Jerry Lawler/Bill Dundee vs. The Blonde Bombers (Larry Latham/Wayne Farris), CWA (6/15/1979)

Another commission review, this time from YB. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

This was for Lawler and Dundee’s AWA Southern Tag Team Titles.

a.k.a. The Original Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl ’79.

So, the thing here is that, as a match, we really only have three minutes of the thing. It’s the frustration with a lot of old territory television stuff. Seeing as this was not on a TV taping itself nor one of those lucky situations where we’ve lucked into the footage being available in full through other sources, what we have is simply what we have, as CWA just aired the closing of the match itself and then the far more important and interesting post-match festivities.

It just so happens that those three minutes are awesome, and suggest that the match in full is probably genuinely great.

Dundee is the legal man for all of it, bloody and desperately fighting back. Lawler can never get in legally (an unfamiliar situation, to be sure) and is a prisoner to his hot-headed nature, arguably doing more harm than good in the end. Latham and Farris are not lighting the world on fire on offense or especially impressive, but both take some real good bumps and sell both dramatically and believably for all of the babyfaces’ punches. Dundee especially puts on a great display of sympathetic selling while also still kicking a ton of ass, the perfect complement to Lawler’s all-fire ass beating approach. It’s only three minutes, but it feels like enough to say that I know this was a great match but lack the material to prove it, and that it stands up as yet another example of how it doesn’t matter what happens in a match, so much as how it happens. This is ninety percent punching, at minimum, and not only does it all rule because of the skill on both ends of all those fists, but because they all come in different settings, circumstances, and are thrown in different ways every time. A masterclass in three minutes.

The bad guys steal the titles when one of them breaks up a Dundee pin with an elbow drop to the forehead, and they do a twin switch spot to sneak away with the pin.

It is not to say that’s not important, but that is not why we are here — you and I as writer and reader, or the contributor and I in a business exchange — nor is it why this footage has survived, closer and closer to a half century after the fact.

Following the highway robbery, Lawler and Dundee keep fighting. After some stunningly old-fashioned belt shots that also bust Jerry open, the fight moves through the building, and away, before Lance Russell directs a camera to find them down in the concession stand, throwing everything around and spraying mustard out there.

As someone who worked concessions for a few plays and basketball games in high school, it is less nightmarish than the more famous Concession Stand Brawl. As much of the area is thrown around and disturbed, but there is less spillage. Only a little mustard, but most of it seems to get on Farris and Latham, so the real heroes of this thing (arena workers) don’t have it nearly as bad as they would two years later.

However as a wrestling fan, it is perfect.

I think I prefer this to the more famous one, actually, if just by a hair. While that one is more spread out and maybe longer and higher activity and definitely sees them bring more modern weapons into it like a stick and a steel trash can, there’s a more violent feeling and simple charm to this. The fact that it is filmed almost in secret, losing the fight and then finding it again rather than the camera staying with them, helps it feel so much more genuine, making it a little more than just a really awesome wrestling angle, like the 1981 Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl. It is almost entirely the protagonists whipping ass in anger over a screwy loss, and has a more guttural feeling to it. The punches — coming from Lawler and Dundee rather than Morton and Gilbert (no disrespect to Morton and Gilbert, but come on) — are better here and the weapons are endearingly simple, clunky wooden shelves and tables and a food service style kitchen stool and a broom and some small utensil Lawler jabs into the face of one of the Bombers and feel like they are not supposed to be used like this as opposed to the ones in the later match.

(INTERLUDE: As for the kitchen utensil in question?

I feel like maybe a whisk or a potato masher is the safe bet. Maybe the wide end of a cheese grater, but it looked smaller and thinner than that. If I had to hit somebody with a handheld utensil in the old catering kitchen or sparser prep area at the event space where I managed specifically, I would go with potato masher (ideally like this, but the circle ones are probably fine too, I just have never used one of those). You could whip somebody with a spoon or ice scream scoop or a ladle, but the potato masher covers more surface area and you can bring it down on somebody with an overhand motion easier because of the thick handle.

Think they would have said if it was a fork or a knife and as much joy as DO NOT THROW KNIVES having roots way back in the 1970s would bring me, Lawler doesn’t strike me as the type. Given some of his relationship preferences, he has much more in common with someone who owns a restaurant than anyone actually working in one.

Bill Dundee, on the other hand, absolutely would throw a knife, but simply did not get the chance to here.)

Lawler and Dundee eventually walk away, after Dundee has choked one Bomber out with a broom on the floor next to the ice machine, and Lawler has thoroughly beaten the other to bits with a stool, unknown utensil, and about a hundred punches to the face.

The cherry on top, for me personally, is that once Lawler and Dundee have clearly won the fight and the referee and promoter (although not in Tupelo itself) Jerry Jarrett get them to stop wailing on the new champions, Dundee opts to crawl/slide over the counter back into the arena to leave, rather than take the few extra steps to walk around. I have never been in a concession stand brawl myself, but there is something about it that feels correct for an insane man to do while all hopped up on adrenaline. Sliding or rolling or hopping over a counter is a very fun thing to do. Hopping on top of a bar counter and swinging your legs around and hopping off the other side after a closing shift is one of the perks of tending bar, and Bill Dundee very much feels like he could have been a bartender. Some skills just translate. The masculine urge to slide/roll over a concession counter is second only to the masculine urge to look at any building, either inside or outside of it, and most trees, and figure out how you would climb up or down it respectively, or something like that. After a wonderfully silly, violent, and fun sort of a thing, it is the perfect ending.

Another wonderful piece of Wrestling TV where, somewhere in the background, there is also a really good looking (and potentially great, in this case) match that happens too.

Buddy Rose vs Johnny Eagles, Portland Wrestling (5/26/1979)

This was a commissioned review from CheapPop1099. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was a Best Two of Three Falls match, as many Portland matches apparently tended to be.

I say “apparently” because more than just about anything else that I’ve described as a blind spot — from mid 90s through 2010 lucha, 2000s joshi, AWA stuff, some older stuff from the 70s and further back — Portland is my ultimate blind spot. Prior to watching this match, I had genuinely seen none of it, not a single second. I knew it was great, of course. I’ve been on message boards since the 2000s, I spend time talking to people with a lot of reverence for this stuff, I’ve planned to watch it for years and years, but I just never have.

Nobody is ever going to watch all of the wrestling ever, despite what you might think if you’re like seventeen and despite what I myself tried to do for a while as younger man, and if you do, there are going to be things absent from your life that are probably not worth giving up. It is what it is, I am largely at peace with it. If anyone wants suggestions for future commissions, this is the sort of stuff I want to see in the inbox.

I say that because this was a BLAST.

Perfect for what it is.

Rose is your consummate goon yet again (not watching Portland doesn’t mean I haven’t seen Buddy before, it just means it’s limited, I know the deal, fuck off), stalling, falling on his ass, getting run around, and it is to the match’s immense credit that like ninety percent of it is just him eating shit. Sometimes that’s him being almost immediately rolled up to end the first fall in ninety seconds once he’s finally done stalling, and going into histrionics. More often than not, it’s Eagles outdoing him on the ground and standing up when exchanging holds, and being owned in ways that are both really fun in a technical sense, and also just instinctively deeply satisfying.

This idea — and the strength of this match — is best expressed here, in a little headscissors exchange, showing both a more novel slant on a routine counter idea, and a real viscerally pleasing shutdown of everything Rose tries to counter with.

lovely little bit from Buddy Rose vs. Johnny Eagles from 5/26/1979 pic.twitter.com/NenYrBOfv7

— CCR Pounder (@ElHijoDelSimon) December 15, 2022

This match is also full of these great moments where Rose gets real overconfident about his own abilities and tries to do the same things as Eagles, only to completely fail and be even more embarrassed. It’s seen with a full nelson early on in the second fall, but also when he tries the same headscissors escape, only for Johnny to jab him from underneath in it, rather than from above as seen before. It’s a beautiful exhibition of goonery and stooging and how to eat shit in small little ways, yet another old thing that really ought to be studied more.

Most impressively of all though is the way that, despite getting maybe ten percent tops of the match’s offense, Buddy Rose is still able to come off as a genuinely rotten person and a great wrestler, dangerous in his own way. He cheats in small little ways every time he has control, the aforementioned headscissors seeing him hide hair pulls, claiming cheating every time he gets humiliated, all things of that nature. It’s something of a lost art, but at every moment that Buddy Rose has the chance to do something in this match, he is able to do something uniquely unlikeable.

The booking of the thing is also very helpful in this regard, making the best possible use of Rose’s gifts to create fall finishes that accomplish every goal that this match has, showcasing the star in a way that takes very little away from Eagles, and furthers the ideas that he is both a coward and a wrestler to be respected.

Rose sneaks in an illegal (?) karate chop off a slight ref bump to win the second fall, and when Eagles gets mad to start the third fall when he blocks a second try at it, his anger leads to him making the mistakes he didn’t throughout the first two falls. Rose catches him with a slingshot backbreaker, before hitting the old style back suplex lift backbreaker to win the third fall, and the match itself.

It’s a lovely thing this match has to say about wrestling. Cheating might have won Buddy Rose the middle fall, but the first and the third falls are both lost as a result of someone taking their eye off of the prize. Winners keep their heads in the game, and there’s nothing more upsetting than a villain deserving to win.

Following his victory, Rose gets run out of the ring by ex-partner “Killer” Tim Brooks with a chain, immediately moving seamlessly to the next thing. Every show is somebody’s first show, and even forty plus years later, I’m the example here. Rose is established as a real shitheel, both a coward and someone just dangerous enough to be even more contemptible, only to be met immediately with a tease of just maybe getting the beating he might deserve. It’s the ultimate compliment to this match that, despite it only being fifteen minutes tops and not having seen a whole lot, it instinctively feels like this is a beating Rose has been dodging for years, and earning for even longer.

Less a great match than it is an exemplary piece of Wrestling TV, but that is no less impressive, and real arguably, is even more impressive than just a great match.

Bob Backlund vs. Pat Patterson, WWWF Madison Square Garden (7/30/1979)

This was a commissioned review from frequent contributor AndoCommando. You can be like them and pay me to write about anything you would like also, be it a match, a series of matches, a show, or whatever. The going price is $5/match (or if you want a TV show or movie, $5 per half hour), obviously make sure I haven’t covered it before (and ideally come with a link). If that sounds like a thing you’d like to do, head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon and do that. If you have an idea more complex than just listing matches and multiplying a number by five, feel free to hit the DMs and we can work something out. 

This was for Backlund’s WWWF Title.

It’s great. Bobby and Pat have a great little match.

The main utility of this though, I think, is to stand perfectly for what I think of as this kind of an old-school Great Title Match.

In terms of, like, what I would consider a great match, they get like eighty percent of it right.

This is a match with some great periods of focus, some outstanding physical activity, that is mechanically super super super interesting, and that also takes an interesting and really satisfying approach at the end.

Backlund’s work on the arm of Patterson in the first half is outstanding. Really great stuff. He not only does a lot of real nasty little things, but it stands out alongside some Ricky Steamboat stuff from five to ten years later as this sort of ideal babyface version of a segment like this. They move around faster than you might expect for the WWWF in 1979, to the extent that it feels like someone ported over a Mid Atlantic title match. Patterson going for big swings and eating shit, repeated arm drags, punishment to the arm when Pat tries to cheat or overreaches, all of the hits. Likewise, when Patterson goes to Backlund’s knee in the second half, Bob’s selling and Pat’s work on the knee are both outstanding. Bob has these lovely little sells, collapsing on a slam, trouble moving fast, things of that nature.

Outside of just what they do in a mechanical sense and how they do it, the match is also home to a really neat little finish as well. Unable to turn Backlund’s hurt leg into a victory as a result of Bobby himself still going to Pat’s arm here and there and being faster and better, Patterson takes brass knuckles out of his trunks and knocks Backlund out with them. The problem is that, Bob’s manager Arnold Skaaland gets on the apron to try and tell the ref, preventing Patterson from stealing the win and the title. As Patterson’s own manager, The Grand Wizard, tries to get the referee’s attention to go into a cover, Pat gets up to go and hit Arnold, only for the old man to hit him with the title belt in a real novel piece of comeuppance.

Neither man makes it up before ten, despite Bob Backlund making it to his knees and beginning to crawl, as the hero of the story has a little more of the tough stuff inside than the villain, resulting in a double knock out that doesn’t feel quite like a double knock out. Backlund still feels like something of a winner, not just for surviving the attempt at such blatant theft, but for being the first one up. And as always in professional wrestling, what feels true is often far more important than what is true.

The match is a lovely little thing, a familiar match done in a slightly less familiar way, and with the kind of a particular booking twist that stands out all these decades later.

It is just that other twenty percent that is frustrating, in which Patterson does the thing a lot of older wrestlers did, in which he completely forgets his supposedly hurt arm once it’s time to move to the next segment. It’s hard to really ding him for it, as he is so great in the first half and he is really good in general at attacking the leg of Backlund and of bumping and stooging in general, but it’s the one thing really off about this match. It’s the sort of behavior that has always sort of frustrated me in older wrestling (not that this was universal, just that you get a lot of it from around this time). It’s a show of intellectual laziness in a match that, otherwise, is the furthest thing from lazy in the world, as shown in Backlund’s performance without the same weakness.

Still, so much of this is so great that it hardly gets in the way of anything. An outstanding match, featuring one and a half great performances, and a stellar example of how not every non-clean finish in the world is bad. Again, sometimes bullshit can be really really great. After all, if bullshit sucked, we wouldn’t be watching pro wrestling to begin with.

Minor mechanical difficulties aside, wonderful little chunk of bullshit.

***1/4

The Funks vs. Abdullah the Butcher/The Shiek, AJPW Real World Tag League 1979 Day Thirteen (12/13/1979)

A final commission for the drop, once again from KinchStalker, who paid for this entire four match series. You too have the ability to pay for me to watch professional wrestling matches and then write about them, over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The going rate is $5 per match. 

This was the de-facto final of the 1979 Real World Tag League.

Two years after the original, finally, a conclusion.

It’s a beautiful match, and one of my favorite watches in recent memory.

A match that feels big as a result of the three match build up over the last two years (on top of all the singles meetings between different combinations), but also serves as a classic example of the not-totally-definable idea of Wrestling Big. It’s a match that feels remarkably important in part because everyone in the match treats it as such. There’s a little more energy behind everything, a little extra on every shot and move, any sort of overused but fundamentally accurate cliche you’d like to use. Simply put, it’s one of these matches that seems larger than life.

The match begins as the last ended, with the Funks charging the villains and fighting the good fight as hard as possible. After three matches, you sort of know how this one goes. An object is snuck in and eventually put to use. Everyone bleeds in one way or another. Abby gets busted open for the first time in the series, and it has a way of feeling like a big deal. Sheik got isolated and worked on at a point in every match, but the Funks finally returning fire on the Butcher specifically is another touch here that makes this feel like such a big deal. Years of build up to Abdullah finally getting some of his own medicine, and that’s sometimes especially literal when Terry or Dory can get a hand on one of the Objects and absolutely get to work.

For as many moments and points of attack in this match that aren’t new so much as better versions of things from the three previous ones, there is one piece of this match that isn’t just starkly different from the others, but also stands out from just about every other thing in wrestling for years and years in either direction.

When Abby gets his revenge on Terry, it’s not the bicep or the forehead initially. It’s the fucking ear. Maybe? He gets him in probably the god damned ear and it’s a remarkable visual. Blood dripping down from underneath the mop on Terry’s head and down his chest, throwing him just slightly off in the way that makes one imagine it’s the ear, but a deliberate series of fork stabs to the side of the head is just as weird and awesome.

The real kicker lies even after that though, when Abdullah also begins stabbing Terry Funk in the hand.

(!!!!!!!!)

Abdullah stabbing Terry’s hand is maybe the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. On top of some all-time “WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS BLOG?” shit, it’s genuinely fucking gross. The culmination of all the horrific attacks from both sides in this rivalry, as it’s not as common as a cut to the head or even the bicep. Nobody stabs somebody in the hand, and so the rare instance of such a thing happening stands out as this grotesque thing, and completely over the line. A true display of wretched villainy, this ultimate thing for Terry to come back from. I’ve written ad nauseum about how my own hand injury opened my eyes to the damage something like that could really cause and how I’ve always enjoyed hand matches more as a result of understanding that pain myself. I’ve never been stabbed in the hand, despite years working in kitchens. This is beyond that. A sort of pain that can be imagined as grounded and human, but taken to an extreme that elevates the proceedings beyond that level. One cannot imagine Terry Funk could survive much longer in this match, both robbed of a hand and attacked on this level, both more tactile and more specifically violent than usual.

And yet, he does.

Just barely, but enough. The stuff of working class hero legend.

Terry sells the hand perfectly for the amount done on it. Always in pain, never forgetting, but just tough enough to still employ it when necessary. It’s the perfect way to do this, communicating the clear and obvious pain, but showing enough guts to be admirable beyond measure. The ultimate babyface is someone in a situation you can imagine yourself in, to some degree, elevated by narrative and succeeding in spite of it through a combination of guts and skill. This is, to me, Terry Funk’s greatest ever babyface performance as a result, succeeding against the monsters of this world in spite of two different all-time nasty injuries.

It’s not JUST the Terry Funk show though.

Off of the hot tag, Dory Funk Jr. once again whips more ass per capita in this series than he has in any other segment of his career. He’s not Terry, but he can try, and does as good of a job as necessary. Importantly, he’s able to thwart Abdullah and The Sheik when they get on their bullshit, and seems to finally have learned a lesson that proves vital in the closing moments.

Dory is able to dodge Abby with one of the taped up Objects, and he nails The Sheik in the throat. Dory dives on top while Abby stumbles away, and just barely gets the victory.

It’s barbaric and desperate and ends as much through raw luck as it does through any sense of the Funks possessing superior grit or force. It feels exactly correct for a feud like this, while also delivering a powerful statement on fighting like this, that sinks to a level like this, and on all warfare in general. The Funks fought them on their level time and time again, but only ever paid the price for it. The end comes when Dory finally is able to just avoid it, and turn the reliance on these violent means against them. A tired and desperate survival more than any chest-pounding sense of primal victory. Perhaps the most raw and violent stuff wrestling had ever seen up to this point culminates with a rumination on violence itself.

A wonderful ending to an all-time great series.

***3/4

The Funks vs. Abdullah the Butcher/The Shiek, AJPW Summer Action Series 1979 Day Nine (7/15/1979)

Here we have another commission, again from KinchStalker. You too can pay me to watch and then write about wrestling matches if you head over to the website at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. That’s $5 per match and if you want a full show or something crazy, hit the DMs. We can talk. 

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.

***1/4

Nick Bockwinkel vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, Mid-Pacific/NWA Big Time Wrestling (2/14/1979)

Another commission here, this time from AndoCommando. You too can sponsor or commission a review, over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon or paypal.me/handwerkreviews. As always, make sure I haven’t covered it before, and I’ll get to it before too long, assuming it isn’t something more recent.

This was for Bockwinkel’s AWA World Heavyweight Title, and as it’s 1979, was a three fall contest.

Obviously, this rules.

It’s worth noting that, technically, this is incomplete. We only (“only”) have something like forty five minutes out of the fifty-three that this reportedly lasts, and while that’s a shame, it’s the sort of shame that’s sort of funny in retrospect. It’s a silly thing to get mad at, especially given the large scale crime that is the amount of Nick Bockwinkel that exists on tape relative to many of his peers and successors. However, what’s missing is all on the front end, it would seem. The match jumps ahead a few minutes  and it’s easy to assume a few means the missing amount here, because there aren’t many cuts here. So, forty five minutes of Jumbo Tsuruta and Nick Bockwinkel is an absolute gift, and I don’t want to dwell on the missing time so much as I want to inform you about the horse you’ve been given.

Because, really, this is an absolute gift.

A great match, and a lovely sort of example of old title match formula.

I don’t know that it’s all that it can be, though. Jumbo works seemingly more towards a Western audience with an increased use of Giant Baba style side-of-the-palm chops to the head and body, as well as some stereotype double chops. It’s a weird sort of departure from the norms that makes this somewhat lesser than their 1980s work together. The fifty three minute runtime doesn’t exactly hurt this match, as two all-time greats know how to use that time properly, but I don’t know if it’s exactly better than their tighter matches together either. While it never feels wasted exactly, there’s nothing here not also accomplished in those shorter matches as well.

Certain things about this match will always rule though, and complaints are very minor when compared to all that they get right.

Before the shift in style in the mid 1980s spearheaded by Choshu and Tenryu, Jumbo Tsuruta was incredible at working this older title match style. Call it “70s style” or whatever you’d like, all of those terms always felt a little bit insulting to me, like they came with an implied “(how quaint!)” added on at the end, but it’s a great fucking style and Jumbo is as great at it as anyone who ever held one of the major World titles for any real length of time. He gets the little things as much as anyone like milking holds and the slow escalation from respectable competition into violent hostility, and what he has over many other practitioners is that he’s a better long-term seller than any of them.

That’s not to discredit Bockwinkel, who sells the early arm work by Tsuruta as much as is appropriate. Jumbo doesn’t quite get to tear him up on the mat with his arm attack so much as embarrass or frustrate Bockwinkel. A good chuck of the best pieces of this match come from this opening third or so of the match, including a novel little sequence that I felt strongly enough about to clip out on its own.

this little bit from the Jumbo vs. Bockwinkel match from 2/14/1979 absolutely whips ass. pic.twitter.com/cHH7nig4BC

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) November 26, 2021

Bockwinkel is able to get out of that though, and they unfortunately never return to any of that. That’s not to say he had a sudden shift and forgot it, because Bockwinkel really does take the time for a few moments to shake it out and to not use the left arm all that much. However, had he paid as much attention to the arm as Jumbo did to his leg, we’d likely be talking about an all-time great match instead of just one that’s just a more regular kind of great.

To win the first fall finally after half an hour, Bockwinkel targets the knee of the big man. It’s the realization of a wonderful shell game employed by all the best heels of a certain generation, spending twenty to thirty minutes baiting someone in. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes simply through adjustments to things that don’t work, but creating a confidence both in the hero and in the crowd cheering him on that things are going one way only to yank the rug out. It’s not Bock’s signature in the way that it was someone like Ric Flair’s, but he’s just as great at it, and just a little more violent. Because Bock always had a better sense of where the line was between showing ass and looking less than serious than all but a handful of people ever, he’s able to slip into control and feel like more an immediate threat than almost anyone ever.

After Bockwinkel’s victory with a Figure Four, Jumbo spends the next twenty plus minuts always with some kind of a limp or a stutter in his step. Even when kicking ass — and he kicks a lot of ass — it’s something Jumbo always seems to remember.

Jumbo makes his comeback despite of all that, and beats the dog shit out of Nick Bockwinkel, who deserves every moment of it. Following Jumbo’s second fall win with the Cobra Twist, Bockwinkel gets some great looking blood after a corner attack. The cut itself just so happens to flow in a way reminiscent of the man himself. Not over the top, but exactly the right amount for the desired affect. No crimson mask, but a steady stream down the face, and coming at exactly the right moment in the match. Bockwinkel once again does everything right, without even trying to sometimes.

One more great example of this comes in the very end, as Jumbo goes back to the hold that won him the last fall, only for a desperate Bockwinkel to reach with his free arm and just slug the referee for a cheap disqualification.

It’s bullshit, but a different kind of bullshit. It doesn’t feel cheap in the way a low blow or a blatant rake of the eye does. It’s a more respectable kind of a non-finish in one of these traveling World Champion matches, as it puts the focus entirely on the challenger. Low blow a guy or use a weapon and he’s got to sell it, so while he wins, there’s still some weakness there. Bockwinkel hitting the ref has some pathetic component to it as well, unable to even do anything to his challenger to fight it, and having to lash out in the only way left. He looks more smart than cowardly, of course, but it leaves the match with a greater sense of injustice than it could by going about it in any more traditional way.

Even the nonsense is better when Bockwinkel does it.

A great great match that everyone would do better for themselves by watching instead of whatever flavor of the month nonsense other people insist that you have to see. Not the best they can do together, but still something of a truly undeniable quality.

***1/4