Written by Cole
Part of Violent People’s FUNKIN’ FALL series: view the full index.

03/13/1975 2/3 Falls match for the NWA International Tag Team Titles

This was an incredibly intimidating project to approach compared to our feature on Danielson from a couple years ago. Terry Funk’s career is an absolute behemoth to try and look at, even when broken down into years, and that was before he was voted as the literal Greatest Wrestler Ever. A guy who started working in 1965 and didn’t finally fully stop until 2017. 

In considering the enormity of this, I decided the best approach would be to just pick a match from a year I had never seen. I have very little experience with wrestling broadly before 1980 so why not take the opportunity to broaden my horizons and go, more or less, as far back as possible. Coupled with that is the fact that we lost Dory Funk Jr earlier this year, a legend in his own right and Terry’s long time tag team partner and older brother. A piece that could honour the work of both men and their long histories with the business.

Somehow my best idea to do this was watch a tag match they had in front of nonplussed businessmen at the end of an All Japan tour. This is another chapter in one of All Japan’s recurring feuds of the ’70s, Baba and Jumbo defending their NWA International Tag Team Titles against the underhanded cowboy crackers in a Two out of Three Falls match. 

To get it out of the way, Baba and Jumbo are very good in this match. Excellent master/disciple dynamic, great babyfaces, incredible physical specimens etc. Mechanically great too. Other than where relevant I do not feel the need to praise them. You already know they’re good and moreover there are literally millions of words on the internet about how good they are. Maybe one day we will do a Jumbo June or a Giant Baba July Jamboree and we can all hear more about it but for now let us focus on the men of honour here.

Terry and Dory are in their early 30s here. Terry already looks 40 and Dory looks 55. I have no idea why Dory decided to keep this rancid Tom Thibodeau hairline instead of just shaving it but maybe they hadn’t invented the Norwood scale yet. It certainly adds to his vibe as a more seasoned scummy tactician compared to Terry’s wild outbursts. All-American Boys in their cowboy hats out here to abuse the foreign man in a foreign land.

Dory and Jumbo start the match off and move through an opening sequence that feels almost alien in the modern day. Very little flash to it, just slowly working the holds and reversals on each other in a way that feels far closer to some type of fight. There’s some European influence still visible here in the way they move with each other. Dory and Terry tag in and out until Dory manages to get the upper hand on Jumbo and they just put the kid through the works. Lots of great little modulations here to their arm work, hitting a forearm to the armpit or twisting at the joint one way while yanking the arm in the other direction. 

Not to wax too poetic or get too off topic but it feels like bullshit when people say this stuff couldn’t fly anymore. “Oh, but MMA exists now and people know what a fight looks like.” No they don’t. The average UFC fan has no clue what happens when they get to the ground which is why they have been reflexively booing it for years. Furthermore, if people know what a fight looks like then they know it doesn’t involve bouncing off the ropes 50 times in a minute to build up speed. If it did, Anthony Pettis would be the GOAT. But I digress.

That’s all to say there is a legitimacy to what they do here and the way they treat it that is a lost art. It’s an internal logic all on its own and it is one that the Funks had mastered both with the actual physical act and their mannerisms and facial expressions supporting it. It all looks like a massive struggle to try and rip the arm clean off this little boy and teach him a lesson. 

Unfortunately for Terry, Jumbo is not some random child. He manages to reverse and Terry takes some excellent bumps on the arm wringers he receives as payment, whipping himself across the ring and begging off like he thinks his arm might actually get flung into the fifth row if Jumbo yanks again. Desperation begins to pour out here as Terry is looking for any possible way to get away from these two giant bastards and avoid getting any more hurt. Relief comes when he manages to nail Jumbo in the stomach and he slinks away while Dory comes in to just beat on the kid. No more playing around with the technical stuff, the shift in both their demeanors is delightful. Dory distracts the ref and Terry hits a piledriver on the outside before Jumbo gets tossed back in and pinned for the first fall. Within seconds the entire texture of the match had shifted and the Funks were now feeling themselves in control.

Great drama builds up here between the falls as Terry instantly tries to lay more of a beating on Jumbo during the break, clearly pissed off that he got put in such a bad position. Dory quietly reins Terry in so they can continue to press the advantage once the match resumes, while Baba is muttering instructions to Jumbo on how to deal with these assholes. There’s something truly loathsome about the way neither of the Funks feels any need to preen or posture to the crowd. They got away with something, everyone saw it, and they don’t even really care. The win doesn’t come from just one fall and the issue for Terry at least is far more personal now.

Unfortunately for Terry, the second fall doesn’t go the way they planned. Jumbo and Baba have quickly understood that the best way to beat an American is to fight like an American. They take advantage of the rules and swarm Terry and pin him in about 3 minutes to take the second fall. It’s a massive swing and Terry sells it like the most fucked up day of his life. The interactions between teammates in the break here are great again. Baba continues to relay instructions, Terry is worried he might’ve burst an eardrum and Dory tries to keep him calm and work the ref for some extra time to let Terry recover by acting like he doesn’t know which man should be in.

There is just a genuine raw magnetism to the way the Funks work as a unit. Terry is selling to the absolute cheapest seats when he gets hit, just flailing and screaming and complaining while swinging back wildly, but when Dory gets on the back foot in the third fall there is a far more satisfying type of fear coming from him. Jumbo really smashes him with some elbows and you can see the panic in his face build as he feels how much heat the kid is packing. Baba levels the playing field by taking the proactive approach and avoiding any tag shenanigans from the Funks. They’re panicking and, though they get control back for a moment, they get hit with a taste of their own medicine as Baba slyly holds onto Dory’s ankle when he goes for a brainbuster on Jumbo, allowing Tsuruta to reverse into a crossbody as he comes down and get the third fall and the win.

Terry is instantly furious and tries to brainbuster the ref before all the seconds swarm in to break it up. Rather than sit around and take in their defeat, Terry stomps off straight into the stands and scatters the men in suits in the crowd everywhere.

This isn’t an especially great, in the capital G sort of way, match. It’s a lower stakes feeling main event for tag team titles that haven’t existed for decades now, in front of a crowd that more or less doesn’t care until the final bell rings. But it’s in this sort of match that you can see all the small moments and flourishes that made the Funks as a tag team so great. Their contrasting personalities in a unified front. Dedicated to their cause of being just plain unlikeable in a way that doesn’t feel especially cartoony. They are just two big assholes who work with confidence until it comes back on them in any way at all. Shitty schoolyard bullies. Dory especially is so great at being the rock that is keeping the whole operation going and it’s when he cracks that it all comes apart.

So this is for those of you out there who have not watched old footage, or haven’t in a while or feel some urge to be well informed on the Funks or whoever else. Just fuckin throw some shit on dude. I went on YouTube and searched “terry funk 1975”. We live in an age of digital abundance. You can learn so much as a wrestler or as a fan just from these seemingly random matches. I now have a greater appreciation for these two guys and I will likely end up digging through more old tape just to see what was happening, there is so much shit you could just steal now from so long ago. With any luck you can even do it without some dumb asshole yelling SHADES OF TERRY FUNK over your match but that is out of our control. Just do it for the satisfaction of making uncs smile. Modern wrestling pisses you off? Watch this. It doesn’t? Still watch this, TV is bad now anyways. Funks Forever.

More FUNKIN’ FALL: See every year in the series