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

Eddie Gilbert vs. Terry Funk, WWA (11/14/1992)

Commissions continue, this one from frequent contributor AndoCommando. 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/thing or $10/hour for things an hour or longer, 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 Texas Death Match.

It’s so great.

Sometimes there are pieces that require some kind of preamble or explanation before getting to the match, and then there times like these, where I think something is simply just so apparent — like, oh yeah, of course a grainy handheld video of a twenty plus minute Funk vs. Gilbert brawl rules — that there isn’t much that has to be said.

It is what it is.

The stipulation hinders them just a little bit in the way it often can, moves getting pin falls that normally wouldn’t otherwise so as to show off the gimmick, and stopping things in the way they often can. It’s not all bad so much as it is different, Gilbert and Funk know how to work within this and around this to still have the sort of match they were always going to. But it would be dishonest to say that they’re not hamstrung just a little bit by the confines of the sort of match they’re booked to have.

Funk and Gilbert are both just too phenomenal for that to matter all that much though.

Gilbert’s heel bumping and stooging walks the line perfectly between comical & exaggerated but also also feeling like he’s really getting what’s coming to him. Funk yet again finds the exact right pitch for his own theatrical bit, the classic punch-drunk selling, removing a lot of the comedic elements that can often be there for both a match where he’s the antagonist and also something more violent and serious. Both men are throwing out some serious heaters when the match fills up much of its runtime with heavy punching, and doing even better work in response to those shots. Gilbert gets the assistance of blood, and combined with his genuinely terrific selling of the leg after repeated spinning toe holds (setting up a great bit where Funk curses him out for tapping out instantly every time, inadvertently causing Terry to repeat the bit and making it worse on Eddie each time until he stopped being a coward), he might even be the better seller of the two in this match. The match itself is fairly sparse, some play with a broken panel of wood off of the steps, fighting around the building, but it’s the work they put into it that makes it work like it does.

Mostly independent of the match itself, it also feels like one of the first versions of something I really love.

Terry and Eddie aren’t the first people to have a big crazy arena brawl, of course. You have your Concession Stand Brawls, some of Funk’s own work elsewhere, and the Cactus and Gilbert matches the year before in the same area. There are dozens of matches from both, maybe hundreds in Funk’s case a little like this, and people cite this 1991/1992 Tri-State area indie brawling as the proto-ECW for a reason, plain as day every time I see one of these matches. However, this feels a little different from those to me, in small but precise ways. The simplicity of the violence and the way the gimmick is worked in a sparse but interesting way, the cumulative effect with a hurt limb thrown into all the fighting, the way they really take in every inch of the gymnasium they’re in, the absolute bullshit, the fight after the bell when Funk barely beats the count off a double down to win leading to another brawl after the match, it all feels so familiar to me in such a warm and satisfying way.

Spiritually, it feels a lot like the first IWA Mid-South match.

From me, there is no higher praise.

A fascinating historical document, that just so happens to have a really great match lumped in there too.

***1/4

 

Jumbo Tsuruta/Terry Funk vs. Tiger Jeet Singh/Umanosuke Ueda, AJPW Grand Champion Carnival III Day 24 (8/4/1983)

Commissions continue, this one from frequent contributor AndoCommando. 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 $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), 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. 

Something that has always really interested me in watching tons and tons of professional wrestling over the course of my life is finding examples of something outside of the environment in which we usually associate it in.

People often talk about TV wrestling or Wrestling TV, myself included, in the contest of the English speaking world. The idea of matches seemingly designed more to push things along week-to-week rather than offer any immediate conclusion, matches that are more effective as angles or character pieces than as Great Matches, which is so often what it feels like English speaking fans turn elsewhere to see, at least initially. Obviously, Japanese wrestling is not some place where build-up tags don’t exist, many of the best wrestling matches of all time are build-up tags for bigger singles title matches, but removed from more celebrated Prestige Wrestling contexts, it can be easy to forget that these places, historically especially, are full of this kind of pro wrestling.

This match offers up some great bullshit wrestling TV.

On the road to his (first) retirement, Terry Funk gets a rare team up with the Ace inside a white hot Korakuen Hall to take on a pair of real shit heels. They cheat a ton, with chairs jabbed into the head and neck along with the classic Tiger Jeet Singh spike, and Our Heroes try to stop them, beat their asses, and save their partner.

Really, that’s it, and it is a BLAST.

Funk and Jumbo have had probably like a thousand better matches than this if you combine resumes, but seeing as this is very clearly less about great wrestling and way more about seeing two cool guys beat up two super unlikeable cheating ass villains, none of that matters to me. The Funk hot tags and storm-in spots and punch cut offs are great, his in-peril work is great, and while he isn’t as great as Funk is (nor does the match ask him to be, retirement tour and all), Jumbo also has some righteous ass whipping in him to dish out too.

The spike gets brought out in front of the referee, Terry and Jumbo both come in to begin wailing on them, Giant Baba gets in on the act, and as the evildoers flee, all of our heroes celebrate in the ring for some kind of nebulous disqualification victory.

Not a great match, but a lovely chunk of pro wrestling bullshit.

It never has to be complex, as long as it feels right, and yet again, even a minor Terry Funk match like this has a way of just feeling correct.

Terry Funk vs. Bob Orton Jr., SWCW (5/21/1983)

Commissions continue, this one from frequent contributor AndoCommando. 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 $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), 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 is from one of those early 2000s old-school footage DVDs a la WRESTLING GOLD that came out, with current commentary recorded over it. I always hated these, a total clash of energies between past and, theoretically, present. Not only in the sense that you know it is not commentary from 1983, but also in that there are references to things happening later, like the existence and stardom of Randy Orton, or Terry Funk’s later hardcore work.

However, it is also a true delight to hear Mark Nulty of ROH 2004-2005 fame call a Terry Funk match.

(No, he does not shoehorn in a Rocky Marciano reference or shout “THE PANTHER STRIKES”, unfortunately.)

Shockingly, this is pretty great.

Funk and Orton almost definitely have a better one in them, as this is a 20:00 time limit draw in a territory that I do not believe was the highest priority for either at this point in time (especially with Terry three months away from his first try at retirement). It is not especially focused, there is no real narrative direction that they are working towards or in the service of, and neither gets especially wild.

It is still Terry Funk and Bob Orton Jr. for twenty minutes.

While not ambitious, everything they do not only looks great here, but feels like it matters. The holds early on are all tight and aggressive and mean, establishing a clear tone of maybe not hatred but clear dislike, on top of the competition. Orton’s control work on the back in the first half may not matter much by the end, the same could be said for the work Terry Funk attempts on the legs of Orton Jr. in the second half, but each of them are sold well enough in the moment and in transition to not feel like the match has wasted my time. Likewise, every other inch here gets filled up with offense that looks really good. Simple slams or suplexes, the previously mentioned attacks, huge bump, or mostly, tons of really really great right hands and headbutts.

Funk and Orton even get into a fun little bit in the back half, where Orton drops Terry hog-first on the top rope to cut off what feels like a match-winning run of offense, only for Funk to do the same in the last minute or two, not through any questionable trick with the ropes, but simply by directing the referee elsewhere, before throwing a real mother fucker of a mule kick backwards into the groin.

20:00 runs up a little after Funk’s revenge low blow, as our guys begin wailing on each other with right hands in the middle of the ring.

This is purely riff work, two guys hurling stuff out back and forth at each other, but when you have this sort of mastery of the pure mechanics and the feel for great riffs that these two do, even that is pretty well worth your time.

***

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

Terry Funk vs. Carlos Colon, WWC Capitol Sports Promotions 13th Aniversario 1986 Round 3: San Juan (9/21/1986)

Another piece of Terry Funk themed commission work, this one being the third of three this week from friend of the blog @beenthrifty. 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 No Disqualification Match and tournament final for the WWC Universal Heavyweight Title.

Enter invading heel Terry.

Specifically in this case, emphasis on a more literal definition of invading. Not just going to another territory to antagonize someone like in Memphis, or in a wildly new environment where the invasion aspect is more implicit like his WWF run, but literally acting as the invading force in another country. The match file on Youtube comes complete with a perfect Terry interview from earlier in the show, constantly saying this is a country of pig farmers and that there’s no way Colon is the world-class athlete people say he is, and a million other things I don’t want to spoil for you.

Just like anything else he’s ever done in any medium, Terry Funk puts everything possible into the role he’s occupying at this specific point, and leaps off of the screen as a result.

The match itself is fairly routine, undeniably very good, but it’s home to yet another ultra lively Terry Funk performance.

Funk improves on the WWF heel run, working in a lot of the same ways as an insane old cowboy who stooges and cheats his ass off as the guy there against the big hero, but he’s allowed to get a little meaner, more violent, and a lot crazier in a more threatening kind of way. Again, Funk is presented with a slightly difficult tightrope to walk, but gets across to the other side in as perfect a stride as anyone ever could. It’s a match where one of the first spots is an overzealous Funk tripping over his own entrance vest on the mat by the ropes in an all-time great piece of stooge work, but also one where he spends at least a quarter of the match bloodying up and choking the local hero (with an especially inspired sequence where he hides a hand in Colon’s hair to help hold him in a sleeper, constantly turning away from the referee, and when caught, choking Colon from the front briefly when the referee takes a look at what his hands are doing on the back of Carlos’ head). Not only is he just as great as both, but unlike so many other wrestlers before and since, there’s zero leap he has to make between the two.

It’s all just Terry Funk, you know?

Colon is also pretty good here. Based on reputation (Puerto Rico is a blind spot, sadly, you should use your money to direct my eyes toward it more often) and how good he is here at what he does, I assume there are probably far better showcases of what he has to offer than this. However, as a super over babyface who bleeds well, is naturally likeable, and has a real solid punch, he is exactly what he has to be in order for the match to work.

Primarily, this is routine stuff.

Funk repeatedly cheats and tries to sucker him in in one way or another — baiting him outside to bust him open, trying to set up a brass knuckles shot he can never hit, getting the referee away so Dory Funk Jr. can hit Carlos with one of his cowboy boots — but it never works, because it’s not supposed to. Colon is too strong and too naturally good, leading to following up the boot shot with a cradle out of a slam to win the title for the fifth time.

Pro wrestling ass pro wrestling, executed by at least one — and probably two — of the old masters.

It doesn’t feel like the absolute best that they can do together and while some of you dig through old Terry stuff through basic Youtube searches, I wouldn’t quite call it essential or must-see, but another enormously fun piece of classical pro wrestling bullshit.

 

Hulk Hogan vs. Terry Funk, WWF @ Philadelphia Spectrum (12/7/1985)

Another piece of Terry Funk themed commission work, this one being the second of three this week from friend of the blog @beenthrifty. 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 for Hogan’s WWF Title.

It’s time to tell a little bit of a secret.

(For some of you anyways, not for people I’ve known for like 5+ years)

While it may not be widely known to everyone reading this —  as with Hogan being a real big piece of shit, there hasn’t been much cause to really go into it, people don’t usually clamor for Hogan reviews, especially not of the better stuff — I kind of love a lot of “peak” Hulk Hogan.

Not the entire decade really, and not always the bigger stuff (although Hogan/Andre at Mania III is actually good, fuck off), but I specifically mean like from 85-88, but mostly on these live events. Now, I’m not calling him top ten in the world or even the country, probably not top five in the company (Savage, Tito, Steamer, pick your poison otherwise), but there’s a real charm to these less ambitious ten or fifteen minutes meat and potatoes matches, especially before Hogan seemed to really figure out how little he really had to do near the end of the decade and the start of the next one.

It’s good meat and potatoes pro wrestling, too earnest and effective in that earnestness to really hate and too short and efficient to find annoying, and although Funk doesn’t quite plug in as effectively to the formula as a Randy Savage or Harley Race or Paul Orndorff during this reign, it’s still a really fun time.

Relatively, anyways.

The reason I don’t love this, especially in the Terry back catalog is that with the WWF this decade especially being like 80% a cartoon show, Terry Funk in the WWF is more of a cartoon than Funk anywhere else. It especially stands out here, two years removed from some of the best work of his career in AJPW, and three and a half away from his most famous (and in terms of peaks, arguably his bet) run in the NWA. Very few other WWF/WWE run have more clearly illustrated the old point about how you make your art out there, and then you come to the WWF/WWE when you’re ready to make your money more than Terry Funk in this mid 80s WWF run. It’s just so different from a lot of what he was doing, and real frustrating given all that he probably could have done with this roster in another environment.

All that being said, Terry Funk is an incredible cartoon villain.

Funk takes it further than anyone else, seeming to figure that if he’s going to look like an asshole, he is going to look like the biggest asshole in the world. Tripping over dropdown spots, shouting at the camera man and calling fans assholes, trying to fight Gorilla Monsoon for a moment, only ever controlling the match through outrageous displays of cheating. He turns it not only past ten, but like all the way up to thirty. It’s my least favorite Terry Funk role, but he gives exactly as much to it as he does to anything else, and it works.

People always say things like “Terry Funk could do anything well”, and this is a match and performance that really illustrates that, challenging the anything by also including less glamorous and more narrow roles, before he even does those better than just about anybody else.

Hogan stops Jimmy Hart from hitting him with the title belt, and hits Funk with it in clear view of Crooked Ref Joey Marella to get the win.

Tremendous bullshit.

Terry Funk vs. Nick Bockwinkel, AJPW Grand Champion Carnival III Day Three (7/12/1983)

Another piece of Terry Funk themed commission work, this one being the first of three this week from friend of the blog @beenthrifty. 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. 

By virtue of being great at basically every aspect of professional wrestling, Terry Funk will get a lot of credit for a lot of things.

He was great in every role, not just on both sides of the aisle but in vastly different stages of his career, ranging from peak-of-his-powers gutsy babyface to invading or veteran heel to elder statesman babyface. He could do just about any kind of a match too from your main event title epics to weird little things later in his career to whatever else.. He’ll most regularly be praised for his great brawls, and all of the things that allowed him to be such a great brawler. The sense of pace, the feel for a big moment, the selling, and of course, the famous punches.

What I don’t think Terry gets nearly enough credit for is just how great he was as a scientific wrestler.

This match — All Japan throwing two all-time great at each other with about a month and a half before Terry’s initial retirement — isn’t entirely conducted on the mat, of course. They get into roughhousing and fighting up on their feet before the end, but primarily, this is conducted on the ground, and it’s one of my favorite more technical matches of the entire decade.

Yeah, a lot of that has to do with Nick Bockwinkel.

Being one of the great mat workers ever, the first 60-75% of this that’s almost entirely on the ground feels like classic Bockwinkel. The long headlocks, the eventual transition into attacking the leg, the struggle over what feels in retrospect like every single movement made in the match. It’s as much of a show of why he’s one of the greatest ever as it is Terry Funk, and Bock shows himself to be a remarkable Funk opponent. Had they had forty minutes instead of twenty like Funk and Race or Funk and whoever else in major title matches, it feels like a pairing that could have produced one of the greatest wrestling matches of all time.

Again though, for as great as an opponent is and as good to great as a match is because of their performance on one end, it’s Terry Funk who makes it even greater.

The obvious thing here is how great Funk’s selling of the leg is in the back half, and yes, absolutely. He not only always moves with a limp, you get your collapse sell when he can’t lift his man on one leg, but there are a bunch of great little moments where he only uses one leg in a moments where almost nobody else ever does and in a way few others ever could. Terry Funk stands up on one leg and hits an elbow drop on one leg, and if I wrote that about a match from at any point after like 2004, I’m pretty sure I would hate how it was done and call it phony nerd bait, but it feels completely genuine when Terry does it.

More than that though, it’s everything before that that gets me so much more.

Nick Bockwinkel begins with his standard headlock work, Punk/Joe before Punk/Joe was a glimmer in anybody’s eye, but Terry Funk also stakes his claim early, trying to get the leg for a takedown. It’s a simple concept, but in committing to it in totality, the match immediately becomes so interesting, both mechanically, but also as an overall concept. Terry is constantly trying to pull Nick down by the back of the left knee at the start, and because Terry is Terry, it quickly becomes an obsession once Bockwinkel blocks it a few times. Even when they move to holds with Funk more on his feet, he’s throwing knees to the quads of Bockwinkel, continuing to go for the leg, and eventually succeeding in it, even if it’s only for a moment before Bock then goes to Funk’s leg in a classic “alright, motherfucker” moment.

There’s also a tremendous narrative function to that first half as well, immediately establishing the ideas of the match and never letting go of them. Bockwinkel is better at this, and Terry Funk is both good enough and stubborn enough to keep up and maybe eventually succeed, except that in his dogged pursuit of something, Bockwinkel has the chance to really hurt him. In short, the old idea of hard work and talent, except illustrated by two of the greatest of all time.

As interesting as it all is, they also find a finish that — relative to the time period and the norms of that time period — works just about perfectly.

When his knee attack eventually doesn’t work following the Figure Four winding up in the ropes, and they wind up outside shortly after, Bockwinkel finally tries to take the easy way out and immediately pays for it.

Nick Bockwinkel tries to pull Terry off the apron by the hurt leg to win by count out, but Terry hangs on. Bock gets on the apron with him to again target the leg, but when he does, Funk kicks him off and into the ringpost, before pulling himself in at nine to win. The match could have kept going if Bockwinkel wanted to genuinely continue the competition, but immediately suffers the consequences for his moral failure.

It’s the rare non-finish that, as a result of how it’s done and what it means, not only feels as legitimate as a pin or submission, but that also feels genuinely satisfying.

Beautiful pro wrestling.

I don’t know if this is a hidden gem or some kind of a secret, because of the finish or because nothing was at stake or because a far more famous Funk match awaited at the end of the summer, but it’s one of my favorites, and if you only think of Funk the one way, you ought to give it a watch.

***1/2

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

Bret Hart vs. Terry Funk, Terry Funk’s Wrestlefest ‘97 (9/11/1997)

More commission work, this time from my old pal Biggie. You can do what he did here, and pay me to watch and review any sorts of wrestling matches or whatever else you can think up. If you’d like to do that, first make sure I haven’t already done it, and then head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The market price is currently $5 per match, and if you have some sort of idea that is more complex than multiplying another number by five, hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi, and we can probably work something out.

This was Terry Funk’s final match in Amarillo, and while that isn’t actually true, few other wrestlers get and/or deserve the benefit of a “yeah, well” more than Terry Funk, who first retired over fourteen years earlier.

(before we start — every compliment about this match is in spite of the refereeing. Dennis Stamp, despite finally being booked, is real bad here especially in the back half of the match. His counts are weird, and while I’m not an expert on refereeing, it’s the sort of thing where I know when it’s not right, and one has to imagine that an experienced and real great referee could have gotten even more out of these counts. It’s thankfully not a match that relies a whole lot on nearfall drama, that’s not who Bret and Terry are, but it does stand out.)

I had actually never seen this before (you know me, always saving it for some project that never came), and a match like this is why I love the commission runs so much.

I loved this match.

There is something about this that is just so cool.

For one, it is just a fascinating thing to have happen.

Bret Hart is the WWF Champion. A month before this, Terry Funk was the ECW Champion. While this era of a Big Three led to a lot of jumping and people wrestling other top guys in situations that may be similar to that, famously the Triple H vs. Chris Benoit match in early 2000, Mike Awesome going to WCW, even the Triple H vs. Taz champion vs. champion match (bullshit tbh), none of them had the sense of importance or the dignity that this did. It seems odd to call it neutral ground given that ECW sold the video of this event and that it’s in Amarillo, but relatively, it’s on neutral ground. It’s also the only time Joey Styles ever called a Bret Hart match, which is a fascinating thing, and the only time Bret wrestled in a match that is filmed like this, in a much more naturalistic and ECW kind of style production. For a guy who so often felt like, was presented as, and presented himself as one of the only real things left in larger production mainstream companies, it is unbelievably cool to see Bret Hart in a presentation that one hundred percent fits his style.

The other really thing about this is that, when taken in the context of so much of Bret Hart’s career, this is SUCH a fascinating match.

Since he won his first WWF Title and became a main event wrestler, Bret Hart’s whole thing largely has boiled down to wanting to be an old-style champion but all the trappings of modern wrestling not really ever allowing him to be like that, four to five years leading up to Bret finally snapping earlier in the year. Everything goes back to that, be it frustration over a brother vs. brother feud that Bret thought other people pushed Owen into, Shawn Michaels getting the first time benefit of a time limit draw restart, all the screwjobs in the last year. As a character, Bret got that a few times here and there such as against the 1-2-3 Kid, but as a wrestler, this is one of a precious few times that Bret Hart really got to do it.

Terry Funk can’t really do it in the ways Bret and everyone would probably prefer in some idealized version of this in their heads, 1994 Bret Hart against 1977 Terry Funk or whatever, but there is something so classical about this match, just along the border of an old NWA style title match. For Terry Funk doing this sort of a thing for the last time ever and for Bret Hart, near the peak of his powers and getting to do something he’s clearly always wanted to do, there’s something I find really beautiful about this match not only allowing both to do that, but it happening in front of a crowd that is beyond receptive for this sort of a thing.

I think that’s where this match succeeds most of all, showing the value of commitment and the value of pure and raw feeling. Save for the finish which is more of a callback, you could probably pick out a lot of the things they were going to do ahead of time. What matters most is how they did them and how much they put into doing them.

Bret Hart does especially well in this regard, getting on the microphone before the bell and giving Funk all of this respect and talking about how Amarillo wrestling was perfect to him, before then turning back to his TV character and saying he was still going to kick his ass Canadian style. It is the perfect old NWA Champion style promo, this deep and real show of respect before putting the crowd back opposite him, injecting the match with legitimacy and sentiment. The match reflects that as well, especially in Bret’s performance, not going to the knee until Funk hangs around on the mat better than he expected. When Funk comes back on Bret’s leg, Bret goes above and beyond to put over Funk’s attack, not only with the classic Bret-style subtle limp sells, but going bigger than usual with his wobbles and his bumps.

Truly, it is not a match that makes an effort to surprise the sort of tenured viewer who would be watching this, so much as it makes one to satisfy them, and one that succeeds completely in that endeavor.

As a match, there is nothing here you don’t expect. A few holds leads to Bret Hart working over the leg of the old men. They keep it basic, punches and a few simple pieces of offense. Funk gets revenge both for Bret’s increasing hostility and for his work on the leg by working on Hart’s leg in return. The match ends not with either famous hold (although there’s a rare great piece of soft political work here from Bret, escaping the Funk heritage Spinning Toe Hold, but never getting the Sharpshooter on so that Funk can never escape from it), but instead with Funk landing a back suplex and trying for a bridge, only for Bret Hart to hit the classic heel victory finish in an old NWA Tiitle match by raising his arm up off the mat while Funk doesn’t, not beating the local hero, so much as he survives him. It’s not the greatest finish in the world, but for what this match is going for, it’s one of a few real appropriate ones to pick from.

This is not a match that excels so much in the moment.

I didn’t leave this thinking to myself about how great it was, this incredible thing that I just (finally) saw. Instead, it took a little bit. I let this one ruminate for a little bit later at night, went on a little night jog while thoughts and words percolated in my head, and I wound up liking this even more when it came time to write about it. That’s often the case with the matches of both men, two of wrestling’s more interesting and thoughtful wrestlers, and it’s no surprise that in their only real chance together, Bret Hart and Terry Funk had a match that is both super interesting and quietly kind of thoughtful in all of the most charming ways.

Nobody delivers the performance of the year of of their lifetimes here. It is not a match that is filled with shortcuts (although there are some) and it is not a match that aims especially high. It is simply the sort of thing that naturally comes about when two of the greatest wrestlers of all time decide to have a match together and treat it with a sense of importance. The result is the exact match you’d expect, if maybe not the one you might want.

A world of fun, with both men getting everything they seemed to want out of it, and giving the world something special and cool in return.

***1/4