[1980-10-22-AJPW] Terry Funk & Billy Robinson vs The Asteroid & The Avenger

[SAMS]

1980-10-22
AJPW
Terry Funk & Billy Robinson vs The Asteroid & The Avenger
Civic Gymnasium, Wakkanai, Hokkaido, Japan
★★★
Card

This was a major step up for Robinson as a tag worker compared to his showing paired with Wahoo. He seemed a lot more comfortable here, spending a large chunk of the first half working as the face in peril, and we even got a fired up hot tag from him at the end - which was a nice shift, as I often view him as a clinical technician, especially in Japan.
I won’t belabour any discussion on Terry, as he was excellent in all the ways you would expect. In fact, he was so good despite it feeling like he was merely going through the motions, or at least his version of it. I will say that he really stands out as a top tier apron worker, which was particularly obvious in this match.
Their opponents however were what surprised me. I will say I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out which was which. Cagematch said that Asteroid (Scott Irwin) was the shorter, and Avenger (Moose Morowski from recent German Catch vs Dieter fame) was the taller. The commentator’s had it the other way around and I’m liable to believe them here. Either way, both men worked pretty similarly, but they were agile in the Slaughter/Eadie mould. Masked US wrestler’s have always intrigued me as they seem to have vanished by the time I started watching, the hood reserved for Luchadores mostly, but at this point in time we were awash with them, including The Assassins, Masked Superstar, Mr Wrestling I & II and all the Super Destroyers. I’ll admit in some ways it comes across like a second rate gimmick to me, not having been raised with the concept, so I had some trepidation about these two. But as I said, they were a pleasant surprise. Solid meat and potatoes offense, could move about the ring with no problems and operated functionally and effectively as a team, allowing Robinson and Terry to do their thing.
This match also ended in a classic call, the commentator shouting over and over again “Terry Funk, Spinning Toe Hold!”, for every revolution he made of the move. Needless to say, The Avenger tapped out. This was all the more enjoyable for how infrequent these kinds of clean finishes seem to be.
On the same note, I’d be interested if anybody could identify the commentator in question. A cursory google search led me to this blog, but I couldn’t pinpoint which ones would have worked this match, but my frontrunner would be Kousuke Takeuchi (竹内 宏介).