Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Terry Funk (AJPW, 6/11/1976)

A hell of a match. Prime time Terry Funk, baby, with his Looney Tunes selling and Amarillo, Texas-style, forearm-grinding limbwork. Terrific first fall, as Terry controls early on, working the arm and building to Tsuruta’s inevitable escape, and when it happens, you can see just how hard Funk fought to keep Jumbo in check as he’s out of breath and sweaty. Now Jumbo’s got Terry on the Rocks and I love Funk working to shake Tsuruta off, firing off knight-edged chops and trying to toss him over the ropes only for Jumbo to hold onto the arm and bring him back into the ring.  Funk tries to find an opening with an atomic drop but Jumbo scouts the elbow drop and arm drags him back down to the mat, holding on. Just a great sense of struggle throughout. Funk finally delivers the double arm suplex but Jumbo’s too fast for him and pins him with the sunset flip.

Between falls, Terry is selling the arm on the outside and back inside the ring, he knows he has to put some distance between he and Jumbo, so Funk cheap shots him during the lock up. Terry focuses on the neck for the second fall, hitting a swinging neckbreaker and a piledriver before he goes to the sleeper hold. The finish here is awesome, as they fight over an abdominal stretch which leads to Funk scoring the second fall following his rolling cradle. By the third fall, the tactical approach is thrown out the window and two go back-and-forth trading suplexes. With all these big bombs being thrown, I thought the finish of the match was a little disappointing, as Terry catches Jumbo throat-first on the ropes and pins him, but it did the trick. Awesome match and build to that explosive third fall. 


No comments:

Post a Comment