Hansen, Brody, and the Funks Were Minutes Away From a Classic
I kind of hate this match.
I mean, I do and I don’t. For one thing, I know what the 1982 Real World Tag League finals are playing at, which is Terry Funk’s eventual first retirement match on August 31, 1983. Everything in Terry Funk’s career was pitched towards that date, and while Terry Gordy would join Hansen in that bout, he hadn’t arrived to All Japan yet, The Funks had had issues with Hansen and Bruiser Brody for a while, in and out of Japan, and their toughnecked do-right nature collided with the roughnecked, pigheaded bullying of Hansen and Brody just right, to the extent that, in most circumstances, I would not mind a disqualification finish between these two teams. It makes a certain kind of sense, you know?
Only this is the finals of the 1982 Real World Tag League, and it ends on a pillow-soft referee bump.
I have read enough essays and watched enough videos about All Japan Pro Wrestling – Japanese wrestling in the 1980s in general – to know that this is just how things were, the liberal use of disqualifications a means of protecting acts, but look. y’all: tournaments are a kind of semi-sacred thing to me, and this match isn’t even built to acknowledge that, at the end of 17 consecutive nights of tag team wrestling, something a bit more concrete than a fluke win may have been nice, especially considering that it’s the last time either of the Funks take down a major tournament or championship in a promotion the two had dedicated so much of their careers to building.
It is 2022 and the results of a 40 year old tag team tournament cannot hurt me, but I’m stewing a bit because I love round robin tournaments and have since WCW/nWo World Tour on the Nintendo 64 introduced them to me. In general, I love the idea of tournament wrestling because its a rare occasion for wrestling to emulate real sports in a way that fascinates me, the real-time strategy of a moving bracket, the on-the-fly adjustments necessitated by the grind of so many marquee matches playing out in such a short stretch of time. The Funk Brothers win this tournament with nine points. The runners up, Bruiser Brody and Stan Hansen, finish with eight points, with Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsruta coming in third with seven..
It’s a race, and I hate seeing a race end on a technicality.
There are a lot of reasons why I hate seeing this race end on a technicality. First, and most trifling, is that the ref bump that leads to the bell is as pillow soft as it gets. Not that I expect the ref to get clobbered – despite their reputations as feral brawlers, Hansen and Brody weren’t animals, and despite Brody’s rep as a rather tempestuous individual, he didn’t really take liberties with anybody – but it’s the last match of a grueling tour, the last match of 1982, and everybody may as well be wearing inflatable sumo suits for all the brutality on display.
Second, this is how the Funks win their last big title/tournament in AJPW. For both brothers, this is their third World’s Strongest Tag Determination League win. Dory was a two-time NWA International Heavyweight Champion, the wrestler whose reign reactivated a dormant title that’d eventually become part of the Triple Crown. Despite their popularity as a team, they never held the All Asia Tag Team Championships, which was AJPW’s active tag title at the peak of their fame. I will admit to not knowing enough about the inner workings of AJPW to understand this, and I don’t subscribe to the notion that some wrestlers are popular enough that their winning a championship is irrelevant. The Funks were touring talent, but Dory’s two recognized NWA International Championship reigns took place before this match, and he held the belt for just shy of a year.
The anticlimax of the finish here feels less of its time and more like a mistake the longer I turn it over in my head. The Funks don’t get a moment of triumph with the trophy and big check, as the focus is squarely on a rampaging Hansen. Dory’s knocked out cold in the middle of the ring. Terry’s outside bleeding, somehow buried in every streamer that got thrown into the ring before the bell. The conclusion of all of this sees an exhausted Terry and Dory looking on while Hansen starts some shit with Baba and Jumbo.
This is absolutely a case of my being Fedpilled, but I found myself thinking about moments like the Randy Savage/Miss Elizabeth wedding, where the whole of professional wrestling history signaled that something bad would happen at the wedding. It does, but not during the part that really matters, which is the ceremony in front of the audience. With that out of the way and everybody who bought SummerSlam for the Match Made In Heaven sated, the piece of business that gives Savage something to do – Jake Roberts’ attack at the wedding reception – happens after, in a pre-tape. One story reaches its climax and resolution, another one begins.
I’m being sentimental here, as I want the Funks to get their sports movie ending as a tag team while they’re both operating at their best. Terry will get his in 1983, and his post-match promo will echo, literally and figuratively, through the whole of wrestling history, but to watch him and his brother made spectators to a different war is kind of sad, even if I do enjoy watching the formation of the Triple Crown, which eventually comes down to Tsuruta’s control of the NWA International Championship and Stan Hansen’s eventual control of the PWF Heavyweight and NWA United National Championships. Like, did you know what one third of the Triple Crown changed hands in my backyard of Athens, Georgia? And that Michael “Potato Skins” Hayes was the guy who won it? Japanese titles are wild as hell!
Mostly, though, what I hate about the finish of this match is how much it leaves on the table. When you thread together the real sports competition of a tournament final, the intriguing triangle of the bully gaijin, the beloved foreigners, and two of the biggest heroes AJPW had going racing for the cup, you expect a certain level of greatness.
And you almost get it. Early on, I was literally on the edge of my seat watching Terry Funk fire off on Brody and Hansen. It felt like exactly what you’d want out of an underdog (in terms of size) team at the end of a 17-day stretch of relentless wrestling and travel. Terry’s not trying to end the match early, he’s not going for a knockout or a submission, but he wants the heels to know that their usual tactics of bulldozing the competition to start aren’t going to work. here. His collar and elbows with Hansen are mean, the kind of thing I’d point young wrestlers to when it comes to making every in-ring action count. When Hansen gets the advantage with a body slam and elbow drop for a two, Funk responds by punching the back of Hansen’s knee as he’s pulled to his feet by his hair.
I love this. It’s early, so there’s no real threat, but he recognizes that Funk has chosen a target and immediately tags out to Brody because it’s more important to break this small burst of momentum than it is for Hansen to reassert his advantage. What I like about the team of Hansen and Brody is that, despite being big and brutal on their own, they are unselfish as a heel tag team. This isn’t a lost art, per se, but it is something that comes with experience, which isn’t always something tag teams are allowed to build together.
FTR is a good example of this kind of team in action, though their offense is flashier and they’re operating in an era and promotion where tag team wrestling is synonymous with high spots. Arn and Tully operated like this, too, as did your bruising heel tandems like the Road Warriors and Nasty Boys. They know that sometimes the best way to hurt your opponent is to, you know, hurt them. See Brody’s introduction to the match, which is just a kick to Terry’s exposed ribs, which sends him into the ropes.
Nobody fucks around here, and Terry’s tag out to Dory is thrilling, an O’Conner roll into wildman clubs to Hansen’s chest while thwarting Brody’s attempt to pull him off by the hair. The contrast between Terry and Dory is a lot of fun, too, as Dory – perpetually cast as the serious brother – is more precise in his striking, opting for European uppercuts (which he is a master of) and forearm strikes. When Terry gets back in, he opts for jabs, which Brody sells by going loopy.
The crowd eats all of this up, of course, as well they should. Both teams are working at a breakneck pace, and once Brody and Hansen break out dropkicks on poor Terry, he begins bleeding profusely. The underdogs, once again legible as such, may not stand tall, but they do stand defiant.
This is the match entering second gear, at which point it ends.
Theoretically, I have no problem with the DQ finish – Lou Thesz getting thrown around by Hansen is its own kind of reward, after all. But there’s so much left on the table here – a proper comeback by either of the Funks before the ref bump cuts things off, for instance – that what first feels like a classic in the making becomes, instead, a great brawl.
I know, what a thing to complain about, but wrestling is replete with great brawls, AJPW is chock full of them, so it’s not satisfying to leave things there when these two teams were cutting a classic pace. I try not to think about wrestling matches in terms of what we could have/should have gotten – it’s a lazy, subjective way of looking at wrestling – but without anything in wrestling history hinging on this match other than my enjoyment of it, I scream to the heavens at Giant Baba, like the worst, most gormless chud watching a mediocre NXT Championship match:
Five more minutes.