[1995-01-08-IWA Japan-Duel of the Wilds] Cactus Jack vs Terry Funk (No Ropes Barbed Wire Fire Death)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Both pre-match promos are great. Cactus is classic, mentioning that Brody and Funk are the only two legends in wrestling and telling Funk there's not much he can do to him -- his teeth are already gone, his ear is already gone, and his heart is too big to carry. He then lays down the ITSU-DEMO. By contrast, Funk is the tender-hearted, lovable grandpa, saying he'll say a prayer before this dangerous match, but not for Cactus. And away we go.

 

These are two guys who know exactly how to work a match like this -- Irish whip teases, starting by brawling outside, all to build to the barbed wire. But the early boxing stuff was cool too. I forget how much I liked Cactus Jack before Mick Foley became overly humanized. He throws a flaming chair at Funk after he's tied upside down in the barbed wire by the ankle -- wow. Cactus also takes a hiptoss directly on the flaming chair and takes a flaming branding iron to the chest. The match is obviously filled with spots like that. But what makes it tolerable is that these two sell, time their spots well and give their audience what they want. There is still a thinking aspect to it all.

 

I wouldn't want to watch very much stuff like this back to back because of the brutality and because of what we know wrestling to be in 2011, but this was fun.

 

The post-match promos are even better than the pre-match ones.

[Tim Evans]

I didn't like the match too much but the post match with Terry acting like FMW Onita was awesome. Kinda sad to see Funk in matches like this.

[jasch]

While I am in agreement about how the brutality is a bit off-putting, as a presentation from the pre-match promises, through the sight of Funk doing his best Onita imitation in the post-match promises, to me this is as good as garbage wrestling has ever been.

[BackToBionic]

I remember him describing this one in detail in his book. Crazy that he was going for a barbed wire hangman at one point.

[Kevin Ridge]

Cactus gets rammed head first into a stacked table and leaves a huge blood stain on table. Loads of violence in this one and I am actually glad that a lot of this stuff has been fazed out of wrestling today. Terry trying to pull the shoe off the photographer in the ring was funny.

[PeteF3]

Not what I'd call a great match, but something I think is worth seeing by anyone interested in a complete history of wrestling. As part of the deathmatch genre it's pretty seminal, even if there are Onita matches that are better than this--this match had some smart work but didn't really build to a satisfying finish the way Onita does best. This is still quite good, with some jawdropping spots involving fire and thrown chairs. And flaming thrown chairs. This is also helped tremendously by the bookended promos, which give it a touch of uniqueness that the FMW stuff can't offer.

[El-P]

Yes, there was some thinking involved here, in the sense of "What the hell were they thinking ?". Killing themselves for a bunch a people in a small Japanese gym, for I guess not that much of money. Yeah, insane spots, but also insanely stupid in retrospect. Of course there was a sense of timing and pacing, but still. None of this was necessary. Onita was a lot less for a shitload more of money. Terry Funk doing his own version of Onita was kinda fun, although it really looks like your shitty indy fed trying to emulate the bigger one. I dunno. I think I would have really enjoyed this 15 years ago. Now, not so much, and I kinda feel like it was a complete waste of both Funk and Cactus, would could have a much better match doing not a third of what they did here in term of spots and brutality. So yeah, times change. IWA Japan was so seedy. The thought of bumping on that ring, much less bleeding and crawling all over it, just makes you shivers these days. Hum… hepatitis anyone ?

[Zenjo]

This wouldn't usually be my cup of tea, so surprise to say I loved this. The promos before and afterwards were excellent. Quite how they were translated into Japanese I'm not sure. These two men had a strong rivalry going. It had this crazy master vs deranged student psychology. And you had two men willing to pay any price, because they knew their opponent was going to have to go through hell to beat them.

 

It's important that competitors in hardcore matches are able to actually wrestle. If all they can do is bleed it's hard to have any empathy for them. This certainly was wild and extreme. An ignited chair and a flaming branding iron made appearances. Both men bled, Cactus a disgusting amount. They fought over the arena as the fans scurried out of the firing line. Well paced and they made the big spots meaningful. This is what death matches should be like. It was believable that both would be totally shot after 15m. Weak finish, but they weren't done there as the fight continues.

[brockobama]

Watched this today for the first time in a number of years. Despite being a big deathmatch fan and despite this match containing one or two iconic deathmatch moments, I don't love this match all that much, though I find it somewhat fascinating. It exists in this transitional period between Onita's seminal work and when deathmatches went completely overboard (for many people) with BJW and CZW. A few hours before watching this, I watched the two Necro Butcher vs Toby Klein matches from the '03 and '04 KOTDMs, and it's sort of amazing how similar those matches are to this one in certain ways, from the vocalizations to the snug pot shots to the copious blood loss. Obviously the likes of Foley and Funk were big influences on the likes of Necro and Klein, but I still find it interesting how easily you can trace the steps from Onita in Kawasaki Stadium to Thumbtack Jack and his syringes, considering how different they are at face value.

[Calvin]

It's fitting that this takes place in what looks to be the seediest warehouse in Japan. There's already a sense of danger inherent in the ambience even before you transplant two unhinged Americans into a ring with barbed wire for ropes. I thought this was incredible up until the finish. It's difficult to have plunder matches flow organically from spot to spot as well as this one did, but these two are absolute masters of the genre for good reason.

***3/4