March 1975

A very fast paced big match. So fast paced that it almost feels rushed at times. First fall had some nice armlocks, mostly carried by Terry Funk being really great at making even a basic arm hold seem meaningful. He always adds so much urgency to his wrestling - and Terry was pretty on point here in general, throwing punches and doing his ridiculous selling including at one point being draped upside down over the announcers table. He added some much needed drama to the match with his in-peril selling, on the other hand Jumbo and Baba barely seemed to be in trouble. They use tag psychology and double team moves in pretty clever ways building the bout nicely with bomb throw…

Ok this is weird. We get a few minutes of slow motion clips of a recent match from Chicago, narrated by NIck and Bobby Heenan. We see Bockwinkel dropping Gagne throat first over the top rope, next it cuts to Bockwinkel giving Gagne a piledriver for a two count. We see Gagne hit a backslide and he appears to get the pin, but Bockwinkel's foot was in the ropes. Heenan immediately jumps in the ring to protest, he kicks Young Greg Gagne at ringside. Verne attacks him and throws him into the post. Young Greg has a full head of hair!!! He gets in the ring, brawling with Nick and Heenan, father and son fight together. Heenan takes some huge bumps. Greg tosses Heenan out, Verne t…

WWWF Heavyweight Champion Bruno Sammartino vs Spiros Arion - WWF MSG 3/17/75 Texas Death This is up on the Cock. It is the Texas Death Match which is a month prior to the Greek Death Match also up on the Cock. In February, Bruno was disqualified for shoving a ref off during a rope break thus necessitating a Texas Death Match (a No DQ match in today’s lingo). Classy Freddie Blassie is Arion’s manager. I believe Arion was a good friend of Bruno but turned on him to set this up. I am sure my good friend Chief Jay Historian @Ricky Jackson can fill in the details. I feel the term “punch-kick” wrestling is thrown around far too frequently and usually for matches that …

Jumbo Miyamoto defends the WWWA World Title Really important match for the history of AJW and joshi wrestling as a whole. Until the debut of Mach Fumiake joshi wrestling only had sporadic tv appearances and public matches as since its beginning in the near aftermath of WWII due to having a reputation of being a sexual sideshow at dance clubs and cabaret halls. Even legitimate promotions couldn't rent gyms cause landlords didn't want to attract a crowd with any potential links to the underworld. Enter Mach Fumiake, a runner up in a national singing competition a couple years before her wrestling debut, a debut aired on Fuji TV, and her built in celebrity helps bring a…

This starts out hot with Inoki going to town on Singh by punching him in the face repeatedly. Of course they settle down do some matwork, but Singh looks shockingly competent here: actually wrestling Inoki, and using cheating tactics to keep the advantage. When Inoki grabs a basic wristlock, he really tortures Singh, who does a mindblowingly good job selling as he was walking around with a limp arm for minutes afterwards and wincing when Inoki reached for it again. He actually reminded me a bit of a Mick McManus/Jim Breaks type with his mix of fun highly exaggerated selling and cheating tactics. Inoki selling a Singh choke by drooling all nastily was a good way to establi…

Damn this was good. Their was limb work, some wrestling tropes like Littlebrook hurting his knee on Johnson's head because a black man's head is right below a Samoans. They worked a midget spot or 2. The key was they kept those to a minimum, but built to them well. This was really good stuff. It also had a real Memphis feel to it . 3*