So last month a project was vaunted in which people would write articles about one wrestling match which they felt somehow summed up life and meaning within its parameters, the results of which would be collated somehow and sold. This created a bit of a ruck in some quarters of the online content provision quarters, with some feeling that recompense automatically be granted to anyone who stumps up the requisite insight and wordcount.
What those moaners did not grasp is that this project was to benefit the great Terry Brunk, known to you and I as wrestling (I hesitate to use this word sometimes but it is applicable) legend Sabu. This man who has undoubtedly sacrificed everything in his body for our amusement/bemusement has hit hard times and it was to be our way of paying back.
As things are wont, the project went south. Nonetheless, I wrote an article I think I may as well share. If you'd like to donate something, anything, to Sabu, then follow this link.
And without further ado...
MASAKATSU FUNAKI vs. TATSUO NAKANO
UWF Fighting Square Hakata, Fukuoka
July 1989
watch
Where carefully-cultivated fakeness exists and overwhelms, the insertion of violent reality (or the illusion of said) is the most thrilling thing. In wrestling, The Montreal Screwjob, CM Punk and his pipebomb, or Andy Kaufman getting slapped across the chops by Jerry Lawler may spring to mind.
But such edification removed from the world of professional grappling is no less relevant. In art we might consider Duchamp's Fountain getting pissed in or the brief utopic hope offered by false narratives of punk music gainsaying indulgent prog-rock. A bust-up between tetchy colleagues in an otherwise torpid office, a school-yard bully receiving timely comeuppance, or a comedian figuratively dying on stage remind us that derailment from delusion is available in daily life.
Here is an approximate schema. Convention or consensus emerges, boldened by a few, embedded over time, and acknowledged by nearly all, that becomes violently transgressed. Uncertainty momentarily reigns. Such events can bring down monarchs and presidents or strengthen their reign. Moments such as these captured in art, particularly wrestling for its necessary foundation in conflict, comments upon the instability of all of the systems we enter into and take as given. It is not always 'nice' to behold. Sometimes it involves somebody getting crushed.
Wrestling is art. Who could argue otherwise? As with painting, cinema, music, dance, and cricket, wrestling, watched attentively and correctly, brings life into sharp focus. The specific codes and particular pomposities of professional wrestling must be read for their relevance to those which we uphold in daily life, variously broken, brilliant, obsolete, frustrating, and comforting. A wrestler rebounding from the ropes because their opponent threw them into them is only as ludicrous, in material terms, as working from nine am until five pm five days a week.
Take the opening few seconds of our chosen match. Between the pageantry of entrances and the physicality of the contest, mirroring the presentation of real sport, we are trained to expect a brief lull in order to perform introductions and functional exchanges that dictate the initial direction of play and mutual acknowledgement of rules.
As the referee reads the riot act at arms length, Masakatsu Funaki extends his palm in a professional and comradely courtesy. Tatsuo Nakano, inches shorter, doughier, less handsome, refutes the palm with a hard kick. The Fukuoka crowd explodes, at once disturbed and delighted by the crushing of convention.
Nakano, replete with both mullet and pompadour, sets about his man in an ungainly fashion, exchanging forceful open-handed slaps (rules! conventions!) before changing tack and shooting for one of his opponent's legs. Standing his ground, Funaki adroitly raises his knee to meet the barrelling Nakano square in the head, arrowing between his windmilling arms. For the opening 30 seconds or more, both men are locked in a struggle to establish – or re-establish – the ongoing paradigm.
These mentions of the physical appearance and stylistic approach of Tatsuo Nakano are not designed to diminish. The contrasts between Nakano and Funaki are immediately recognised by the 4000 people crowded into the Hakata Star Lanes bowling alley. Masakatsu Funaki is handsome, princely, tall, chiselled, without a clear hole in his all-around fighting game. All conceivable aces have been dealt into Funaki's hands at birth and added to in life. He is a company man. Josh Barnett would later, piling on the praise of his fighting prowess, describe Funaki as 'the symbol of Japan.'
Therefore Nakano, in his squat stance and recondite history and questionable tonsorial choices, is the perfect symbol for the schlubs in the crowd and at home, even in the future well after the match has elapsed. Contrast this choice with the Wrestlemania of the same year (VI), where a similarly physically glamorous and technically rigorous avatar in Rick 'The Model' Martel was paired with Koko B. Ware, replete with loon trousers and a hand-tamed parrot. A delight for sure, but a contrast contained within different shades of clown.
Inverting the dispiriting (and sometimes hilarious) nationalist sentiment that pervades a great deal of wrestling (and life) whilst forbearing tropes that cast a grotesque outsider against an elite domestic combatant charge this contest with added electricity. This particular expression of art offers hope and respite in its mirror, reflecting classic typage in the mould of Sergei Eisenstein or Sergio Leone. There will be a glory to recant even in failure.
Funaki, cast as The Man, can do nothing about this state of affairs, nor can he assert his own individuality nor contradict the advantages available to his opponent (such as being trained by Karl Gotch). As such his approach from here on in embodies the advantages and abilities that states, companies, and powerful individuals have to repress those of lower status. Wrestling, for it to work and survive for centuries, agglomerating and incorporating the indignities of the day, requires it.
Nakano takes the leg but has a problem developing anything like a workable position. Funaki scissors him and neutralises the fight on the ground, carefully working to his back whilst keeping Nakano's head squished tight between his thighs. Realising that pretence of Plan B is silly, Nakano pretends to get caught in the finicky business of gaining hand position as he works to his feet before letting go entirely and slapping the prone Funaki in the face three times.
The crowd roar NA-KA-NO in delight (as they do continuously) at this development. As strikes go it is merely a fine line in a rap battle or the overwhelming of a lowly-paid counter assistant at the DVLA / DMV. Nonetheless, it signifies shots fired and a hope for a knockout blow.
Working back to his feet, Funaki remains under torrential assault. Nakano lurches for a front facelock and quickly raises a knee to the chest to open Funaki up, gliding quickly into a double-underhook position. The Man, being The Man for a reason, has defences stout enough to resist an initial charge. It is too early for the suplex Nakano attempts. Funaki resists and, as Nakano falls backward to perform the sacrificial element of a suplex, lands atop in the perfect position to clean the belligerent underdog's clock. Panic stations.
An overhand slap crushes the stricken Nakano. Funaki takes to the vertical to kick and stamp the life out of Nakano. Funaki pauses, perhaps mistaking the cheers for his opponent as a plea for mercy, allowing Nakano to catch a kick and attempt an impudent dragon screw. It fails and Funaki's regal disposition drops. Nakano's head becomes both volleyball and football, struck vigorously with hand and foot.
The picture continues to develop with one man forever punching upward in hope and his opponent repressing him from doing so, less executing a fine strategy than extinguishing hope. From personal experience, the worst thing to be confronted with when full of passion and action is inertia and austerity.
Nakano lands his blows throughout, favouring intense slaps and cocky takedowns, but he cannot land a lasting psychic wound upon Funaki. Meanwhile, less than three minutes into the contest, Nakano is bloodied from the nose and technically exposed from his efforts. The doctor, in this context a mere ombudsman of health, is called in to fix the superficial damage. A fistpump to the crowd after treatment shows that the champion of the people is still ready to fight.
Mikhail Bakunin, in his On Anarchy, writes “he who is given power will inevitably become an oppressor and exploiter of society.” In wrestling we see this through such stories as Vince McMahon as free-market billionaire against the blasphemous iconoclast Steve Austin or the deliberately inefficient refereeing of Tirantes in CMLL. But we also see it in sports where power is not that which situates someone atop a structure or complicit in its maintenance, but the power derived from nature apparently blessing a person who remains insufficiently humble about their gift; search Twitter right now for takes on Floyd Mayweather Jr., Conor McGregor, Brock Lesnar, and Cristiano Ronaldo that would injure lesser beings (you).
In short, Funaki, already gifted, already the poster boy, anointed for greatness in time, adds insult to Nakano's quite visible injury. Favouring his bloodied face, Nakano is completely confounded by the breathtaking manoeuvre that occurs next. Funaki performs a forward roll in which he grasps Nakano's leg, upending him totally and making him a rube in the process. The hold, an attempted heel hook, loosens, but Nakano has no counter-play. This is key: the bold gambit of Nakano's suplex fails, whilst Funaki's equally cheeky attempt embarrasses its victim.
But no society lasts. Power overreaches and becomes complacent. Funaki's follow-through never emerges and Nakano breaks the hold with a dinger of a slap and leaps to his feet to add a couple more and a vicious, coruscating kick to the face. Funaki seeks the upright but staggers and topples over, taking a mandatory count (UWF rules: knockouts and submissions only, no pinfalls).
Nakano swarms after Funaki as soon as he gets up, slapping his opponent hard and going after that double-underhook suplex anew. He lands it, securing a picture perfect kesa getame (side control headlock), putting Funaki deep in trouble. But really, anger, perhaps misplaced anger is all that fuels Nakano. His ground game is shoddy, allowing Funaki not just the chance to get up, but to return fire. Once again, Nakano attempts a desperation dragon screw that is rebuffed even more violently than the first, as Funaki stands directly on his head mid-technique.
Fans of Kazushi Sakuraba's most suicidal victories (such as his final victory against Zelg Galešić at DREAM 12) will find much to adore in Nakano's adhesiveness in the next section. Nakano is a barnacle to Funaki's left leg in spite of a barrage of strikes from all remaining limbs and points of articulation. He only lets go under the duress of Funaki's rear naked choke and face rakes that spread the blood around his face like jam on a slice of toast.
Back to feet and another moment that highlights disparity. Funaki attempts a back suplex but Nakano slams on the breaks, sagging like a year-old bag of cement. Funaki rolls around, hits a physics-defying wheel kick to the back of Nakano's head, and then re-attempts the back suplex successfully. These are not the careful neck-bridging suplexes of weeks in the training school either, rather they're low-angled and designed to rattle the bones of the recipient as they skid across the canvas. Funaki is dangerously in control now as Nakano takes a brief count.
Visibly sapped of energy, Nakano puts up his dukes only to expose his lower half to an easy take-down that is comfortably progressed into a vicious single leg crab. We see behind the machinery at Funaki's contorted pain, eager to end the contest, eager to suppress the hostility mounting against him, to stamp out Nakano's life force. The crowd never give up voicing their approval, even though their emblem is bleeding profusely and unaware of which town he is in. Nakano makes the ropes for momentary relief and the referee motions to the doctor, who looks like OJ Simpson trial judge Lance Ito, to tend to the pulped Nakano.
Nakano remonstrates with the doctor, referee, and a wrestler who joins them in the ring, demonstrating his ability to continue despite a glaze about the eyes. Sensing the kill, Funaki steps forward and straight into Nakano's trap. A pair of high kicks floor Funaki. We are dreaming. We have wrested control from the state. We have beaten the company that mistreated us. A revolution is in the offing. The Man is face down and taking a count and The People are rapt.
The dream continues. On Funaki getting up, Nakano steals a leaf from his opponent's playbook, attacking the moment both soles touch the floor. This attack causes the referee to step in as Nakano smirks, whilst Funaki staggers backwards, contemplating defeat. Nakano goes wild with knees, slaps both impertinent and focused, another grim suplex atop Funaki's head, before destroying all known repression with a pair of gruesome kicks that see Funaki take a third count. Blood streams from Nakano's face and it tastes of the dawn.
But this daylight never breaks. After absorbing a stiff German suplex, Funaki powers up, seemingly from nowhere. A cold wind blows. Funaki simply lifts Nakano high above his head and drops him onto his back. In swift and expert fashion, Funaki rolls Nakano over for a Texas Cloverleaf. It is late and the temperature drops rapidly.
Cinched in a tight arc, Nakano, despite the ascendancy, despite the will of the people, despite the aesthetic, cannot escape the fate designated for him and indeed is proved a fool for ever deigning to try. Funaki wins. The promise of the slap that curtailed pleasantries at the outset, threatening delivery into a different era, never materialises.
To paraphrase Samuel Taylor Coleridge: if you wear your heart on your sleeve, watch out, it'll stay there. Nakano's heart exposed his plan as the quiet inscrutability of Funaki, the presentable face of power, smiled on. The chaos suggested in the explosion of Nakano rebuffing Funaki's gesture is suppressed and the course of life continues in full splendour.
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