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This was a Best Two of Three Falls match.
In the third meeting, finally, there are some changes. Not too many, that central conflict between punching and stabbing is never totally lost, but this is something a little more tightly defined than in the past. The three fall format kind of forces a hand in that regard, but whereas as their 1977 and 1978 tag league matches felt fairly similar with only minor adjustments, this feels like a real continuing story from those matches into something else. Less a stopgap or an interlude or a reimagining and now a second chapter.
Primarily, the difference that the Funks now come in prepared, and establishing some sense of order in the first fall allows for the decline into more grotesque savagery that much more pronounced. .
Terry Funk has NONE of that shit early on. Sheik doesn’t get to stall, and their attempts to play Hide The Weapon don’t really work on him at all. Funk dodges, ducks, moves around, and absolutely beats their asses. Dory is also a little more proactive, spurned on by little brother into not waiting until shit has broken loose to get a little wild with it. The battle between punching and stabbing sees first blood, literally and figuratively, drawn by the punchers. Abby and Sheik, in particular, as Sheiky stumbles back inside for safety and into a bullet style dropkick by Dory for the first fall.
As you would expect with a match up this clearly soaked in classic good and evil, no victory by Our Heroes comes without a healthy dose of violent revanchism (as if there is a peaceful kind). Dory gets put out of the ring after being choked with either hidden wire or wrist tape by Sheik, and Terry Funk gets his ass kicked when he has to fight both at once. The weapons get used again, Terry bleeds more impressively than ever in this series to date, and there’s a real danger and meanness to the actions of Abby and The Sheik once again. Funk takes an absolute god damner of a bump over the top when both hurl him out, sadly not fully caught by the camera shot at the time, but the man is totally wiped out.
Terry gets counted out while he’s rendered immobile outside, and the match goes to 1-1.
Terry is dead, and so then Dory is on his own. It feels like the ultimate strategy, to whatever extent men like Abby and Sheik have a strategy. Dory fights, but he is a wrestler first and foremost and eventually gets his ass beat. He gets choked, cut up, bludgeoned half to death. Just a magnificent beating, all establishing this feeling of something brushing right up against total hopelessness. The result is my own personal feeling when Terry Funk is able to fight back into the match that it’s something like the liberation of Paris, except even better because Terry Funk is in it.
Everyone in the match begins fighting in the ring, after Terry is barely able to break Sheik’s choke on Dory Jr. The referee again loses all control, but this time, nobody hits him and nobody brings a ring bell into the ring. He’s bowled over once or twice trying to maintain order, before once again having to call for the bell, leaving them at a double disqualification for the third fall and a draw overall, ending both the match at 1-1-1 and putting the series itself at 1-1-1.
A lovely ending to this “middle” chapter in the series, creating a total deadlock to be solved months later, on the biggest stage that All Japan has for tag team conflicts.
Given that their next and final match in the series I’m covering does see an honest conclusion, this is the best way it could have gone. The natural evolution of the series after two different disqualification finishes is now both teams entirely out of control in a match that itself spiraled more deeply out of control than either match preceding it, with both nobody and everybody being at fault for the way the match ended. Someone from each team snaps at the end of each of the previous matches, and now, every single person is wildly out of control. A great example of how to raise the stakes in a series like this.
Something closer to a conclusion, and more importantly, something much closer to the initial wild excitement of the original match.
HANDWERK 