Terry Funk Sees the Future in Jumbo Tsuruta

Terry Funk defends his NWA World's Heavyweight Championship against a young Jumbo Tsuruta, creating something that isn't just good for that stage of Jumbo's career, but that stands for all time.

Terry Funk Sees the Future in Jumbo Tsuruta
AJPW

I will not mince words: this is an incredibly important match. Odds are, you already know that. It is, after all, the only Terry Funk NWA Championship match that exists in its entirety, or at least that’s been discovered. Two-plus years of the Funker terrorizing the NWA, and beyond this match, where he’s ostensibly a babyface squaring off against a young lion, is what we’ve got to show for it. It’s unfortunate, because based on the way he carries himself in the ring before the bell, his sense of what a champion was supposed to look like is as keen as every other instinct he had about wrestling.

Whether it’s an artifact of the video or a rare spot of irregular lighting in a well-maintained arena, there’s something of a spotlight on Funk’s corner. He stands just off-center from it, holding the NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship at waist-level, presented to the crowd and camera for the prize that it is. Really, he’s cradling it. He knows what the title means, and, by all accounts, he sacrificed as much to the altar of its prestige as anybody before or after him. It’s a beautiful scene before a beautiful match.

BIG EGG is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

What rings loudest in my heart, watching this match amongst the many, many Terry Funk matches I’ve watched since his passing, is that this is a match where Funk is wrestling a man in Jumbo Tsuruta who was not only extremely young to the business, but was once a Funk family protege in the Amarillo territory. Terry Funk had a reputation as being one of wrestling’s most selfless performers, willing to give of himself to make permanent attractions out of wrestlers from Stan Hansen to Tommy Dreamer, and here he is, at the peak of his powers as a global featured attraction, giving a young Tsuruta not just a great match for this stage of his career, but a match for all time. 

They arrive here by keeping things relatively simple, pitting Jumbo’s natural strength and technical prowess against Funk’s veteran guile and willingness to get mean when it counts. The way they lay this out in the first fall is ingenious – they’re in close contact the entire time, with Funk largely focusing on Jumbo’s arms and shoulders, pulling them back or pinning them to the mat to expose the challenger’s head or shoulders, which the champion takes free shots at. It’s mean without being outright nasty or underhanded, the long periods where Funk is in control building to spots where Tsuruta triumphantly muscles his way out. In a match full of extremely good spots, my favorite is just a collar and elbow tie-up where Funk leverages Tsuruta to the ground, only to be pushed across the ring and to the ropes on his knees. 

The match breaks loose when Jumbo takes the first fall, rolling out of it triumphantly. Funk never wrestles like he’s on his heels, but if he was toying with Jumbo, giving him a bit of touring champion vs. local project shine, he’s done playing around in the second fall. There are bits of Funk offense, like his splash across the neck and shoulders of a seated Tsuruta, that would spark weeks of discourse on safety in wrestling, and Jumbo is so big that when Funk piledrives him he flops over into the ropes, making one of the 1970s most killer moves look that much more dangerous. Funk’s focus on the neck leaves Tsuruta vulnerable to one of my all-time favorite wrestling moves, the rolling cradle, dizzying his challenger and rolling his neck on the mat until he can hardly stand it anymore, let alone Jumbo. Another small detail that stuck out to me on multiple viewings is Funk adjusting where he has Tsuruta’s leg trapped, really cinching it in – you get the sense he thought that Jumbo might have broken free otherwise.

It’s in the second fall that Funk starts bumping like a madman, going over the ropes and to the floor with wild abandon, hurling himself sternum-first into the turnbuckles in a way that must have inspired Bret Hart. He rarely loses total control of the match, but between Tsuruta outfoxing his mentor in the first fall and Funk’s increasing expressiveness on the sell as the match progresses, Jumbo is never without hope. The two make every bit of contact count. Like the collar and elbow in the first fall, they approach the Irish whip, one of wrestling’s most perfunctory interactions, like Herculean labor, Jumbo throwing his entire body into it, Funk flying around like a pinball on a particularly fast table. The third fall opens with Funk bodyslamming Tsuruta like the bodyslam is a consequential move and not a matter of feeding for a hot tag or positioning for a more impactful move, hurling him across the goddamn ring in his biggest show of strength.

Keeping Jumbo so close throughout the course of the match makes the ending come as a shock. Jumbo is in full control. He’s just nailed Funk with a German suplex, though he doesn’t have enough to maintain a bridge, the extra beat or two giving Funk enough time to escape the pinfall, but not the challenger’s clutches. Funk manages to shoot Jumbo into the ropes out of a side headlock and execute a leapfrog, but aggravates his back on the landing. He sells it, turns around late enough that you might expect Jumbo to drill him with the jumping knee (especially if Jumbo’s future has conditioned you to this), only to sidestep him, hit him with a hotshot, and score the third and final fall, all of that focus on the neck paying off for Funk in the end.

It’s a perfectly wrestled match, basically, crafted to present the young challenger as being at a world championship level while burnishing the champion’s reputation. The first fall and the number of times Jumbo nearly clinches the title are enough to tell you that this young man will be a major player for years to come, cemented in Funk’s celebrating with him after the match for giving him a serious run for his money. And you know what? Jumbo Tsuruta is a major player in the years that follow, one of the biggest names in the history of Japanese wrestling.

When people say that Terry Funk could see the future, they often mean it in terms of styles of wrestling, the way he’d learn how to breathe fire or throw a moonsault (seemingly) late in his career or, as we’ll see next in in our look back on his career, how to incorporate acting into professional wrestling at a level nobody else has come close to. But he also saw the future in individual wrestlers, not only opening the door to them, but inviting them into whatever that future held with poise and grace, a good steward of the sport he loved.