Harley Race vs. Terry Funk, Houston Wrestling (7/1/1977)

A piece of Terry Funk themed commission work, this one from Benny. You too can pay me to talk about all sorts of stuff, wrestling matches generally at the top of the pile. You can do this by going to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon, where the current going rate is $5 per match. If you have something more complex, which is to say that cannot be figured out simply by multiplying something by five, hit the DMs, and we can work it out. 

This was a best two of three falls match for Race’s NWA World Heavyweight Title.

So, the first thing about this is that Terry Funk is incredible in it.

I’m not quite in the camp of saying Terry Funk is the greatest of all time. I don’t disagree necessarily, but with the 70s being a relatively blinder spot for me than the decades to follow, I just hesitate to totally commit, and instead go with a blanket statement of “top twenty for sure”. The statement about Funk that always stood out to me though is the idea that Terry Funk, he the individual wrestler himself, always had something to offer in any match he was in. While a lot of other contenders for the title of best ever or greatest of all time have some black marks on their resume (later career periods once athleticism is gone, occasionally being far too giving or tolerant like Danielson/MJF, etc.), I’ve never quite come across that with Terry Funk.

Even in matches that are not great, Terry Funk is great in them.

So in a match like this, one that is mostly great and that happens to have a less consistent performance from the other side of the match, the performance of Funk stands out even more.

Harley Race is fine here. Good, even. He’s just, yet again, a real frustrating guy.

There’s so much that he does right in this match. The working of holds is fantastic, especially when it comes to the headscissors he puts on after first taking control in the first fall. Genuinely, I’ve never seen a headscissors milked more effectively or better than the one in this match. Funk’s slow fight up in it and initial failure to break it is a big part of that (more later), but Race’s repeated stomps down to bring his knee into Funk’s ear in the hold is also real real nasty. His simpler offense also looks real great, and he works in the exact way a classic NWA World Champion ought to. Not only simple and mean on offense, but the feeling of it. At all times, Race is unlikeable and definitely dirty, but always also just clean enough to make him even more unlikeable. Yeah, it sucks when a guy cheats, but what works even better is something like the attitude and feeling that Race perfects here. He’s dirty and you know he’s dirty, but his dirty little acts are just enough within the boundaries of the rules that nobody has a real gripe, so much as a spiritual one.

Race also decides that, after Funk spends a great ten minutes really tearing up his arm at the start, that absolutely none of that matters for even half a second, which is always sort of the thing with him. It’s especially frustrating because in the last five or so minutes of the match, his selling of the leg after Funk’s attacks on it for the Spinning Toe Hold is genuinely very good, despite that work lasting maybe a third as long as what he he decided otherwise wasn’t worth his time.

Of course, a major pet peeve doesn’t wash away all that good, but as is so often the case with Harley Race and much of his celebrated work, it’s either more than a little uneven or maddeningly inconsistent, depending on how you want to take it.

Which makes it all the more impressive that, because of the performance of Terry Funk in this match, that it still winds up being as great as it is.

Funk does in this match what Race simply cannot, and that’s being great on both sides of the match.

Yes, his work on offense is tremendous. His arm work in the first quarter of the match is fantastic. His holds are both cool and a little bit nasty, but without ever even coming close to feeling mean or cruel. His comebacks manage to feel urgent and frantic and always feel like they build on top of everything to happen in the match up to that point. The particular moment at the end of the second fall where he blocks the abdominal stretch that won Race the first fall to go into a backslide, then immediately fires off a real motherfucker of a Piledriver (mostly to Race’s credit as a bumper) is particularly outstanding. Near the end of the match when he gets busted open, his attacks on the leg in the toe hold also get more and more desperate and vicious in a way that’s both super intense and thrilling but also deeply sympathetic. It’s a tightrope that not many people walk across cleanly, but that Terry pulls off without a single step out of place.

However, it’s the other half of this match where Terry really shines, and does all of the things that really bring the match together.

Funk has so many different chances to show off his selling chop in the match, and gets them all perfectly correct. When Race first takes over and attacks the head, Funk’s selling of a shaken equilibrium after some of the shots land by the ear and temple is incredible. The slow fight out of the headscissors also helps turn what, forty five years and counting later is a simple ten second bit into not only something that can fill three to five minutes, but that does so in a thrilling way, making a routine escape into something that feels like a real victory. When Funk hurts his back to end the first fall, the selling is maybe not as in depth (as Race doesn’t fully commit to it), the same with brief Race arm work in the middle, but Funk gives each of these things their proper respect, really making sure that at least in terms of what happens to him and what he can control, there is very little in this match that does not matter.

Late in the match, when Race gets a little lucky on a punch out of the initial Spinning Toe Hold and Funk get a gusher, the selling of the cut is also out of this world great. Not only the mechanics of it or how sympathetic he is, wildly swinging, trying to block follow up punches as he hangs onto the toe hold on later tries, slowly losing his grip on the foot or his footing in general, but the escalation of it over a few minutes. It’s not just the classic wobble leg business, having trouble getting up (more and more each time he goes down), but Funk communicates not being able to see better than just about anyone I’ve ever seen in a similar spot too.

Beyond individual performances, it’s such a great overall package too.

Every section of the match feels like it not only transitions perfectly to the next in terms of the nuts and bolts of the thing and how well it all flows, but narratively speaking too. Race’s two transitions to control in the first half are rough and unlikeable, but also a little lucky, leading to his final transition at the end of the match being the actual dirty play by going to the cut over the eyebrow more intently. Funk constantly takes advantage of Race trying to repeat what came before, or wrestling a little too conservatively, and the match makes the point that it’s actually the winning strategy, before Race just so happens to get exactly lucky enough at the end,

The referee finally stops the match when a half-blind Funk initially tries to lunge at him when he checks on him on the mat, and Race holds onto the title. As much as anything else, the real strength of the match lies in just how the finish feels, the ultra-rare blood stoppage finish that feels earned, and not just like something done to avoid a more conclusive finish.

It’s imperfect but it is, I think, necessary viewing.

Not only an ideal old style NWA Title match that I think hits all the beats as well as any other match — stately but unlikeable & dirty champion survives against local favorite through something like a 51/49 split between luck and skill — but also as succinct and powerful a single-match case for Terry Funk as an all-time great as any of the more celebrated AJPW or NWA work.

***3/4

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee, CWA (8/22/1977)

Another piece of commission work here, this time from Ko-fi contributor AndoCommando. You can be like them and pay me to watch and write about all sorts of things, wrestling matches or otherwise. First, you ought to do that due diligence and make sure I haven’t written about your choice here already, and then you can head to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The market price is currently $5 per match and if you have an aim more complex than multiplying a number by five, hit the DMs, and I’m sure we can work something out. 

(The actual Youtube version of this is full of inaccuracies. It claims the date of the Hair vs. Car match, which it claims to be, is August 15th, although a Cagematch search will reveal otherwise. The Hair vs. Car Texas Death Match was on August 29th, and the Dundee’s Hair vs. Lawler’s Manager’s Hair match, which this is, was on August 22nd. So this upload of the match is incorrect not only about the date, but also about which match is actually being presented. These are very easy things to research given that this was uploaded in 2019, don’t ever be like this.)

This was for Lawler’s AWA Southern Heavyweight Title, with the hair of Lawler’s manager Mickey Poole also wagered against the hair of Dundee. It is one of the great wagers in the history of professional wrestling, up there with Hair vs. Boot Hair in 2003 IWA-MS and the wager of Lawler’s wife’s hair against Dundee’s title in a later meeting between these two (and the Lawler Leaves Ton vs. Dundee’s Hair/Dundee’s Wife’s Hair match that came a week and a half after that). The prize, I think goes to their match a week later, featuring Hair vs. Car, but that’s not available.

As always with these two, the match is fantastic.

There are some minor issues with the footage, as is often the case with the old Memphis stuff. The video quality, as one can see in the header probably or on the image in the link on Twitter, is definitely not great. Grainy and a little blurry, and full of some weird production quirks like zoom ins that don’t quite hit where it seems like they’re supposed to, generally feeling like the camera operator was learning how to do this on the fly. It also isn’t complete, with some bits missing here and there in the way it often was on old footage, trimming out chunks of “non-action” here and there to fit as much onto a tape as possible.

Again though, the end result I think is that it kind of self-selects out. You’re not sticking it out with this unless you really want to see it, and the match exists as a reward for anyone who isn’t a baby about footage from forty-five years ago not being of the greatest quality.

The major weirdness of the match, as someone who’d only ever seen their 1980s work, is seeing the roles reversed like this. Talent is talent, and this is an exceptional match in spite of them being the opposite of the way in which this works best, but it was deeply strange to see Lawler working as the antagonist in Memphis, and Dundee as the hero opposite Lawler.

Otherwise, Lawler and Dundee deliver the exact sort of title and stipulation epic you’d expect from them, even if it’s not quite as refined or as major feeling as those mid 1980s clashes. There’s some leg work early on that while Lance Russell tells us is a thread from an earlier match in this series, and that is certainly handled well and works as this thing to put antagonist Lawler on the backfoot early on, is not the best stuff they can do. Mostly though, it retains the general form you’d probably recognize. A slow build into a frantic and desperate final half, bringing pro wrestling down to the most guttural elements, two men who hate each other punching each other as hard as possible.

Some of the greatest punching in wrestling history is on display for much of this match. Lawler gets most of the credit for that, he throws way more, but Dundee’s leave little to be desired themselves. Beyond just the form, it’s the sequences of punches they rack up here, between Lawler’s angrier right and left combos late in the match when the Superstar won’t stay down, jab flurries, and the back and forth exchanges. The way these moments are reacted too also matters a whole lot, not just in terms of the myriad of different ways they sell these shots, from Lawler taking huge bumps off of Dundee’s comebacks to Dundee’s sympathetic slumps and collapses late in the match, but the cumulative damage and exhaustion selling late in the match.

The booking of the thing is also tremendous, these classic conventions like a hidden weapon leading to a near stoppage by blood loss before the valiant hero waves it off, insists on continuing the match, and just barely succeeds, but performed with such skill and executed with such a commitment that it elevates the entire thing.

Following a collision on a double down, Lawler misses a rare flying elbow off the middle rope, and the near knocked out Dundee gets an arm on top to win the title.

A fascinating historical document and a look at a different version of an iconic match up in wrestling history, if not the best they can do. 

***1/2

The Funks (Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr.) vs. Abdullah the Butcher/The Shiek, AJPW World Open Tag Team Championship Tournament 1977 Day Thirteen (12/15/1977)

It’s another piece of commission work, this time from new subscriber KinchStalker, who requested all four of these matches. Yo`u too can pay me to watch and then review professional wrestling matches over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. That’s $5 per match, and if you want a full show or something weird, feel free to hit the DMs and we can have a chat about that.

This was the de facto final of the tournament.

As one could probably reasonably expect, this absolutely fucked. Perfect enemies meet and create a perfect sort of a fight, yet again one of these compact and ideologically correct sorts of fights that’s disguised as a professional wrestling match.

Under fifteen minutes, bloody, and a match that’s either about a.) the Funks punching the other team in the face as hard as possible or b.) Abby and The Sheik trying to stab them with a variety of sharp objects (fork for Abby, the notorious spoke for The Sheik) in order to stop them, and also because they really really like stabbing people. Styles make fights and while you don’t usually think of “stabbing” vs. “punching” in the same way you might think of matwork vs. flying or striking vs. grappling, that’s what the match comes down to. If anyone can make punching a style, it’s Terry Funk. If anyone can make stabbing a style, it’s Abby and his little buddy. It’s a match reliant on these things and largely only these things, one which finds a perfect premise (punching vs. stabbing), and relies on that alone, with enough (figurative) fire, energy, and hatred to bridge the divide.

A match whose structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.

Each team has a plan and goes about executing those plans flawlessly. There’s nothing not to like here. Even what one might imagine would be a weak link (Dory often not being fired up enough) is absolutely not that, because Dory brings it when the match asks it of him too. When Terry gets hurt (too much stabbing), he’s a house of fire like I’ve never seen him be before, punching up a storm and even getting one of the instruments of destruction and having his turn stabbing the stabbers. Terry Funk, obviously, is perfect. This is a match that asks him to do all of the things he’s best at, from the purely mechanical as one of wrestling’s all time great punchers, to the more emotional and harder to define things, such as getting pissed off and raising hell, which he does better than anyone else in the match too. On the other end, it’s hard to mess up stabbing (although certainly some have), but they do a stellar job when called upon. Abby has a few super impressive bumps and Sheik is generally fine in all areas, but they do a superlative job of carving up Terry’s arm with their tools and earning every bit of the ass beating that follows, first from Dory and later from Terry upon his return to the ring.

Delightfully, Terry comes back not only with his right bicep all bandaged up, but also having taped up his prodigious left to arm himself with a weapon of his own. Terry whips ass with it, and is able to bail his softer brother out when they try to stab him with both tools at the same time. It’s no better or worse really than your garden variety Terry Funk comeback, but your 1977 garden variety Terry Funk comeback is one of the better things that pro wrestling history has to offer.

After a moment or two of that sweet sweet revenge, we wind up getting robbed of that ultimate vengeance in classic 1970s style. The Sheik hauls off and punches the referee in the face for trying to maintain some sort of order, and that’s finally enough after giving them a pass all match for the stabbing. The evil dream team is disqualified, and the Funks triumph in the end, although with nowhere near the satisfaction that the match made anybody want.

One gets a sense that there’s so much more that they can do together, but a lovely lovely start to the series.

***1/4