BABA, TSURUTA vs. BOCKWINKLE, LANZA

Giant Baba, Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Nick Bockwinkle, Black Jack Lanza
ALL JAPAN, The World Tag League '78
Dec 9 1978 Kuramae Kokugikan (Tokyo)

This league series started in 1977 as The World Open Tag League, and The Funks won the championship of the first series. Baba and Tsuruta, the team of the master and the pupil, strongly wished to win the league in this year, but they drew with the cruelest team (The Butcher and The Sheik) on a count-out, so that it was very difficult for them to outstrip the Funk brothers. However, surprisingly The Funks lost to the cruelest team on a foul at the semi-final, and now conditions were favorable to Baba and Tsuruta.

Though the Funk brothers were fighting against the cruelest team bloodily as ever, the feature of this series was an appearance of Nick Bockwinkle, AWA world champion. Baba joined hands with NWA and AWA, and NEW JAPAN (Antonio Inoki) succeeded in cooperation with WWF. At that time pro-wrestling of Japan was running into the marvelous best days. Well, the hard fights between Jumbo and Nick began in this match. Tsuruta would wrest the AWA belt from Nick in 1984, but it may have been a Gagne's strategy to push into Japan.

In this match Lanza showed a good fight. He had a wonderful build which was a match for big wrestlers like Baba or Tsuruta, but he had few effective moves except for a good old Brain Claw. Lanza attacked Jumbo with it persistently, and when Tsuruta was outside of the ring, he caught Tsuruta's head and pulled him up to the apron. Or Jumbo may have gone up by himself. (^^; Just then Baba kicked Lanza, so that Lanza released his opponent, and Tsuruta used wonderful Rolling Clutch Hold over the rope !!

In those days I was thinking Tsuruta would become the NWA world champion before long. But if Tsuruta had done it, he couldn't have passed his master Baba. Tsuruta became the first AWA champion as a Japanese, in the same way Baba took the NWA belt for the first time as a Japanese. In this sense, probably Baba's tactics was right. In the early 80's, Baba mainly fought Race and Hansen, and Tsuruta contended for AWA belt with Nick. I think that was the best days of ALL JAPAN and we pro-wrestling boys.