Dan Severn vs. Dory Funk Jr.

[4.0] "I had a much longer review for this, but it was eaten by Cagematch lol. What I do remember from this I wasn't super impressed by. A lot of the technical, scientific wrestling you'd expect from these two just isn't very apparent with a lot of the match eaten up by Dan Severn doing very dry pro-style locks and holds while Dory for the most part did very meek defence or lacked no real agency to escape or try to work in holds of his own. I know the structure here is partly based on an apparent worked shoot angle the two were having at the time (including a so-called "real fight" between them after a match that Severn later came out and said was total bullshit) so this does explain the somewhat uncooperative, scrappy feel that the two were trying to convey here. I say "trying" because anyone watching this can see that Severn would've killed Dory in like a minute if he was actually trying to go legit here rather than the most telegraphed takedowns you'll ever see. Dan Severn wasn't I'd say ever a "bad" wrestler per-se but he was someone who could be quite dry if he didn't have a more dynamic dance partner in with him to really add a structure or a base to things to get things going, and late-stage Dory Funk was not the man who was going to really be capable of doing that given his own track record. I do at least admire how they had a plan of things slowly getting out of control with the first 15 being just plain grappling and then having Dory break that with strikes and outside brawling when his frustrations come through, but the two again are so dry even when it comes to the more aggressive stuff that I never really believe what the two are trying to sell to me. The only real thing that came as a highlight was the very silly finish where Dory does his wacky rope-hung bodyscissors hold to throw Severn into a table which is purely there just to have the two get their double count-out with the ref counting insanely fast to get there. But yeah, the match as a whole is just a lot of Severn gingerly doing a lot of throws to Dory and them just kinda spinning their wheels for a good long while here. Shame as well since I think if we got even Dory 10 years earlier he could've probably pulled this off but his lack of physicality just kills what they are trying to do here and as a result the whole thing doesn't work nearly as well as it should."