[2004-10-22-EWP] Christian Eckstein vs Kendo Kashin

Pretty rare find as a lot of EMP matches are lost to the void of obscure DVD collections. This is during Kashin's very short reign with the Intercontinental Title (which he'd taken off Robbie Brookside in a sadly unaired match) and his only successful defence of it. This is also wrestled under European Rules, so rounds and breaks are used. The dynamic is obvious: Eckstein is the owner of the promotion and native hero, Kashin is the disrespectful troll who just wants to screw around with the golden boy. The national anthems of both men play before the bout, with Kashin not caring at all about the German one but trying to get the crowd hyped for his: it's old fashioned cheap heat but it's good heat, and the crowd play around just fine, in fact Eckstein is pretty damn over here with nearly every small thing he does, namely working over the arms. Eckstein isn't anything tremendous in terms of ring talent; his fundamentals are solid and he knows how to work them good enough to keep the crowd engaged however, so that wasn't too much of a issue. Kashin mostly plays on the backend here and his selling is good but not too all over the place: he doesn't need to scream or yell to get over the fact his arm is hurting. He only gets offence in after getting his standing transition into the cross armbreaker and then not breaking it even on the ropes, which causes enough damage to Eck that he can confidently work from the top. His work is also quite good, even modifying his usual spots to instead work on the bad arm (like his rope choke where he leans on the rope itself, he does that instead into pushing the arm while it's tied up for nasty leverage) which was awesome.

They go into more equal sequences as the match goes on, with Eckstein getting pockets of advantage before his arm fails him or Kashin just stomping the shit out of it causes him to fall to the mat. Eckstein's selling is also quite good, and he gets great leverage on the Kashin corner headscissors spot like no one else I've seen. The small stuff like Kashin taking his right glove off a few rounds in so he can get exposed punches to the head with said right hand is simple but effective, pretty much vintage cheesy CWA antics all over again. This eventually pisses off Eckstein enough to just charge in with closed fists himself but Kashin kicks him in the balls while the ref is busy giving the warning out. Finish is screwy as Eckstein gets a second wind but a distraction causes him to get hit with white salt into a top rope armbreaker transition for the win. The finish is lacking (the ref just doesn't notice the obvious white powder left in the ring?) but the match itself is really good old fashioned CWA-style German Catch, especially with Kashin's heel antics fuelling some major heat. Eckstein doesn't have anything dynamic and certainly no spotshows but he gets the crowd into this fairly well and keeps them until the very end. You can tell Kashin was a German Catch guy by heart with the old-fashioned face/heel dynamics right up his alley.