Bruiser Brody v. Dory Funk Jr. (2/27/88)

[El Boricua]

Bruiser Brody v. Dory Funk Jr. (2/27/88)

[elliott]

Oh come on guys, really? Brody vs Dory? In 1988 no less? This is mean spirited. Ok Brody throwing chairs at small children is great. Crowd is HUGE & hot so that’s good. After Brody’s awesome entrance, and it is awesome, they casually lock up in the center of the ring. Sigh. Great camera angle on Brody’s really good dropkick. Dory spills to the outside and throws a wooden chair into the ring so Brody bashes the chair onto the ring post until it shatters. Dory Jr hides a giant shard of the chair down the back of his trunks. Dory shoves the ref out of the way and goes all Abdullah putting Brody in a side headlock and stabbing him in the face. OHHHH. That was unexpected. This turns into a brawl around the infield with Brody falling into chairs and dory blasting him. Back in the ring and Brody immediately comes back with boots and takes the chair away from Dory and crushes him. Even getting stabbed in the face can’t stop Brody for more than a couple of seconds apparently. Shit he barely even bleeds….uh…nevermind. Back to the outside and Brody slams Dory into the ringpost back first a few times and tosses him back in. Brody does an almost jackhammer back in the ring and then grabs a front facelock slowing the match down to a halt. Dory makes a comeback when he moves as Brody charges into the turnbuckle. Crowd is noticeably not as into this as they were at the start. Ref bump but nobody cheats. Weak strike exchange leads to the Hogan/Andre WM III piledriver reverse spot on the floor and Brody takes a bump more embarrassing than Hogan’s. Dory ends up winning by countout because Brody can’t recover from the worst backdrop of all time. This was not really a good time. There were moments where it seemed ready to become a good match. And then Brody got in the way of himself and shit fell apart. Everyone needs to see the reputed “tough guy” terrified to take the piledriver reversal on grass.

[KB8]

Is Brody heel at this point or is throwing chairs at kids a babyface thing in Puerto Rico? I don't like either of these guys, but strangely enough my favourite singles match from both is probably against each other. And hey, I thought this had some good stuff! Dory channels his brother and throws a chair in the ring, so Brody grabs it and smashes it to pieces on the ring post. In an awesome touch, Dory takes a piece of the broken chair, hides it in the trunks and uses it to jab Brody in the head the first chance he gets. He then drags him outside and chucks him into the crowd and starts hitting him with another chair, and I'm not used to Dory getting wild like that. Eventually Brody comes back and fucking wellies Dory in the head with a revenge chair shot...but then it settles down a bit and they work a pretty mediocre brawl. Nobody bled buckets, no riots were nearly started. It was short, though. I actually thought the first half of this was shockingly fun and the second half was passable enough, and it's not like it stuck around forever. I think I feel comfortable saying these two are an okay match-up for each other. Minus that absolute stinker they had in All Japan. We'll forget that one ever happened.

[dawho5]

Dory actually did a nice bump later on in the match that reminded me of shit Terry did. Good start with a highly disappointing finish.