Dory & Terry v Baba & Jumbo

Terry & Dory Funk Jr. v Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan, 3/13/75)

This was a very good wrestling match. Maybe not a tremendous one, but a very good one. Terry Funk, however, was tremendous IN IT. He was always doing something interesting, in the ring, out the ring, animated, active, aggressive, urgent, desperate, sometimes two or more of those things and maybe several other descriptors at once. The Funks came across as a well-oiled machine in the first fall working over Jumbo's arm. They operated with lots of quick tags and tight arm wringers, then every now and then Dory would smash Jumbo in the face with one of his mean European uppercuts. Jumbo for his part was pretty interesting working from below, though Terry was such a presence that everything around him sort of got pulled up to his level anyway. The same goes for when the tide eventually turns (after a cool dueling nip up!) - Jumbo is more than fine working on top but Terry is just magnetic fighting from underneath. At times it almost feels like a story of Terry's overzealousness and how it'll cost him. In the first fall there's a point where he has the chance to tag Dory, chooses instead to go it alone, then ends up getting shut down off a leapfrog attempt with a deep armdrag. In the second fall he jabs and weaves with Baba and obviously it turns out to be a mistake because Baba clonks him in the face with chops, Terry flying out the ring with an amazing bump through the ropes, landing upside down on a ringside table like he'd just been launched out a trebuchet. He also hadn't been stabbed repeatedly in the face by Abdullah and the Sheik yet so this wasn't the red hot uber babyface Terry we'd get in the coming years. It meant he wasn't above getting underhanded when a situation called for it, like when he gave Jumbo a piledriver on the floor to set up the Funks taking the first fall. When he drops the second fall for his team he has no interest in starting out the third and about swings on poor Joe Higuchi for trying to keep things on track. As that deciding fall went on both Funks got more and more surly, neither being afraid to break up pins with a knee to the neck or double up with nasty forearm strikes. I liked the finish with Jumbo reversing a vertical suplex and falling on Dory for the win, Baba realising at that very moment that 15 years down the line Jumbo will return the favour for the man who will ultimately unseat him as The Ace. I assume. There was some confusion as to how the reversal here came about and post-match the camera pans around to Terry picking Higuchi up ready to skull him with a brainbuster.