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.
HANDWERK 