10 Ups & 1 Down From AEW Full Gear 2021
3. CM Punk & Eddie Kingston Are The Best
This was perfect.
The glimpses of CM Punk being a right c*nt and actively enjoying it.
The Frye/Takayama sequence.
Eddie just beating the absolute f*ck out of Punk's back on the turnbuckle.
Punk riffing on his much-ribbed "locker room leader" self-proclamations with the John Cena tribute.
CM Punk's new fight shorts, which look cool and taunted Kingston with the smug spectre of his early indie days.
The elements of theatre that proved monumentally entertaining and didn't try to sell this thing as an epic blood rivalry. It wasn't. It was a petty, old grudge that mutated into violence, and that's why Eddie Kingston made a jerk-off gesture after mimicking Punk's GTS taunt. They worked a specific kind of loathing here: an anti-epic strain so much better than most.
The whole thing was just fabulous: two guys who have it in them to be very abrasive personalities expressing that aspect of their personalities with glorious, unbearable smugness and likeable piss-taking, respectively. It was a funny, very brutal fight that never took itself too seriously nor undermined itself. It was the only match these versions of CM Punk and Eddie Kingston could have thought to have.
And it was perfect.