Eddie's ever gotten. This has all the intensity of a Kawada title match and Eddie is great here as he has to claw back from the lead Hero gets on him. I know the TPI match is more famous, but I like this match better. All of the hatred and violence from the TPI match is there, but with none of the plunder. They just throw bombs at each other until one is left standing. This would be my pick for the best US match of 2007 if it weren't for the Danielson vs. Morishima title matches in August and September, and I'd put it on par (at worst) with the best matches from Japan and Mexico in 2007. Just an absolute masterpiece. ****3/4

[ohtani's jacket]

This was good when they were stiffing the shit out of each other and cussing at one another, channeling whatever Kingston's favorite puro tapes were at the time. I haven't watched a lot of Kingston, so I don't know if he makes this much noise usually or if he was just trying to sound like one of his Japanese heroes. The match was less convincing when it was time to do some moves and add a little structure to things. I kind of thought they should have continued brawling and made it completely minimalist.