B-I Cannon (Giant Baba/Antonio Inoki) vs. Johnny Valentine/Gene Kiniski, JWA International Champion Series Day Eight (12/1/1970)

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.

Unlike the last B-I Cannon match covered here, while still incomplete, we get close to two-thirds of the match, and as far as that goes, thirty plus minutes out of forty-six is a whole lot better than twelve of thirty two.

Sadly, this is the other side of the spectrum, as that feels just a little too long.

That’s not to say this is bad, or really anything close, but half an hour plus at something of a slower pace, in addition to some of those old start and stop rhythms that maybe have the right idea in mimicking those of a real fight but that kind of just result in lost momentum in a pure good and evil wrestling match, is a little more than the match can totally handle.

It’s a shame too, because all of the raw material is, at worst, very good.

By “at worst”, I mostly mean Kiniski, who is largely on the outside here, and who often feels like the odd man out, as if Valentine originally had another partner but something happened and Kiniski filled in. His slight selling of shots is interesting and realistic, his own offense is basic but good, and he always feels cruel and mean (maybe the most important part), but he feel removed from the faster and more physical approach of the other three. I am sure there is a match from the 1960s or 1950s that someone could commission in which he rules, but at the end of the first year of the decade, there are three guys in this match who feel like they are of the 1970s and beyond, and one who feels stuck somewhere else.

Two of those are, of course, Inoki and Baba. Inoki is the one more on the outside again for much of the last two falls, but he turns in one of his more sympathetic performances ever getting beaten up by the villains in the first fall. Some of that is the natural consequence of how much Valentine is beating his ass, but Inoki also shows a real gift for this kind of underdog babyface in a way I don’t recall him doing too much of going forward, and I liked it a whole lot. The focus is on Baba more than Inoki however, and he is once again so impressive in 1970. The dignity and statesman-like manner, but indignant when pushed, energetic to the extent that the classic Baba brain chops turn into leaping ones, and discovering a weirdly great chemistry with Johnny Valentine.

On that note, Valentine is the real key here.

Having now only seen two matches of his, I already feel comfortable saying Johnny Valentine is one of the greatest examples ever of one of my favorite types of wrestling heels, someone who presents as dignified, but who is a sadistic monster under that. Ric Flair always talked about Johnny as an influence, and while he added in a 1980s style cowardice and higher athleticism bumping and removed some of Johnny’s more hard-man elements, you can see so much of the classic routine as Johnny handles the majority of the match. Not just the chopping, but the indignant reactions at ever being treated in the same way he treats others, the maniac shit when in control, constantly barking at the crowd even in another country, all of it. This is the second best of the two Johnny performances I’ve seen, but even here, he’s interesting to me in a way few other new-to-me wrestlers are.

For all these positives though, I don’t think the match ever entirely comes together.

Things drift, Baba and Valentine split the first two falls, and then in what seems like a sudden flip of a switch abrupt dash to a finish, everyone begin fighting on the floor shortly after an Inoki hot tag, and Tony gets back inside also sort of arbitrarily to retain the titles on a count out.

Not a perfect mesh and the time doesn’t help, but with the talent in there, it’s a little too hard not to like on some level.

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

Giant Baba vs. Fritz Von Erich, JWA Winter Series 1966 Day Six (12/3/1966)

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This was for Baba’s NWA International Heavyweight Title, and was a best of three falls match, as all title matches were back in this time.

It absolutely whips ass.

Baba and Fritz wrestle for no more than fifteen minutes, but have everything that a match needs to be great. A simple story or two told to perfection, with enough violence and hostility to make it feel like a real fight.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Firstly, a clear and simple story. That goes beyond just that Fritz is evil (either as an American invader trying to take Baba’s title or as a Nazi character, possibly both) and Baba is one of the most wholesome wrestlers to ever live and compete. It’s also about the power and fear of The Claw. Baba spends the first fall avoiding it, the second slowly succumbing to it, and the third trying to stay out of it again and trying to break it on the occasions when Fritz can wrap that hand around his comically large noggin. The other part of the story is Fritz being a maniac and Baba getting drawn more and more into a fight, leading to the unclear ending of the match.

That goes to the other great thing this match has going for it, which is that it is violent and feels realer than usual. Fritz is a harder kicker and chopper than I remember (the sound on this remaster from G+ is truly exceptional) and immediately brings this up a level. You get an idea in your head of that, while older matches were often stronger in a logical sense and maybe more mechanically perfect, they weren’t always as hard hitting, save a few notable names. However, this absolutely beat ass, and not only on Fritz’s end. There’s a grime to this that adds so much, especially when both get beaten around a little, and minutes are spent with each man either lying on his back or trying to get up, before the other dives in with a punch or a chop or one of Fritz’s tries at the Claw to drag it back down. The ring is of pristine condition, but there’s a sense to it of each man constantly dragging the other down into the mud and getting as dirty as possible. Fritz is comfortable there, but for the more dignified Baba, it’s a thrilling thing to see him forced to go and pound out it out with this absolute god damned scoundrel. The transition, to me, is the thing that really makes a match like this. Violence rocks, hitting hard is great, but the transformation into that, the fall from grace, is what makes it feel so special. While the match begins with a Fritz cheap shot, it all still feels like something we’re not supposed to be seeing, and there is nothing cooler than that.

As the match grows more violent and the referee loses some ability to restrain the combatants, Baba mixes in slaps with the classical Baba Chops, and it’s not only more interesting, but the most violent sustained Baba attack I’ve ever seen. It’s as stiff as anything Fritz does, but also the perfect babyface attack to counter everything Fritz does, being as insulting as possible to teach him not to shove the referees around and to cheat, just slapping the dog shit out of him for crossing the line.

Naturally, Fritz keeps crossing the line, and Baba’s slaps turn more aggressive, and turn into great violence on the outside.

There are few things better in wrestling than a vicious cycle like the one which this match offers up.

In the second fall before he was able to use the Claw to even the match up, it was Von Erich’s attacks at ringside that really did a lot for him. Throwing Baba down face first onto the ground in a way that felt gruesomely true to life, but also hurling him into the ringpost and the announcing/timekeeping tables near the ring. In the third fall, once Baba has been able to come back, he can’t resist when Fritz tries to take it back outside. He’s now the one hurling Von Erich off the apron to the ground and throwing him into tables, with every bit of it feeling like a receipt.

Inevitably, the match breaks down, as most of them do. Baba’s anger leads to him slamming a chair down onto Fritz’s Claw hand outside, but it’s when Fritz brings the chair into the ring and belts Baba on top of the head with it as he tries to follow inside that the referee calls the disqualification. It’s a little shaky, but allows Fritz the old heel bitch to set up a rematch, with the beautiful caveat that it’s at least like 90% his own actions throughout the match that got them to this point. Fritz punches a referee for it, before Baba runs him off.

Everyone leaves the match looking better in some way, while perfectly setting up the rematch. A charmingly hostile little chunk of business that makes Fritz look better, Baba look cooler and more badass, and leaves so much of the story still waiting to be told and expanded upon. A match that gives everyone involved exactly what they need in the given moment.

A beautiful little piece of wrestling, and a reminder that simpler and better often walk hand in hand.

***1/2