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This was a Texas Death Match.
It’s so great.
Sometimes there are pieces that require some kind of preamble or explanation before getting to the match, and then there times like these, where I think something is simply just so apparent — like, oh yeah, of course a grainy handheld video of a twenty plus minute Funk vs. Gilbert brawl rules — that there isn’t much that has to be said.
It is what it is.
The stipulation hinders them just a little bit in the way it often can, moves getting pin falls that normally wouldn’t otherwise so as to show off the gimmick, and stopping things in the way they often can. It’s not all bad so much as it is different, Gilbert and Funk know how to work within this and around this to still have the sort of match they were always going to. But it would be dishonest to say that they’re not hamstrung just a little bit by the confines of the sort of match they’re booked to have.
Funk and Gilbert are both just too phenomenal for that to matter all that much though.
Gilbert’s heel bumping and stooging walks the line perfectly between comical & exaggerated but also also feeling like he’s really getting what’s coming to him. Funk yet again finds the exact right pitch for his own theatrical bit, the classic punch-drunk selling, removing a lot of the comedic elements that can often be there for both a match where he’s the antagonist and also something more violent and serious. Both men are throwing out some serious heaters when the match fills up much of its runtime with heavy punching, and doing even better work in response to those shots. Gilbert gets the assistance of blood, and combined with his genuinely terrific selling of the leg after repeated spinning toe holds (setting up a great bit where Funk curses him out for tapping out instantly every time, inadvertently causing Terry to repeat the bit and making it worse on Eddie each time until he stopped being a coward), he might even be the better seller of the two in this match. The match itself is fairly sparse, some play with a broken panel of wood off of the steps, fighting around the building, but it’s the work they put into it that makes it work like it does.
Mostly independent of the match itself, it also feels like one of the first versions of something I really love.
Terry and Eddie aren’t the first people to have a big crazy arena brawl, of course. You have your Concession Stand Brawls, some of Funk’s own work elsewhere, and the Cactus and Gilbert matches the year before in the same area. There are dozens of matches from both, maybe hundreds in Funk’s case a little like this, and people cite this 1991/1992 Tri-State area indie brawling as the proto-ECW for a reason, plain as day every time I see one of these matches. However, this feels a little different from those to me, in small but precise ways. The simplicity of the violence and the way the gimmick is worked in a sparse but interesting way, the cumulative effect with a hurt limb thrown into all the fighting, the way they really take in every inch of the gymnasium they’re in, the absolute bullshit, the fight after the bell when Funk barely beats the count off a double down to win leading to another brawl after the match, it all feels so familiar to me in such a warm and satisfying way.
Spiritually, it feels a lot like the first IWA Mid-South match.
From me, there is no higher praise.
A fascinating historical document, that just so happens to have a really great match lumped in there too.
***1/4
HANDWERK 