Say what you will about AEW‘s Eddie Kingston, that he's one of the best talkers in the business, that he has an “unprofessional physique,” or that his angles have a tendency to get a bit too real for anyone's good, but even his biggest detractors can't say with a straight face that the “Mad King” isn't a student of the classics – specifically of the death match wrestlers of All Japan Pro Wrestling.

Need proof? Well, read what Kingston had to say about his wrestling Mount Rushmore by NY News 12 Long Island, as dictated by Wrestling Inc.'s Eric Mutter.

“I’m just going to go with my personal favorites. Not the people who drew the most money, not the people who made the most impact in the business, just my personal favorites,” Kingston said. “Honestly, it’s the Four Pillars of All Japan-Pro Wrestling. (Toshiaki) Kawada, (Akira) Taue, (Mitsuharu) Misawa and (Kenta) Kobashi. There you go, there’s my Mt. Rushmore right there. All Japan 90’s and some of them when they went to (Pro Wrestling NOAH). There’s your Mt. Rushmore for me personally, because they’re the guys I still watch to this day. I just watched Misawa and Taue from ’96 or ’95 the other day on the phone.

“No one wrestles like them. No one will ever wrestle like them. I love them to death. Kobashi is my personal favorite. Kawada, I feel like I’m a kindred spirit with Kawada. But no one wrestles like them, no one will ever be them. That’s the benchmark. I’m trying to be better than them, not to be like them because nobody could ever be like Kobashi, Kawada, Misawa, Taue ever again.

Now to some, this might sound like a whole lot of words without enough context clues to understand the full story. All Japan has long since been overshadowed by NJPW and hasn't had a Bullet Club to popularize their in-ring style stateside – with the closest probably being Kenny Omega's Atsushi Onita-inspired Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match. And yet, since becoming a full-time member of the AEW roster, Kingston has paid homage to his idols at every chance he's gotten, from wearing embracing moves like the Kawada's signature Plum Stretch to his Misawa-inspired ring attire at Full Gear, which he described to Big Gold Belt Media during his Highspot Virtual Gimmick Table signing.

“It was the first time I wore kickpads ever. The reason why I got the colors is that it’s the colors of Misawa, who wrestled for All Japan and was the Ace of Aces. He was a huge inspiration for me and that’s why I wore the colors… The reason why I wore it that day was for Misawa and I wanted people to know who the Four Pillars of Heaven are from All Japan in the 90s. I like to educate. That’s my favorite style, I like to learn it and study it every day.”

Why, you may ask, is this relevant on this, the day of AEW's Fyter Fest Night 3? Well, because Eddie Kingston's Barbed Wire Everywhere Match versus Chris Jericho was practically a love letter to the All Japan Legends; a match that, save the Shark Week tie-ins, would make the likes of Terry Funk, Mick Foles, Atsushi Onita, and the Four Pillars of All-Japan very proud indeed.

Kingston and Jericho delivered a bloody good time onto AEW television.

When the members of the Jericho Appreciation Society were raised up into the air above the ring at AEW's Fyter Fest Night 3 in a promotional tie-in for Discovery's Shark Week, fans knew they were in for something downright ridiculous. Sammy Guevara was noticeably absent from the shark cage, as was Tay Conti, and even the prospects of having an “injured” Ruby Soho holding the controls to the cage was a decision just designed to cause some ridiculousness.

And yet, the actual in/around-the-ring wrestling in the match was pretty textbook in terms of old-school, 90s-style barbed wire death matches.

Chris Jericho came to the ring with a barbed wire baseball bat that would have made Mick Foley proud, Kingston stole Justin Roberts' barbed wire microphone – as if one would need such a thing – to immediately get some color on his foe, and the duo dueled away, with suplexes onto barbed wire tables, spots into the barbed wire ropes, and one particularly brutal spot where the “Painmaker” put his foe into the Walls of Jericho right on top of a barbed wire board.

Yes, the match rapidly went off of the rails shortly thereafter, with Conti and Anna Jay attacking Soho, the JAS escaping the shark cage, and all heck breaking loose shortly thereafter, with Kingston's final submission attempt being interrupted by a “Spanish God” superkick, but hey, for about eight minutes, it looked like a classic bout between two performers from a bygone era thrust into action in the modern era. Though the match didn't end as Kingston may have liked, those tributes alone likely makes the bout a successful one for the “Mad King.”