Dory Funk Jr.

[GOTNW]

I'm considering Dory. The problem for him is that he's certainly not one of my 100 favourite wrestlers of all time and when push coves to shove, I'll probably want to represent wrestlers who express what I authentically think is great in pro-wrestling like Nikolai Zouev over wrestlers whom I think should be on a list if you were arithmetically analyzing their output. Still, Dory has a very good resume and shouldn't be overlooked.

When I was trying to think of comparisons to Dory, the first name I thought of was Randy Orton. World champions respected amongst their peers, mechanically sound, a lot of good matches throughout their career, but don't really have the most flavor in their work. However, when thinking about it, I realized I don't think Randy Orton has any classic matches that I would think of as 10/10, and in those I thought of as great (8-9/10) he was usually having the matches more in line with his opponent (Christian, Mark Henry, Foley). This is not the case with Dory, who I think both has great matches and classics and is an integral part of them.

I think an apt comparison is actually Bret Hart. Both portray stoic technical wrestler World champions. Both had reps of being great workers in their time. Both are second generation wrestlers. Both were parts of acclaimed tag teams. If you think of the singles classic matches usually associated with Dory, you'd get something like:

vs Inoki 1969

vs Brisco 1972

vs Brisco 1974

vs Hoffman 1975

And for Bret you'd get something like:

vs Owen Wrestlemania 10

vs Owen Summerslam 1994

vs Austin Survivor Series 1996

vs Austin Wrestlemania 13

It's all a matter of opinions, so you can skew it towards one or the other depending on whom you prefer, but I think it is a very suitable analogy. I cannot really imagine Dory succeeding in Bret's environment of early 1990s WWF, nor can I imagine Bret succeeding in a 70s NWA style environment. Bret wasn't really a great matworker, and Dory wasn't someone with the versatility of his brother where you can just plug him into whatever style, time and place and have it somehow work out.

For post-Thesz US "technical masters", right now I would probably go Jack Brisco>Dory>Bret. But really, WWE machinery aside and "I watched him as a kid" aside, I feel like if he cut anti US-promos, had a cool outfit and a catchy theme song, there'd be a lot more Dory Funk Jr. fans