[1980-12-09-AJPW-Real World Tag League] Dory & Terry Funk vs Nick Bockwinkel & Jim Brunzell

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[cactus]

Bockwinkel seems like I guy I ought to check out more of. Him and Blair work great as unit and I thought it was a nice touch that they both acted displeased when ever a Funk got out of their grasp. This is a rather standard match of it's time until Terry and Bock start trading blows. There's some great strikes in here, particularly Blair's dropkick, which might be one of the best ones I've ever seen. This all leads to a great Terry Funk face-in-peril segment until he gets the tag and the match wraps up, perhaps too prematurely. ★★★¼

[SAMS]

1980-12-09
AJPW
Jim Brunzell & Nick Bockwinkel vs The Funks (Dory Funk Jr. & Terry Funk)
Real World Tag League 1980 Match
Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Osaka, Japan
★★★
Card

This was almost a great match. If the finish hadn’t come out of nowhere and Dory had been more than a walking zombie it would have made the cut. Having said that, Bockwinkel was clearly in his element on this tour, delivering yet another excellent performance - fantastic offense, just snarling and calculating, plus his combination with Brunzell almost got the deal done as they were extremely successful in isolating Terry early on and then when given the opportunity later, they focused on his left leg and relentlessly assaulted it with a series of attacks including consecutive figure four attempts. It wasn’t to be though as we got the hot tag to Dory and he was able to use his veteran wiles to outmanoeuvre Brunzell and catch him in a pin. I wish they’d built up the hot tag more though and executed the finish a little cleaner, plus Joe was uber liberal with the tags, allowing Bock and Brunzell to switch numerous times sans tag which pulled me out somewhat.
Can’t finish this without waxing poetic about Terry, once again. This was TEXTBOOK face in peril. The bumping, the selling, he didn’t give anything away at any point so every advantage Brunzell and Bockwinkel gained they had to earn at every step. There was one moment where Bockwinkel gave him a nice clubbing blow to the chest while he was up against the ropes and he did this crazy back bump over the ropes to the floor and it just wow’d me. It wasn’t particularly integral to the match and they didn’t dwell on it at all, but these are the little moments where he really separates himself from the rest. Every single match he does something like that which gets me out of my seat.

[tcg91]

This was a really nice representation of an American style match in Japan, with tons of influence from puroresu and an interested crowd. Bockwinkel doesn't hold back, once again his strikes are on point and he's really good on the mat. Terry plays the babyface in perils part and of course he's great, the heels work on his leg and he shows plenty of fire in his comeback. You could tell that the crowd was hooked and, when most of the match revolves around something that works, things are getting good (smartly, Bock and Terry are heavily involved here). The clean finish was a good surprise, but it was a bit abrupt and this match would have been a classic with a good 5+ minutes finishing stretch
***1/2