Eddie Kingston shows up at Evolve, brawls with WWN Champion JD Drake, and ends up challenged by NXT’s Montez Ford

At Evolve 117 tonight (for full results, check here) we got some pretty monumental news about next month’s shows on January 18 and 19.

First, during the preliminary bouts, ring announcer Timothy Barr announced that no less than the WWN Icon, the man arguably more synonymous with Evolve than anyone else, the Bee’s Knees, the Cat’s Pajamas, the Whole Shebang himself, Johnny Gargano would be making his return to Evolve!

While it’s maybe not as triumphant as it might have been had it happened before he turned heel in NXT, it’s still super exciting to have Johnny Wrestling back for a weekend, and I’m over here praying that somehow we finally can get him against Timothy Thatcher for a second round.

But it was during the match for the Evolve Tag Team Championship that we got something exciting in the here and now. The action was on pace for a fever pitch and a big finish, just a constant ebb and flow between champions the Street Profits of Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford and their challengers, the WorkHorsemen of Anthony Henry and WWN Champion JD Drake, when a man came through the crowd and started hitting backfists on everybody.

That man?

Impact Wrestling superstar Eddie Kingston.

Wait what?!

He brawled with champions and challengers alike as the match got thrown out, and when the dust settled, Ford got on the mic and called him out for next month!

Eddie is and has been for years one of the absolute best promos on the indies (seriously, go watch the Road to High Noon if you haven’t), and his hard-striking, hard-grappling style is so incredibly well-suited to Evolve that I find it hard to believe that he’s never worked for the purple atom brand before. Just the thirty seconds or so of brawling he did with JD Drake have me salivating for him to go one-on-one with the WWN Champion, folks. It’s gonna be great.

And it’s also intriguing in that, well, as noted, he works for Impact and showed up on a weekend where Impact Tag Team Champions LAX were originally scheduled to appear before getting pulled, despite Evolve proclaiming that they wouldn’t be booking Impact contracted wrestlers going forward. Is he done with Impact? Does Evolve’s ban only apply to talent under certain types of contracts, like say if he’s under a per-appearance deal rather than a full-time contract? Did Impact offer Eddie up as a makegood after the LAX debacle?

Regardless of the hows and whys, this just put a little bit of 2018’s mojo right back into place and I’m excited for the possibilities.

There you have it, folks

Are y’all as excited as I am for Evolve to have Johnny Gargano back for one weekend and Eddie Kingston around in general, Cagesiders?