December 1980

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1980-12-05 AJPW Abdullah The Butcher & Tor Kamata vs The Funks (Dory Funk Jr. & Terry Funk) Real World Tag League 1980 Match Prefectural Civic Hall, Kochi, Japan ★★ Card I’m tempted to say that this was actually good, but it suffers from too many flaws to reach that level. Having said that there are a couple excellent elements to this that made it so fun to watch at points. The aim of the game early for the Funks was keep-away from Abby on the outside. This mostly meant holding Kamata in a standing headlock, but at least Terry made this engaging, showing struggle when Kamata was edging his way to his corner and also kicking out at Abby to fend o…

1980-12-05 AJPW Billy Robinson & Les Thornton vs Jim Brunzell & Nick Bockwinkel Real World Tag League 1980 Match Prefectural Civic Hall, Kochi, Japan ★★★ Card Well this was a long one. It went the total 45 minutes for a time limit draw. Had that real 1970s vibe to it. Bockwinkel and Robinson put on a clinic to start, really cycling through the mat routines and it was fantastic. Brunzell and Thornton however had shaky starts, whether in there together or matched up against the team captains. Brunzell specifically looked really hesitant, like a scared child at times, but I’ll concede he still had a killer dropkick. The majority of the first half w…

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I was looking forward to this. I was kind of expecting a Tully type of match. Then I realized the heat was on Gino and Lewin not Dusty. With that said I really enjoyed the 1st fall. It had a lot of energy. Some really fun spots. Loved the kick to Gino ass and he bumped to the top rope. The 2nd fall just went way too long. The fun wasn't there. The 3rd fall was just a finish. These guys do have a good 12 minute match in them.

I liked this. Lewin is such a better babyface than heel in his work. This was just a fun brawl. I loved the angle with Gino. A fun little bout.

1980-12-05 NJPW Kantaro Hoshino & Riki Choshu vs Kengo Kimura & Tatsumi Fujinami MSG Tag League 1980 Match City Gymnasium, Tokushima, Japan ★★★ Card After watching several All Japan tags in a row it’s interesting to see how starkly different the New Japan style actually is. Whereas All Japan seemed to veer between wild brawls or old school mat work, New Japan has a crisper pace and a more rough, formless structure. This match could very well be described as workrate-y, and maybe it’s because I’m less familiar with 80s New Japan in general, but I do struggle at times to pluck the narrative threads out of their matches. This was eminently enjoyable …

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1980-12-09 AJPW Abdullah The Butcher & Tor Kamata vs Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta Real World Tag League 1980 Match Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Osaka, Japan ★★ Card Who would have thought that a match that was 90% standard wrestling fare would still finish with 3 of the 4 competitors bloodied? Well when Abdullah the Butcher is involved you can expect nothing less. The Abby face turn is fully sealed. I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but there have been signs in his most recent matches, but here it was irrefutable. When he and Baba eventually faced off we had a massive Butcher chant from the crowd, and once the mayhem had died down post match, it wa…

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1980-12-09 NJPW Antonio Inoki vs Andre the Giant Kyuden Memorial Gymnasium, Fukuoka, Japan ★★ Card It was curious to see a man of Inoki’s standing come across like a mere child, as he did here when faced across from Andre. Obviously Andre’s been in countless matches against smaller men, but at least from what I remember, they’ve mostly been in throwaway squash matches. All his real singles challengers have been bigger - your Hansens, Hogans, Sakaguchis, so the size disparity isn’t so big. Inoki is the first serious opponent who’s been significantly smaller and it certainly was jarring to say the least. It worked in getting across Inoki’s, for lack of a bett…

1980-12-09 NJPW Bob Backlund vs Stan Hansen Kyuden Memorial Gymnasium, Fukuoka, Japan ★★ Card Maybe it was just in light of my expectations of a match between these two, but this felt pretty uninspired, all the way down to the finish. Hansen put on the pressure throughout and Backlund was forced underneath, the impetus placed on him to carve out some sort of resistance. The problem was that he didn’t push back on his end strongly enough and when he did it wasn’t that interesting. Hansen, as always, looked singularly credible, but this highlights a flaw, in that a match being interesting or compelling often relies on his opponent’s willingness or ability to …

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4

Another true hidden gem. 2/3 Falls NWA title match, with Gino as the local heel challenging a heel champion. It was a pretty great performance by Gino as he turns the crowd over to his side by the end, kind of a devil we know better then a devil we don't situation. I am not the world's biggest Harley fan, but he looked pretty boss here, all of his offense was super nasty looking, his big headbutts looked like they smooshed skulls and he had this awesome looking big right hand in the corner. Gino was a total boss, jumping Harley at the bell, piledriving him on the floor, spraying blood as he goes for his giant back elbow. He was so good as the local heel, it really makes m…

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1980-12-13 WWF Rick Martel & Tony Garea (c) vs The Wild Samoans (Afa & Sika) WWF Tag Team Title Best Two Out Of Three Falls Match Philadelphia Spectrum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA ★★★ Card Maybe Martel’s best performance of the year. Certainly the best Samoans match of the year by a mile. They had shed some of the “impervious” aspects of their gimmick which allowed them to show a bit more vulnerability and avoided what was a major issue with their matches, which is that they were incredibly DRY. The Samoans jumped the champions to start and pummelled Martel in particular. He took some brutal attacks to his back, and generally this style of …