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In the wake of Wednesday night's AEW Dynamite Grand Slam event and last night's AEW Rampage Grand Slam broadcast, PWInsider.com sat down with Eddie Kingston to reflect of AEW's successful debut in the New York market and more:
Stepping in the ring with Minoru Suzuki and main eventing Rampage in NYC:
"I know. I am drained, I am drained, I am emotionally, mentally, physically, after Suzuki started beating me up and Lance started beating me up, drained. That's it, that's all I can tell you, drained. [The match] means the world to me. It was like I was in there with four pillars. It was like I was in there with The Three Musketeers in New Japan. It was everything. It was everything to me. I cracked a smile in the middle of going back and forth with Suzuki in the ring. And you know me, Mike, I don't smile when I fight. I'm just trying to get in there and fight. But I just cracked a little smile like, "Yeah, let's go. I was born to this." I actually felt, at the end of the night when I sat in the locker room by myself, after the adrenaline wore off and I had tears in my eyes, running down my face, thinking of this 20-year-career, it will be 20 years in October. Thinking about this 20-year-career and thinking about everybody who was there with me and everybody who has passed away who I knew, who was with me, and everybody who wasn't with me, and all this stuff, I just broke down in tears, I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. And then in my head I went like this, Mike, you know me. I went, "Okay, on to the next one."
Shouting out his mother on the mic after the show went off the air:
"Man, I'm a mama's boy and I don't care. I wanted everyone to know that I love my mother and that I'm so thankful for her. And my dad, let's not forget, because my dad busted my balls a little bit. He was like, "Oh, that's cool. Mention your mother, not me." But those guys, they never left me. They never gave up on me. Man, I was a hardheaded kid, Mike. I was hardheaded, I was hardheaded in my 20s, I was hardheaded, but they never gave up on me. No matter how broke I was, no matter how many times I had to go to them to borrow money to pay off rent, they just never gave up. They said, "Keep chasing your dream." Because they'd rather have me chasing my dream than me out in the street or sitting at a bar all day drinking."
Whether it's hit him that he's now part of a promotion that will inspire the next generation of talents the way ECW inspired him to get into the business:
"No. Short answer, no. But all I can say is if I'm one of those guys that's inspiring the kids, I just hope they learn from me to love what we do, what we're doing, and love the profession of what we're doing, the fight of what we're doing. Because it's an uphill battle, man, it's a uphill battle. And I truly believe, though, that like ECW brought back the violence and the pro wrestling with guys like Dean Malenko and Eddy Guerrero, I hope we're bringing that back to pro wrestling for some kids and that inspires them to be pro-wrestlers or that inspires them to look up Minoru Suzuki and when I talk about All Japan in the '90s, I hope that inspires them to look it up on YouTube because they ain't got to tape trade, lucky sons of bitches. But I hope that inspires them to do that, so they can see why we fell in love with the sport."
His Mental Health and whether having "made it" as part of AEW helps ease that battle at all:
"My mental health is always a struggle and that's a everyday thing. One minute I'm good and one minute I'm not, the next minute I'm good, and that's me. And I'm always trying to improve myself because I tell people my final form is when I'm in the ground. So this is not the final form to me. So every day is a struggle but I embrace the struggle. And to get a little smart on you, Mike, without struggle there is no progress. So I enjoy that struggle because I know I'm making progress in my life. The other part of that question is, yeah, I'm in AEW and AEW is the top but I'm not the champion so the work is not done. I didn't come to AEW just to be like, "Hey, man, I'm on TV, hooray." I did the "Yeah, I'm happy to be on TV. I'm happy to get a contract. I'm happy to show everybody if you don't quit and you keep trying you make it." But to me I haven't made it fully yet, so the struggle is still there. I'm still trying to be World Champion one day."
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