B-I Cannon (Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki) vs. The Funks (Dory Funk Jr./Terry Funk), JWA NWA World Champion Series Day Seven (8/4/1970)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program @beenthrifty You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was a Two of Three Falls match, as was the custom, for Baba and Inoki’s NWA International Tag Team Titles.

Disappointingly, while this match is listed at thirty two minutes long, the footage I was provided — and more importantly, as I am pretty good at finding things online, the only footage I was able to find — only has twelve minutes of action to it.

Not disappointingly, that twelve minutes is awesome.

First, as tends to be the case with the classic footage aired by, I think, G+, you might never know there was an edit if not for the times listed on screen, or in my case, the research I tend to do to find out the names of these shows. It is seamless in a way you don’t often get, with every cut feeling like a natural television cut, simply going to another angle. It’s the kind of match clipping that ought to be studied, along with some of the better 2000s to early 2010s Toryumon/DG edits. It arguably does the match a disservice, as if I had no idea about the times and/or saw this at a time when it was harder to easily find these things out (the children may not know this, but for most of the 2000s and maybe early 2010s as well, it wasn’t always so easy), I would have zero qualms about full on calling it as a great match.

That’s because every single thing we see is really great.

On the surface, it is pure meat and potatoes pro wrestling, and it rocks.

Following a 60:00 time limit draw against Inoki two days earlier, Dory and his kid brother have to reckon with Inoki and his own partner, and the national heroes get here what they weren’t yet able to for one of the major world titles. The Funks get rowdy when things don’t work perfectly, punch a whole lot, throw the referee out for a disqualification, hit their toe holds, before Baba and Inoki give them every possible receipt on their way back out of the country. It’s pure and it’s simple, and like so many of these old things, the total commitment to the basic concept does so much for me.

Like anything great, it’s the parts that go into that that make it run like it does though.

Baba and Inoki are great enough here that my loudest thought leaving this is that I really really need to see more B-I Cannon (thanks to this same contributor, I will, but you can add onto that at the ko-fi). They’re not this ultra slick team in the way we often think of tag teams, but there is an electricity and a magic to them that makes me think they could potentially be the most underrated great superteam of all time. Both have a certain wild energy to them, and Baba is especially impressive at managing to walk the line between ass kicking vengeance and a more stately manor. Dory Funk Jr. is the guy sort of in the middle here, the least impressive yet again, but being entirely fair, he’s so much better here than in the footage I’ve seen from ten plus years later, as you expect. He’s a lovely mirror for Baba, maintaining the same kind of vague dignity while teaming with a wild man of his own, but in giving in more and cheating along with his brother, it’s not only a great heel performance, but makes Baba especially come off that much better for not being a phony about it.

Most of all, there is Terry Funk.

While it is incredibly weird to see Terry Funk with short bleach blonde hair, he is still Terry Funk. Awesome stooge bump to the floor, perfect punches to the extent that he is probably already the best puncher in wrestling history even this early on, and above all, perfect as what he’s embodying, the little brother of the big foreign star who overreaches with the confidence that gives him, and gets his ass kicked at the end for it. It’s hard to call it even close to the best Terry Funk heel performance, those come nearly twenty years later, but it’s unbelievably impressive that he’s able to deliver a great performance not only that long before his career work, but in this near opposite role as the young punk paying the price for not only his own sins, but those of his dipshit brother as well.

Doubly so when, really, it’s the thrill of him eating shit at the end that seals this.

Inoki and Baba single out young Terry, and pummel his knee into oblivion for a minute or two, getting the kind of beautiful ass kicking revenge you expect from Inoki, but don’t always from the more stately Baba. Hard ass stomps to the knee and thigh, diving off the top, ending with a real mean looking half crab from Baba for the win in two straight (man up).

Beautiful pro wrestling, mean outsiders and ass kicking local heroes getting their payback, in the exact coin that was given to them earlier on.

This is closer to a third of the match than even half of one, so it feels wrong to rate it as if I’m talking about something I’ve seen in its entirety, but chances are high that the full version is likely just as great as the one that exists here.

theoretical ***1/4 or more

The Funks vs. Stan Hansen/Terry Gordy, AJPW Super Power Series 1983 Day Eleven (8/31/1983)

Another piece of Terry Funk themed commission work, this one from Stuart 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, at the time, Terry Funk’s retirement match.

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah. I know. We all do. Yes, Terry Funk would be back in time for the 1984 Real World Tag League. Wrestling retirements are almost always fake, and this is the most infamous example of that. Whatever. Nobody cares, stop trying to be smart and write lmao in response to the stipulation, Reader Who Exists In My Head. You fucking prick. You water brained cheese eating bitch. Shut up.

None of that matters, because this rules so much.

It is not just the good shit, it is the best shit.

Mike Tenay recently posted a tweet saying that Terry Funk was everything good about professional wrestling, and you can just about say the same for this match.

Bigger bully heavyweight wrestlers against smaller guts and heart fighters, bruisers against a technician in an ideological struggle, an attack on a limb that means something, bloodletting, and above all, two horrible people trying to take a nice moment and ruin it, while Our Hero tries to walk off with his head held high.

The clear highlight — not only of the match but real arguably of All Japan’s entire year, going to their singles matches as well — is the Terry Funk vs. Stan Hansen match up. To say they’re electric against each other feel like it does them a disservice. It immediately feels right and with zero preamble (in the match itself), feels like a titanic struggle. Everything is big and it’s airtight and when Stan and Terry begin wailing on each other, doubly so later on when Funk is bleeding again and wobbling on a hurt knee, it feels correct. That feels like the most concise way to put it, that Terry Funk vs. Stan Hansen feels like what pro wrestling is supposed to feel like.

If this match has a problem, or at least a drawback, it’s that there are moments in this match where Terry Funk isn’t wrestling.

Dory is fine here. I’m not a big fan at all, but this is a twelve minute tag and not a fifty minute singles, and his sections of this thing have their utility. His short comebacks are fine and Hansen and Gordy are both real great when showing off all the nasty things that they can do to him. It’s just that he’s not Terry, he doesn’t quite have the same energy as every other section of the match. They’re good sections of a pro wrestling match, but in a match with next level drama and energy and yet another incredible performance by one of the best ever, the sections that are simply mechanically solid feel out of place with every other part of it.

However, again, forget all of that, because Terry’s in probably like 60% of this thing.

Most importantly, he’s there when it really counts. In much of the first half, in the hot tag, and especially in for the finish.

With a bloodied face and a hurt knee, Funk feels like a sitting goose, and a young Terry Gordy tries to notch his gun while the big dog takes care of pesky older brother. Gordy gets him down and goes up, following a great little moment where Funk tries to stand up only for the knee to give out. Funk rolls out of the way of a splash off the top though, a young Gordy paying for his overzealousness while Funk himself never gives up the fight. Terry goes up top himself in a rarity at this point, leaping off into a sunset flip on the big one to turn back the young gun while he still can.

It’s pro wrestling, man.

Simultaneously a match about a whole world of things, themes, and fight ideology itself, but also something that, taken completely on its surface and only appreciated for the what of it all, a match that also happens to whip a ton of ass in the easiest way.

Really though, if you’re watching this match, you’re there for the famous post-match just as much as you are for the match. The Funks fight them off again, and a bloodied Terry Funk gets on the mic. He proclaim his love for Japan, before shouting one word over and over again. It’s one of the most famous parts of one of the most famous careers in wrestling history, it’s forty years old already, and you don’t need me to spell it all out for you.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with it.

Like the man himself, even when it’s gone and the time has passed, it’s not going anywhere. It’s gonna be here for a real long time. In my head, and in your head, and in the heads of everyone who’s seen it or heard about it. Somewhere in there, bouncing around the various corners and alcoves of the old mind palace, waiting to pop up again one day and remind you about how great pro wrestling can be when it’s done right, about just how great Terry Funk really was.

Forever.

***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

The Funks vs. Abdullah the Butcher/The Shiek, AJPW Real World Tag League 1978 Day Nine (12/9/1978)

Another commission, here from KinchStalker once again. You can be like them and pay me to watch and then write about professional wrestling matches of your choosing, provided I haven’t covered them already, over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. That’s $5 per match, and if you want a full show or something weird, hit the DMs and we can discuss that too.

This was part of the 1978 Real World Tag League tournament.

More than anything, it’s a continuation. A stopgap sort of a match in the feud, re-establishing all the facts, inching closer, but still denying the ultimate climax. Or at least what’ll pass for that in the 1970s.

Everything that worked about their meeting a year prior still works here.

The immortal battle between punching and stabbing, conducted by the flagbearers of both schools of thought. Sheik and Abby hide the fork and the spike a little more this time and make more of a production out of that classic heeling now that this isn’t a tournament final and they can play a little more. There’s blood, the Funks get more and more pissed off until the match hits a fever pitch. The structure and rules of a professional wrestling match are eventually too much to contain the hostility that’s built up over the match (and the one before it), and shit breaks entirely loose, before the referee is forced to admit defeat in his battle to keep this looking like a sporting affair and calls a disqualification.

Fortunately, there are those slight differences and so it’s not just a complete retread. The stalling at the beginning from The Sheik is different, and the use of a HIDDEN OBJECT (not a spike) for a shot to the throat in transition is also a new one. Instead of just cutting up Terry’s arm, they go for his face this time, and carve Dory up when he comes in. That’s an especially good addition, this idea that they know Dory can’t really fight like that long term in the way that Terry can, and becomes this easy victim. Both Funks bleed a whole lot, and the game that the villains play with hiding their different pieces of equipmunk is a fun new wrinkle too. It doesn’t make them more dangerous exactly, but it’s a weird little lizard brain trick. Even if the referee lets them get away with a lot historically, it’s like Raven always doing his stuff behind the ref’s back in ECW, just creating this innate feeling that someone’s getting away with something that they shouldn’t, even if it’s pretty much all allowed.

The finish is, of course, different as well.

Terry Funk once again comes back in at the end and whips ass in a wonderful manner. Without the taped up left though, he doesn’t have a weapon of his own. Abby holds him in a bear hug this time so Sheik can stab him in the bloody forehead as he can’t move.

Dory finally has enough and now he’s the one to come in with the equalizer and belts Abby and Sheik with ring bell shots to the face and body. Dory throws referees down and won’t stop, and this time it’s the Funks that lose on the disqualification. A great little escalation from match to match here, now with each Funk bloodied and it being Dory of all people who loses his shit and costs them the match, a most unexpected conclusion.

Returns diminish from the initial meeting, as they do in a match that opts to simply switch things around instead of really progressing them, but with this much talent, it’s just a little too hard for this to be anything but great.

***

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