So many times it could have ended differently for Eddie Kingston.

The pro wrestling veteran of 18 years spent the majority of his career on the “indies,” most notably with the Philadelphia-based Chikara promotion. He did work short stints in larger-scale companies such as Total Nonstop Action/Impact in 2016 and 2017, had a WWE tryout and appeared on and off in Ring of Honor.

Not having a major company to call home changed when he signed with All Elite Wrestling in late July. Kingston quickly made an impression and now finds himself wrestling AEW champion Jon Moxley in an “I Quit” match for the title at the “Full Gear” pay-per-view on Nov. 7 (8 p.m., B/R Live) in Jacksonville, Fla. Kingston has dedicated the match to his friend, mentor and former wrestler Tracy Smothers, who lost his battle with cancer at the age of 58 last week.

Kingston has said WWE had interest in bringing him in as a coach, but he was more passionate about staying a performer when AEW came calling.

“It means the world to me,” Kingston said of the opportunity in a phone interview. “It also means when I win the world title it’s gonna mean more, too, because I can go to my mother and tell her, ‘I’m sorry I never gave you a grandkid, Mom. Mom, I’m sorry I never got married, I’m sorry I put you through all this stuff, but look I did it for this.’ And that’s gonna mean so much to me that I can explain to her, this is why I did all the stuff I did. It was for this.”

It’s an opportunity that could have been lost numerous times along the way. The 38-year-old Kingston, who grew up in Yonkers, considered retirement in 2019, but continued to wrestle so his new nephew — and now a niece — would have something they could be proud of their uncle about.

“I believe God sent my niece and nephew to me not to stop wrestling because he knew good things were gonna happen,” said Kingston, whose real name is Eddie Moore.

It wasn’t the only time his wrestling career nearly ended.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, Kingston, who was also working for the National Wrestling Alliance, had to race back to the U.S. from bookings in Europe due to COVID-related travel restrictions. Back home, wrestling shows outside of WWE and AEW dried up. Kingston was forced to sell his ring gear, promotional photos and other things to pay the mortgage on his home in Orlando, Fla. It was not going to be long before the stop-gap measures would no longer get the job done.

“I think probably another month I would have sold the house and moved back to New York and back to my parents’ place until I could get a regular job and, you know, get my own apartment,” Kingston said.

Hoping to get a bite, Kingston called out AEW’s Cody Rhodes along with NWA champion Nick Aldis and Zack Sabre Jr. at an indie show in early July. Two weeks later, AEW offered Kingston a chance at Rhodes’ TNT championship as part of an open challenge. His match on “AEW Dynamite” against Rhodes on July 22 impressed company brass and garnered a big reaction from fans. It was enough to earn Kingston a contract with the company a little more than a week later. He got the news while on vacation with his girlfriend in Montana and broke down.

“I just started crying in the car,” Kingston said. “I didn’t understand why I was crying and my girlfriend was just like, ‘Let it go, let it out because you reached a goal. You did it.’ I was like, damn. I was gonna be broke and homeless and back living with my parents. It hit me then. I just started bawling in the car and apologizing for crying. That whole New York tough guy thing, I can’t let anyone see me cry.”

He grew up in an Irish-Puerto Rican Catholic family on University Avenue in The Bronx and later moved to the Woodlawn section of Yonkers. Kingston’s on-screen persona is the angry 17-year-old version of himself — a fighter — turned up to 1,000. He described himself as an angry kid who was made fun of constantly in his mostly Irish neighborhood because he was of mixed race.

It drove Kingston to learn how to box in middle school. He admitted he did not use his skills with proper restraint, leaving him with only a few close friends. Others only called on him when there was trouble.

“I learned about racism in like second grade,” Kingston said. “Being called a spic, spic-ghetti, spic and span. By sixth, seventh grade I was like well, next person who makes fun of me I’m gonna start swinging. As I got older as a teenager and even early 20s … I was so angry and I was just known as the fighter of the neighborhood.”

He’s applied that same emotion and energy and often anger into his wrestling persona and promos, including kernels of real-life truth in many of them. When he talks about matches they are “fights” and says whatever he puts in a promo about himself “is a shoot.” He calls wrestling “therapeutic” and his “nirvana” because he can put all of Eddie Moore’s problems and concerns away and become Eddie Kingston — focused on the fight. He hopes others can identify with his struggles.

“As long as I reach one person that goes, ‘I feel what Eddie’s saying, I feel Eddie’s anger or pain,’ whatever you want to say, in the ring or on promos, if there’s one person, I can be like, ‘OK, good, I did my job,’ ” said Kingston, who grew up in a union family and spent nine years as an ironworker in New York City while wrestling “for peanuts” on weekends.

Along the way, he wrestled the likes of Kevin Owens, Adam Cole, Matt Hardy, Samoa Joe and Cesaro. In 2019, he wrestled for 25 different promotions, according to cagematch.net.

The 6-foot-1 Kingston said opportunities with WWE or larger promotions never happened because of “my big mouth” and because of his look, wrestling at around 290 pounds. Now, he is around 240. He dedicated himself to the gym in 2011 before wrestling for Osaka Pro in Japan. Kingston doesn’t regret the decisions he made but knows now they were not smart business.

“I’ve told the wrong promoters to eff off,” Kingston said. “I told off the wrong guys who had some sort of indie cred, indie power or power in other places. I told them off. To me, if you’re a scumbag, just because you’re a wrestler that’s been in the business an ‘X’ amount of years I’m not gonna show you respect.”

The opportunity to face Moxley in AEW came quicker than planned. The seeds were planted in September for them to square off. Kingston, in the storyline, kept saying he was never eliminated from a No. 1 contender’s Casino Battle Royale, won by Lance Archer, at “All Out.” Kingston, who is the heel in this feud, ended up getting an impromptu championship match on Sept. 30 when Archer tested positive for coronavirus and plans for that week’s “Dynamite” changed.

“What happened with Lance, it definitely fast-tracked everything,” Kingston said. “There was some pressure, but I loved it. I love pressure. It’s either I s–t the bed or I do so good that I force people’s hands to do more with me.”

Kingston passed out in Moxley’s bulldog choke submission but never quit, as part of the story. Kingston, who is also the on-screen mouthpiece for the Lucha Brothers and the Butcher & Blade tag teams, later attacked Moxley to set up the rematch at “Full Gear.”

He cut a promo on the champ that set the story for the match, dating back to their time together in the indies. They once wrestled in front of a couple of a hundred people at the Elks Lodge in Queens on their way up.

Kingston told Moxley as part of the storyline that he was going to make him “pay for leaving me behind” while he made millions in WWE as “an entertainer.” According to Kingston, there is a real-life story behind the anger he showed that day.

“We were at a bar in Philadelphia after one of his last shows [with Chikara] and I was so happy for him and I was giving him hugs,” Kingston said. “I was like, ‘Good for you, man. You get to buy your mom a house.’ I was so happy for him. And he’s like, ‘Hey Eddie, the inmates are gonna run the asylum.’ I’ll never forget that. And what happened? Nothing, nothing.”

Kingston said he reminded Moxley of that day when he came to AEW.

“I just told him, you remember you said that to me and then you bowed down to them,” he said. “He didn’t like that that much, but it’s what I felt.”

Kingston is hoping for a different feeling after his match at “Full Gear,” which pits two characters who are hard-nosed brawlers against each other. His plans for a potential post-championship celebration are quintessential New York, including “wearing my Timbs” and “in the morning get a bacon egg and cheese with salt, pepper, ketchup on a roll.”

It’s certainly one way to enjoy winning your first world championship for a national promotion and the possible culmination of an 18-year journey that nearly missed out on its final act.

“I hope everyone else enjoys the ride with me,” Kingston said. “That’s the point. I want people to come with me. Let’s get emotional together on the seventh of November.”