1987: obreros ilustrados (or lack thereof)
- 1987: obreros ilustrados (or lack thereof) - November 13, 2026
- Kenny Omega (Part 2) - September 22, 2026
- Kenny Omega (Part 1) - September 8, 2026
Part of Violent People’s FUNKIN’ FALL series: View the full index.
“You, monstrous exploiter, measure your steps, because if you don’t, you may fall into the precipice of your own egotism or into the abyss of your own errors!”
-Luisa Capetillo, Mi Opinion
I often think, long and hard, about wrestling as a form of liberation—if not from the oppressive structures that it exists within (e.g., capitalism or Vince McMahon) but from the hegemonic modes of modern Western entertainment that puts explicit guardrails on the scope of our imaginations so that, if we were to see ourselves as heroes capable of toppling the systems that opress us, we can only do it with the support of the state, the military industrial complex, the Democratic Socialists of America, or a myriad of other imperalistic power structures who’s primary interest is maintaining their own power as the working class. This is the lens which I squint through whenever I watch wrestling—when Sami Zayn Helluva Kicks Cody Rhodes in his patriotic Transformer tattoo, it is not merely to prove that he is capable of being the face of a wrestling promotion; he is, in his own unique way, a fleeting moment of emancipation from the Slim Jim-branded noose that Ari Emanuel has slipped around our necks. Sí se puede. Intifada. Blue no matter who.
When I pulled up “Terry & Dory Funk Jr vs Road Warriors 1987 09 20” from Juan Ramón Loubriel Stadium in Bayamon, Puetro Rico, I was anticipating the Funker’s brief sojourn into the extractive colonialist occupation of Puetro Rico to be an attempt at instilling a sense of revolutionary praxis into the terrority—or, at minimum, that he and his brother and the Road Warriors would use their unique form of agitprop to elevate the class consciousness among the working class audience, elevating a new subset of obreros ilustrados to carry the flame of the real professional wrestling proletariat siempre, eien ni, forever.
Not a single word in the two paragraphs above is true. One thing about neoliberals is that—like Terry Funk!—they have no problem courting spectacle and appropriating the language of radical movements so long as it benefits them financially. We here at Violent People are not above that. And let me tell you, if there’s one thing this project is doing, it is helping us ride the blue wave to the bank.
1987 is, unequivocally, a strange year for Terry Funk. After his departure from WWF and with his attention almost entirely turned towards Hollywood, Terry was limiting himself to a) the AJPW’s Real World Tag League; and b) a handful of random CWF bookings against Mike Rotunda & Kevin Sullivan. Few things, for my money, are more beautiful than the Funks playing heel in an “international” territory and it is especially delightful to watch him jostle with groups of boriquas in the front row as the rest of the audience pelts him and his brother with garbage. It never ceases to amaze me how exceptional these two Texans are at drawing heat.
A large part of the Road Warriors’ appeal has always been their perceived recklessness, but that sense of danger is absent here. That might be because all four men are mailing it in here; more likely, it’s because Hawk and Animal mistakenly assume Dory is 78 years old. Even so, there’s plenty to enjoy in Terry’s performance—even here, where wrestling must feel like an afterthought, he still treats the audience to his cartoonish, exaggerated bumping. The Funk Brothers are agitators here, endlessly bending the rules and tempting the Road Warriors to break them outright. If there is a highlight here, it’s in the brief glimpse we get at crowd brawling—note the way Animal rocks Dory with a few chair shots after refusing to sell for some himself. But the truth is this match is a poor copy of their AJPW match from the previous year and you’d find much more joy in the singles match Terry had against Carlos Colón.
So alas, it pains me to tell you there are no revolutionaries in this match, as these Anglos fail to deliver on the promise of liberation the same way Jamie Raskin failed to deliver on the promise of statehood for the island. That this relatively tame match takes place in Puerto Rico, a territory known for its wild brawls and chaotic action, is akin to a second turn of the blade. But if there’s one thing revolutionaries can agree on, it’s that Bill Alfonso is a lot like Hillary Clinton (in that he ruins everything).
More FUNKIN’ FALL: See every year in the series
