Featured image by The Ringside Perspective
I don’t know who The Rotation is but he sure is lucky to have been in there with Eddie freaking Kingston. One of the positive effects of WWE’s blatant attempts to gut and neuter the European independent scene is that we get something like Eddie Kingston being a featured character in this year’s 16 Carat.
After a very good match against Daniel Makabe in the opening round, Eddie Kingston cut a promo on the crowd to cement himself as the big villain going into this year’s Carat. As a result, we have a motivated and very serious Eddie Kingston here tonight going up against The Rotation. In a one-off position, Kingston is prone to playing a little more loose with his crowd interactions. Here though, the focused direction of his role for the tournament has him turn a switch to being the more serious heel Kingston that we’ve seen from years past. While Kingston taunts the crowd on occasion, he’s much more focused on destruction and malice here. And as anyone familiar with his CHIKARA work will know, Kingston bullying a younger and smaller opponent usually makes for some damn good wrestling.
Kingston plays an absolutely fantastic bully to the much smaller Rotation. Let’s give Rotation credit where it’s due. He bumps a maniac for Kingston’s offense here as Kingston unleashes a whole arsenal of suplexes on the poor kid. Rotation plays sympathetic well here as Kingston just wrecks him for a grueling ten minutes or so. By the time Rotation goes into his comeback by nailing successive 450 Splashes, you do wonder if he might pull it off. Better for everyone involved that Kingston pulls the win out in the end.
Matches like this are what make Kingston one of the most underrated independent wrestlers of all time and also one of the most consistently valuable ones even in 2020. Thank all your lucky stars that he put aside the retirement plans for last year.