Fire Fundraiser: Jim Breaks vs. Zoltan Boscik

Jim Breaks vs. Zoltan Boscik, World of Sport 3/8/75

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

This was a request from the lovely Matt D, who is forced under threat of punishment to only write about lucha libre, therefore leaving him woefully unable to document trippy Hungarian wrestlers from the 70s. I have never seen Zoltan before, but Breaks is a guy who any fan of wrestling should be familiar with as he's obviously the most well rounded and amusing of all the World of Sports guys. Breaks is kind of like if Michael Palin decided to get into wrestling instead of acting. He works a lot of great schtick, knows how to stooge better than all but a select few, yet also has awesome mat skills to go with his great character. He's great in his little moments of cheating, even better in his moments of frustration. Breaks getting worked up is always a great thing, complaining to the ref about imaginary cheating, acting like his shoelace is untied when it clearly isn't, sneaking in cheapshots (his short knees while holding a hammerlock was perfect). Breaks knows how to perfectly engage the crowd while locking on nasty cravates, knows how to feed into all of Boscik's fun armdrags and takedowns. I love Boscik's kip ups out of snapmares, and Breaks' increasing frustration at them. At one point he rattles off 4 or 5 snapmares and Boscik keeps flipping through all of them and it's glorious. All of the mat stuff is great here, and this kind of stuff is almost too hypnotic to me. I can just watch their awesome knucklelock struggles in an endless loop, locking on really painful knucklelocks, finding awesome ways to enter and exit those knucklelocks, looping legs over arms to shift leverage, wrists being bent awkwardly, fingers being manipulated, dickish snapmares into the ropes. All of it is great, all of it flies by too fast  (especially for a 6 round match). And it all caps off with a brutal Breaks Special. God the Breaks Special always makes me cringe, and the camerawork here was perfect, really showing him slowly bending Boscik's wrist allllllll the way back and under, into the Breaks Special. All of this was great.

Thanks for the suggestion/request, Matt! The others are coming up soon!


I am still raising funds for my co-worker Jan. I originally offered to match everybody's contributions, but at this point I believe I'll be matching contributions x2, or x3, maybe more!! And that includes EXISTING contributions. I want to try and get as much as possible to her, and while the fires are finally contained the suffering will continue for a long time. If you've contributed already, thank you. If you can't contribute or don't feel like it, I have zero ill will whatsoever towards you and hope you at least enjoy the writing that has resulted from the cause :)