Mr. Fuji & Prof. Tanaka VS Haystacks Calhoun & Tony Garea 07.23.1973 MSG

[12valvepower1]

the message was clear in the 40s. FUCK JAPAN

[12valvepower1]

haystacks calhoun making out with a woman. how would that work really. him on bottom i reckon. he would flatten her like a damn flapjack. like a car running over your foot.

[12valvepower1]

yokozuna vs haystacks

[mkl62]

Along with Edge and The Four Horsemen, I hope that Haystacks Calhoun makes it into the WWE HAll of Fame one day.

[generationll]

This was basically a 2 against 1 match because Tony Garea spent just over 8 minutes inthe ring alone by himself & Haystacks Calhoun was in there for less ten 2 minutes.

[12valvepower1]

japan and korea dont like each other

[brnleague99]

@12valvepower1 That's because Japan treated Korea like crap every chance it got.

[12valvepower1]

@brnleague99 the poor korean girls, they got treated like whores by the ugly japanese.. and killed korean children. i do know alot about the japanese atrocities in ww2. the japanese got what was deserved by them.. if you ask me.

[brnleague99]

@12valvepower1 The Japanese were monsters during WW2. They did despicable things to civilians.

[12valvepower1]

that old prune witch.. is now dead and everyoen drives japanese cars made in china.

[PatrioticPirate]

GrandMomma was on their asses, (:48) wasn't she?

[generationll]

nice move by calhoun at 1003 to help garea out

[Inediblehulk]

9:15 Eat your heart out, Killer Bees! That was a sweet switcheroo. How they did it is just one of those Oriental mysteries, like mist or neckbreaking suplexes.

[Inediblehulk]

I would love to see Fuji vs Garea at Wrestlemania 28. They may be a tad old, but look at how Steamboat surprised us at Wrestlemania 25! It would beat watching Mae Young and Sgt. Slaughter dance with a celebrity I don't know while Michael Cole fake laughs.

[5Kspecialist]

I remember going into a restaurant in 1975 and finding no salt shaker on the table. The waitress said that Mr. Fuji was responsible for a worldwide salt shortage.

[winifredatwell]

Calhoun was well known as being a "big" draw, but as for wrestling - forget it. A poor worker who couldn't sustain singles bouts and had to be sold by others.

[yockinnottou]

haystacks is absolutely horrible. he doesn't even wrestle.

[conradsdad]

Back when stereotypes like the sneaky Jap meant something! Mr. Fuji with that "sneaky grin" on his face.

[RPenta]

I really liked Tony Garea when he was wrestling; but not when he became one of Don Vinnie's Stable of Stooges.

[Lfdjake91]

I think this is the oldest WWWF match I have ever seen.

Haystacks Calhoun was wrestling's big traveling draw until Andre the Giant came along a few years later.

[dontchadaremissit]

@Lfdjake91 I posted another video, Gorilla Monsoon & Pedro Morales vs The Mongols. The match is from 1970, even older than this one.

[VideoNoob122]

@dontchadaremissit Damn, post the match: Giant Calhoun vs. Happy Humphrey.

[bookmdano]

that old lady is the BEST

[coconutsavage]

More Haystacks, Tanaka & Fuji please. They are soooo underrepresented in the videos on YouTube. Thanks for posting this!

[elc1960]

This may be the oldest footage of Tony Garea on YouTube. He'd been in WWWF for almost a year at this point. This was the rematch of the fight where Tanaka & Fuji lost the belts ("All Star Wrestling", Hamburg PA, 5/73). Tanaka & Fuji regained the belts from Garea & Calhoun in 10/73 on "All Star Wrestling". Calhoun and Tanaka should be in WWE's Hall of Fame; Fuji & Garea both are. I forgot Monsoon used to call Tanaka "Chopstick Charlie".

[LT9856]

@elc1960 I'm with you. Tanaka & Fuji had some great runs as tag champs.

[elc1960]

@LT9856 You know it. They worked a tag team match together against Garea & Monsoon in my hometown of Brockton MA in 1973, and before the match some kid threw something and hit Tanaka in the chest with it. Tanaka ran out of the ring and went up to the kid at ringside, grabbed him by the collar and starting cussing him out - "Why'd you do that? You know I'm not getting paid for this? If you were a few years older, I'd kick your skinny little ass!" True story.

[elc1960]

@LT9856 (continued) The funniest part was when you looked in the ring, you could see Fuji, Monsoon & Garea chuckling quietly to themselves. They were working the show for transportation reimbursement and nothing else, because it was a benefit show for the high school booster club. When Tanaka was chewing the kid out, he was speaking perfect English, and not the put-on Japanese accent he used in promos.

[LT9856]

@elc1960 I've been hoping someone would have posted the famous Fugi & Tanaka vs. Pedro & Bruno match that led to the Bruno-Pedro Shea Stadium match from '72. I guess no footage remains of that famous "salt in the eyes" classic.

[elc1960]

@LT9856 The reason may be that a lot of the independent UHF TV stations that originally broadcast that match back then may have either destroyed or erased their copies of the tape. It was common practice back then for those stations to do that, and is the reason so little of the really old pro wrestling stuff exists here on YouTube. That match may never resurface unless WWE issues a Bruno Sammartino DVD, but don't hold your breath waiting for that one.

[LT9856]

@elc1960 Damn shame! That was just before I started watching wrestling, so I've never seen it. What's amazing is that McMahon Sr. didn't film the Bruno-Pedro match from Shea. The thing was hyped as "The Match of the Century" and no one thought to film it?  Crazy!

[elc1960]

@LT9856 Actually, he did film it . . . but they only showed a very small portion of it on "Championship Wrestling" the week after it happened. The clip was silent, with Vince Jr. doing commentary over it. The match was looked on by fans as boring because they wrestled hold-for-hold and didn't brawl. The fans were listless, so they sent George ("The Animal") Steele out towards the end to do a run-in. Many fans were booing Bruno and Pedro afterwards. They were expecting an all-out brawl.

[LT9856]

@elc1960 Pretty interesting. I knew about the George Steele run in, but didn't know about the fan's disgust with the match. Thanks for the info! I guess that's why we didn't see another "face vs. face" match for years after.

[elc1960]

@LT9856 I wasn't at the match myself, but a buddy of mine from Jr. High went with his older brother and an uncle. He told me what happened the following day in study hall. You occasionally saw face vs face matches, but it was usually between mid-carders like El Olympico, Fred Curry, Sonny King, Tony Garea, Rene Goulet, etc. NWA and AWA still had those kinds of matches though (Billy Robinson vs Gagne, Jack Brisco vs Dory Funk Jr.), but no more high profile matches of that ilk in WWWF/WWF.

[LT9856]

@elc1960 That's probably one of the reasons Bruno never really got the respect outside of the WWWF. While NWA champs like Dory, Brisco & Race would work hour long technical clinics against equally proficient scientific grapplers, Bruno was usually regulated to kicking, punching and goughing contests with the likes of Killer Kowalski, Gorilla Monsoon, Ernie Ladd, etc.

[elc1960]

@LT9856 But Bruno did have some amateur wrestling in his background. And he wrestled against babyfaces when he was champ in the '60s (ex: Bobo Brazil, Giant Baba). It was a "sea change" in WWWF programming I guess, with babyfaces only getting title shots against heel champs and vice versa. Quite an interesting little dialogue we've got going here. Apparently we've both seen a lot of wrestling in our lives.

[LT9856]

@elc1960 This is true. I've seen Bruno vs. Baba clips here on YT. You're right, he did have seen decent amateur style ability. I guess McMahon Sr. chose to dumb it down sometimes during the early 70's which resulted in "heel vs. face" 100% of the time. Which probably made sense. That formula worked best in the Northeast as opposed to NWA territories like Missouri where scientific matches were better appreciated.

[elc1960]

@LT9856 Very true. From what I've heard, the Pacific Northwest (Don Owen's promotion) also handled things that way in the '70s, with babyfaces vs heels only.