One of Tsuruta's most interesting matches occurred near the end of his run in the territory, and was seen in its entirety only by a small studio audience. Around this same time, another young worker with impressive amateur credentials had come to the area to train with the Funks. His name was Bob Backlund. After an impressive amateur career, he had trained with Verne Gagne. Gagne sent him to Amarillo for further training. Like Tsuruta, he was pushed as a babyface. Both his amateur credentials and his strength were played up; he appeared on TV doing bench presses. Like Tsuruta, he was destined for only a short run in the area, as Gagne had plans for him - though he would gain his greatest fame as a three-time WWWF champion. His run in West Texas had ended shortly before Tsuruta's began, but he returned for this single match against Tsuruta on TV. The show went off the air before the finish. I've heard it was a draw. The six or seven minutes we saw on TV were excellent, beginning on the mat and evolving into of Greco-Roman style match with lots of throws and suplexes. Of all the matches lost to the taping economies of the day, this is the one I most often wish I could see again.

Tsuruta soon returned to Japan full-time. In his debut there, he defeated Amarillo mainstay Moose Morowski. Tsuruta went on to hold the AWA title and was the first triple crown champion in All-Japan, and arguably the finest worker All Japan ever had. In fact, he's sometimes mentioned as the greatest worker any promotion ever had. He died in 2000 of cancer.

[I'm indebted to Dave Meltzer's book Tributes and to Dory Funk Jr's web column Gunslinger Rap for many of the details in this article.]