Probably his best result was equal first with Gligorić, Ivkov and Lev Polugaevsky at Skopje 1969 ahead of former World Chess Champion Mikhail Botvinnik and multiple candidate Efim Geller.

He played 78 games in six events for Yugoslavia, with the overall result of 46 wins, 28 draws and four losses, for a 76.9 percent score, the 10th all-time best Olympic performance.

He played in the 1970 "USSR versus Rest of the World" match on eighth board against Botvinnik, losing one game and drawing the other three.

Over the board he played on in hopeless positions when grandmaster etiquette called for a resignation, allegedly in the hopes of reaching adjournment (suspension of a game for resumption on a later day, common in tournament play at the time) so that the news reports would read "Matulović's game is adjourned" rather than "Matulović lost.

[16] Matulović's sharp attacking play was demonstrated in this game against the Bulgarian grandmaster Georgi Tringov from the 1970 Chess Olympiad at Siegen.