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I knew this day was going to come, and out of every person I’ve ever written about who passed away, with the exception of my own mother, who I dearly miss, this is the one I’ve feared writing about the most since writing became my vocation.
Let me state the obvious: Terry Funk represented all that was vibrant and great about professional wrestling. I can talk about all his championship accolades but instead, I want to first mention three very important milestones from different eras of his career.
First, when he won the NWA World Championship in 1975, Funk toured the world for 14 months as the most important person in pro wrestling, tasked with what at the time was the hardest job in the industry - run all over the place to make everyone else look better while maintaining his own credibility, doing so with a far more colorful version of pro wrestling than previous champions had done.
For better or worse, he broke the mold of what it meant to be champion and the type of finishes the NWA traditionally did, eschewing tradition by bringing a little chaos into the top of the card. For a role that was always about wrestling first, Funk shifted the parameters to bring a little entertainment into the mix.
Second, when he came to WCW in 1989 to feud with Ric Flair, Funk was so great he wasn’t just feuding with Flair, but the entire babyface roster - Sting, Ricky Steamboat, everyone! If you went to a WCW show or ordered a PPV in that period, it was likely because Terry was so in the zone and so amazing that he made every single other hero in the promotion greater because they were battling the dreaded villain.
Even when he broke his own tailbone in service of the promotion, as Paul Heyman once recounted at a tribute dinner for Funk in 1997, Terry Funk was more upset about the fact that he’d potentially let fans down, since he was set to Flair at the 1989 Great American Bash PPV than he was over the fact that he had literally broken his ass. The idea that he might not be able to deliver was heartbreaking to him.
Of course, he did wrestle and more than delivered, because he was Terry Funk. Not only was that match excellent under any circumstances, but that entire year of the promotion was incredible. When the Funk-Flair storyline ended in November 1989 with an “I Quit” match, the quality of WCW’s output immediately declined and never consistently returned until the Monday Night War era. That was the power and the importance of Terry Funk in that era. You can’t follow greatness with just good, so the entire promotion was just thrust into reverse when he was done and sputtered for years afterwards.
In the 1990s, Funk lent his credibility to ECW. If you are reading this, you likely know how important Funk was to that company, but it bears repeating. When the man was done wrestling in feuds with Sabu, Shane Douglas, The Public Enemy, Cactus Jack and many others, they were far more important to ECW and became legitimate stars and draws for the company. He put them ALL on the map or made them far more important names, one by one, again and again, the same as he did with Tommy Dreamer just by associating himself as Dreamer’s mentor.
When it came time for ECW to finally produce their first pay-per-view in April 1997, in an era where this truly was the Holy Land, not just another event streaming in an alphabet soup of streaming independent shows, Funk provided the heart and soul, the story of a 53-year old man fighting for one last chance at glory in the name of his late father, seeking to do for the promotion what he had done for their talents.
Funk used whatever fame and credibility he had to raise its profile to the masses, this time for the mainstream PPV ordering public. ECW later named him Lifetime ECW World Champion, with good reason, when Funk retired (or so it would seem…) in 1997 in Amarillo, Texas.
If one man had accomplished just one of these things, we’d celebrate that person in a sad time like today. Terry Funk accomplished all three and an infinite number of other accomplishments, so many that it’s going to be impossible to process and discuss them all in one article or one month or even one year.
He was so good that I’m declaring right now that there were only three eras in professional wrestling.
There was Before Terry, the Terry Era and sadly, we now find ourselves trapped in After Terry for the rest of time.
Terry Funk rose out of a wrestling family in a territory that housed legitimate toughness and grit to the point his own father, Dory Sr., gave his life for the business. He headlined everywhere there was to headline, over multiple generations and in multiple countries. There was crazed evil brawler Terry Funk in Memphis. There was the respected gaijin Terry Funk in Japan. There was grizzled and revered Terry Funk in Philadelphia. There was middle-aged and crazy Terry Funk on the independents. There was mentor Terry Funk behind the scenes of all of these shows. Terry gave to everyone in his vicinity in different ways. The man wasn’t a saint - no man is, but he sure as hell blessed the professional wrestling world and everyone who was in his orbit.
I consider myself among the blessed. I’ll never forget the first time I encountered Terry Funk on my television. He was obviously a villain but being introduced on WWF TV, he talked about how he had so much heart. He was a bad guy cowboy with heart? This was strange for that era and would be strange for today’s era, too! He was anything but a one-dimensional caricature of a cowboy in a promotion that was based around live action cartoon characters going to battle. There was an unspoken depth that peered out beyond the usual one-note over the top characterizations that populated the WWE.
Indeed, middle aged and crazy like a fox, Funk certainly caused all sorts of chaos, antagonizing Hulk Hogan and The Junkyard Dog and beating up Tony Garea in a bar brawl in one of the all time great TNT vignettes. While there were lots of villains who fought and fell to The Hulkster on episodes of Saturday Night’s Main Event, but Funk was different. He truly, absolutely brought the fight to Hogan and while Hogan won the battle, there was no doubt Terry Funk could win the war against anyone he desired.
Terry Funk carried a different level of street credibility in his soulful eyes - you knew he meant what he said, every word and you knew this was not a man to be tested. No matter how serious or how cartoonish the pro wrestling world he resided in might have been, Terry Funk was the truth. He was the median by which anything credible was truly measured inside the ring.
If you could hang with him in the ring, chances are that was despite his best efforts to befuddle you and the audience at once, because Funk himself probably only had sort of a clue of what he was going to do before he entered the madhouse arena and brought the house down. This isn’t to say Terry Funk didn’t have bad matches at times, but if they happened, it was just a natural extension of whatever insane plan he had in the moment not working out for whatever reason. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe it was because the opponent wasn’t up for the test of the Funker. Maybe Terry was completely at fault and read the room wrong, but no matter what, if it was bad, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
For true fans, Terry Funk was some sort of deranged pied-piper that galvanized fans to give a damn about professional wrestling. If you knew about Terry’s exploits beyond WWF or WCW, you were a more discerning fan, someone who was in on the secret society of where true pro wrestling greatness lived. He was the gateway to Narnia, where pro wrestling’s hardcore heaven resided.
That man never, ever half-assed it in front of the audience, not that I was ever aware of watching him on television or in person, and trust me, if Terry Funk was on a show from 1993 on when I really started to attend professional wrestling events live, I made every effort to be there.
Everyone knows my connection to ECW and what it meant to me, but none of that ever would have happened if I didn’t already have a deep affinity for Terry Funk. When I first started paying attention to independent shows, it was because Terry Funk was battling the late Eddie Gilbert in the Northeast. A Texas Death match in NEW JERSEY? I was in!
When I first started the ancient practice of trading tapes decades ago, it was so I could get my hands on these precious Funk matches I’d never be able to find locally. His Exploding barbed wire ring match against former protege Atsushi Onita was the spectacle of the era, each of them taking insane bumps into pyrotechnic-laced barbed wire. In the end, the ring was going to EXPLODE and Onita, even after defeating Funk, realizing Terry wasn’t going to escape under his own power from CERTAIN DOOM, charged back in and sacrificed himself, diving onto Terry as they both BLEW UP. It was the damndest thing in 1993 to an 18-year old me and to this day, the magic of that moment still holds up.
It wasn’t just the violence. That is the thing that gets lost in the translation by so many that tried to live up to Funk’s antics and reputation. Terry’s ability to…not even act, but to emote to the audience his pain, his frustration, his anger as shown by his loud cursing, his reaction time to things that happened around him, his ability to make fun of himself without ever sacrificing his street cred, all of these things made every act, violent or artistic or both, that much more visceral, more real, and most importantly, more meaningful.
For all the Death Matches and crazy stipulation bouts that happen today, none of them have ever truly realized that what made Terry’s performances in that environment so unique and special was that everything he did in those matches had nothing to do with the bumps and the violence. He brought a true feeling of someone going through an emotional warfield - and he did it in an era where people were truly willing to still believe and invest in what was going to happen to this man and his opponents. That’s something that can’t be replicated today, especially without Terry involved.
No one can ever replicate those soulful eyes and the validity they radiated. Even when he veered into goofy (this was professional wrestling after all), Funk had the innate ability to make sure it was never at the cost of his credibility, and the integrity he emitted was a major factor in that. He somehow knew when to double back and never let what made him so special, so dangerous, so tough in the eyes of the audience be diluted. No matter how good or bad the booking around him might be, Funk found a way to maintain his aura. No one ever questioned that this man was a legitimate cowboy who could kick the living hell out of everyone else in the room, ever. That wasn’t by chance, it was because of his heart.
When it was announced in May 1994 that Tully Blanchard was coming out of retirement to wrestle Terry Funk at WCW Slamboree ‘94, I ran to a Ticketmaster outlet to wait and purchase a ticket, happy to run to Philadelphia for the first time to see what I felt was a true dream match. I wasn’t let down, sitting in the first row at the Civic Center alongside the legendary Georgie Makropoulos as Terry brought chaos to the proceedings. He nailed a piledriver on Blanchard on a piece of table, went after fans as a heel as though they ravenously cheered for him and basically raised all sorts of hell in what was the best match on the entire show except for perhaps Funk’s prized disciple Cactus Jack and Kevin Sullivan brawling all over with The Nasty Boys.
When I learned of Terry Funk teaming with Arn Anderson against Sabu (the HOTTEST performer on the independents in that time period) and Beautiful Bobby Eaton that same month, this to me, was the greatest freaking attraction I could ever hope to see in that moment. It was four of my favorite wrestlers at one time, in one place for one match - one that would never ever happen again.
I went to ECW expecting to go for that one match and never went home. I have told the story before, but it bears repeating, because that match was the bout where I truly fell head over heels in love with professional wrestling.
Late in the battle, Funk accidentally struck Anderson, who of course turned on him, pummeling Funk’s already legendarily bad knee with a steel chair over and over. As Sabu took over and locked the abandoned Funk inside a Boston Crab, Terry screamed, asking for help. No help arrived and he submitted during a time period where top stars just didn’t do that, a huge gift and boost to Sabu’s credibility.
As he recovered and stumbled from the ring, Funk turned right to me and the others sitting in the front row, loudly stating, “What the hell? If I tell you I need help, why don’t you come help me?” Terry Funk needed help? Terry Funk?
A Boston Crab and that flippant remark in my direction from the Funker and my love of all things pro wrestling grew five times like The Grinch’s heart that day, because this was true pro wrestling in a world that had been long devoid of it. It was a natural extension of everything that was great about Terry Funk, because even if you knew what pro wrestling was, he made you believe in the realism of what was playing out in real time before your eyes.
To steal a phrase from Tony-Award winning writer and musician Stew from Broadway show Passing Strange, Terry Funk was the “Real” of pro wrestling.
I went to the next ECW show only because Dory Funk Jr. was coming in to team with Terry against The Public Enemy. How cool would it be to see the Funks in PERSON, I thought. By the time ECW went to intermission that second show, that match resulted in the late, great Flyboy Rocco Rock being hogtied and hung upside down in mid-air off the Eagle’s Nest. It was the craziest thing one could imagine in that period and hell yeah, I needed more of this madness! A No Ropes Barbed wire match followed, as did the chair throwing madness that climaxed what was announced as the first-ever Funk vs. Mick Foley match the month after that..
By the time the summer of 1994 ended, I knew that no matter what, I could NEVER miss a show in Philly. In that time period, there was no greater spectacle, no greater natural high for a pro wrestling fan than ECW, so addictive that by the time the show was over, you spent hours talking about it on the ride home and then waited impatiently for the chance to walk right back into one of the most dilapidated buildings ever constructed. Terry Funk was the gateway drug to ECW for me, and when I caught sight of that beacon in the dark night, my life was forever blessed.
The lives of lots of other people were blessed as well. Everyone else knew it and they knew it was in great part thanks to Terry Funk. I’ve lost count of how many Terry Funk tribute events or roasts of Halls of Fame or lifetime achievement awards I’ve become aware of or attended.
For an industry that is notoriously self-centered and self-driven with a population of talents who all want their locker rooms to do great, but not as great as they want themselves as talents to do, there was one constant - everyone revered Terry Funk.
When Terry Funk appeared at wrestling events, it was as if a Pope had anointed everyone in the locker room that night with greatness. He would do his little shambling, “Oh well, you know” bit when he talked to everyone, that low mumble mixed in his self-deprecating humor, but the reality is, there wasn’t one person in his presence who didn’t realize how lucky they were to be around him.
Terry Funk was the living embodiment of everything every professional wrestler set out to be and dreamt for themselves. Respected. Talented. Beloved. Terry never carried himself like he was above anyone else in the locker rooms he visited. He came there as if he was just another one of the guys, arriving to do his job, but to all of those other guys and girls, he was everything they were working to try to become, and even more, it seemed like he was at that level without even trying. They just wanted to be in his periphery, so they could be more like him, because he truly was greatness personified.
Terry Funk represented the greatness of professional wrestling in all of his exploits. Whether it was fighting Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse, doing multiple projects with Sylvester Stallone or starring in forgotten Western series Wildside with Meg Ryan, Funk always showcased himself well as a tough guy and an actor.
Even when he played sillier roles, such as a police sergeant in the forgotten TV adaptation of Tequila & Bonetti, Terry Funk did it with zest and brought all the lessons he absorbed from professional wrestling and used them to his advantage on screens silver and small. From Frankie the Thumper in Paradise Alley to a memorable episode of Quantum Leap to choreographing fight scenes in Rocky V to Wendy’s commercial campaigns, Funk sprinkled everything he represented in the ring and translated that to the projects he was involved in.
In bringing that Amarillo swagger to those cinematic and television realms, Funk helped to normalize the idea that professional wrestlers were reliable performers. I don’t know if that's something he will ever truly get the credit for unless someone like Stallone pushes to make that happen, but it’s reality. If anyone from pro wrestling deserves a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, it sure as hell is Terry Funk.
Terry did lots of movies and shows, some great and some bad, but all memorable because Terry was in them. How could Terry Funk NOT stand out, even when doing little things like selling a punch or reacting to the hero who was punching him?
In 2001, I nearly died in a car wreck and after weeks in the hospital, I finally got to go home, where I laid in pretty much a zonked out state in a fetal position on my living room couch, healing broken bones and trying to process the trauma I had been plunged into. In absolute pain, the likes of which to this day, I can never truly convey without depressing everyone and medicated in a way that should have been illegal to prescribe, I laid there half asleep zapping through the channels, depressed and feeling like my entire life was now over.
Then, as I zapped through channels, I heard…that voice.
Confused, I flipped back and sure as hell, there was Terry Funk in some awful movie about a Stealth Fighter. It was terrible, but here was Terry Funk for me when I needed him the most, distracting me from the awfulness of my life in the moment. It's weird the stuff you remember that made you happy in the midst of a terrible time period and trust me, I desperately needed a reason to be happy during a really bad moment, but there was the Funker, as if the universe knew. Life is weird that way.
It took a lot to get back to normal (not that one ever truly returns to normal from such a predicament) but Terry Funk’s bad B-Movie represented a reminder of the things I loved and somewhere in my possession is a DVD copy of that movie, Active Stealth, that I later bought for $2 somewhere, just so I have a physical reminder of that moment for myself.
I’ve often joked to my non-wrestling friends how insane my life can be and I don’t think there was ever a more insane moment than being subpoenaed to testify in the ECW fire trial since that night, it was a rare event where I was sitting in the bleachers instead of the first row as a fan. Due to that fateful decision, I had full view of the dark comedy of errors that unfolded in a ridiculously stupid, dangerous way unlike anything I’ve ever seen in life before or since, thankfully.
There was the truly stupid act of lighting a towel taped to a chair on fire, causing pieces of it as it burnt off to land on Funk, who went up in flames in one of the most frightening things I’ve ever witnessed at a pro wrestling show. Fire extinguishers were then shot across the ring from the outside, pushing the pieces as much as extinguishing them and causing all sorts of smoke and chemicals to spew forth. Then, for a planned angle, the lights in the building were turned off as anyone with half a brain, myself included, ran out of the building.
A fan who had reached through the barricade to try and put out the flames with his bare hands, decided to sue ECW, Funk and Mick Foley years later, claiming that a flashback to the incident caused him to wreck a motorcycle, among other claims. Somehow, I got subpoenaed as someone remembered me talking about the incident when it happened (trust me, I was angry about it) and now many years later, attorneys had figured out how to find me.
Thus, I found myself in a Philadelphia courtroom, having had to take time off from my real job at the time - try explaining THAT one when you need a day off from the entertainment office you are running.
When I walked in to testify, there’s Terry Funk and Mick Foley sitting there watching me as I’m recounting my experiences and what I saw from my raised position in the venue, and then as I am getting cross-examined. Like I said, insane.
How insane?
Well, that experience included, among other things, being asked if Dave Scherer “owned ECW” (Yes, really), whether I “needed” ECW in order to write posts on the Internet (Yes, really!) and whether I could be trusted because somewhere on the Internet at some point in my life, I had written that Terry Funk was my favorite wrestler. Yes, REALLY!!!
In the end, the testimony included me explaining the difference between writing about something within the context of a storyline and behind the scenes, accidentally calling the plaintiff by his ECW Arena nickname “Wannabe” (which the Judge, as you would imagine, wasn’t happy about, admonishing me on the stand) and despite the plaintiff’s attorney trying to bully me in court (check one of Mick Foley’s books for more on that attorney’s performance), eventually, I was done and excused from the court.
I will never, ever forget what happened next. As I was excused, the court went to recess. I exited and walked right into…Mick Foley, who quipped, “I thought I was your favorite wrestler”, which I still smirk at to this day.
As if Terry Funk wasn’t his favorite wrestler, too!
In the end, Funk and Foley, etc. won the lawsuit and the jury decided they didn’t owe any damages. I have no idea whether I actually helped or not, but I did hear from a juror who felt I did, and the next day, Terry Funk called my house, having gotten my number from his attorney, in order to thank me and tell me that if I ever needed anything to call him.
This was Terry Funk, calling ME, to offer me anything I wanted.
With the exception of a few interviews over the years, I never asked for anything - how could anyone dare to bother Terry Funk, was my thinking! - but every single one of those conversations I absolutely treasured to the point we re-run them annually on Terry’s birthday. There was one where I just started asking him about all the different acting projects and urban legends about his career, more for my own fun than anything else. When we were done, we said our goodbyes, but then the phone rang again. It was Terry, telling me he couldn’t believe I remembered all this stuff and how much he enjoyed the interview.
This was Terry Funk giving me a compliment I would always hold dear to my heart. Writing about this crazy stuff sometimes, you never know who you are going to upset - talent or readers who love said talent. Sometimes you throw things out there into an Internet void and never hear back, or you only hear back the worst feedback. Every story is basically cliff-diving and hoping you don’t hit the rocks on the way down, but that compliment came at a time where I wondered if I was getting anywhere with this job. It empowered me to work even harder, because if I made Terry Funk smile and happy, even for a second, even if it was forgotten after we got off the phone, well I was doing my job right in that moment.
Or maybe Terry was completely full of shit and ribbing me.
I’ll never know and neither will you.
That’s the magic of the Funker.
Sometimes I saw Funk and he knew who I was immediately. Sometimes, it would take a second. Sometimes, he didn’t seem to realize who I was at all - I didn’t care, he was Terry Funk and it was always a pleasure to see him. I am sad I won’t ever see him again, but I was so blessed to witness so much and I can never thank the man enough for what he did for me and for all of us who cared about pro wrestling.
I watched Terry Funk, live and from afar, wrestle at events as large as Wrestlemania to the smallest, tiniest, forgotten independent shows. I was there when Chainsaw Charlie was born (escaped) at the Nassau Coliseum. I was there sitting in the bleachers when Terry and Abdullah the Butcher went to a double DQ in a Texas Death Match…again in NEW JERSEY. What was it about the Garden State that there were so many Texas Death Matches?
I witnessed Terry and Sabu headline ECW’s long forgotten first-ever NY show at the Yonkers Raceway and man, I wish SOMEONE who filmed that show would unleash the footage, as it ended with them under the ring, destroying it from underneath. I can only imagine how much these two were laughing as they took this thing apart, potentially crashing it down upon them at the same time.
Terry vs. Sabu at a time was the pinnacle of greatness on the independent scene because Sabu was in all his glory as a performer and Terry pushed him to be even greater. There’s never been anything, in my mind, that has eclipsed how special and fun and different those matches were in that time period.
I also watched Funk and Sabu brawl all over the Manhattan Center for the equally-forgotten WWN TV taping booked by Paul Heyman and if you CAN find that footage, you’ll see a very young, stupid me chasing them through the crowd, taking photos as they brawl. A friend pilfered a table piece they broke that night and later gifted it to me, signed by both Sabu and Funk. It’s both garbage and pure treasure at the same time, which when you think about it, might just also be a great definition for professional wrestling.
One weekend, my friends and I flew to see Terry Funk lead a team against the Extreme Horsemen in a Wargames match for MLW in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Realizing the promotion was filming a brawl with Funk and Steve Corino before the show, we all immediately found ourselves at the brink of the chaos. When it was over, Funk began heading to the back but not before locking eyes with my friend Joe Mistretta, turning and snapping, “What are you looking at, asshole?”
It was as if Joe had been knighted into immortality with Excalibur itself by King Arthur. That moment became referenced forever amongst our group of friends. That’s what Funk did, without even trying. He took little moments and made them infinitely unforgettable. If you were insulted by the Funker, it was as great as being zinged by a top comedian on stage. There was no comparison.
That night, Terry blew a fireball in the ring for the finish. No, he certainly didn’t learn his lesson from the ECW incident and after the show, the fire marshall almost arrested everyone involved. I had no idea whether it ever resolved itself until the next day when I got to Philadelphia and there was Funk, ready to wrestle CM Punk in the Murphy Rec Center. How he and MLW got out of that one, no one will ever know, because no one’s going to go on record - I am chalking it up to again, the magic of the Funker.
And, my friends, there was a lot of magic that man spread across professional wrestling. It was a joy to watch Terry Funk in MLW, Ring of Honor, WCW, WWF, SMW and TNA, among other countless other places, because no matter what the promotion was, no matter how good or bad the shows were, you could always count on Terry to do his best to make things memorable.
Whether he was wrestling Eric Bischoff on Monday Nitro, fighting in a Wrestlemania 14 Dumpster match before doing a Raw angle to launch DX as the top heel WWF group, abusing SMW Commissioner Bob Armstrong for Jim Cornette, becoming the sacrificial lamb for Mick Foley on Raw, brawling with Chris Candido and even getting kicked by a horse on live television, clunking someone over the head with a microphone, cursing out a referee, brandishing a chainsaw or some other instrument of destruction, moonsaulting to the floor despite having two terrible knees that needed to be replaced or some other crazy, stunt that shattered common sense and logic, Terry Funk somehow always knew exactly how much of his patented Terry Funk magic to pull out, so that someone else could then use it to propel themselves forward.
Terry Funk was a wizard when it came to pro wrestling. If he wasn’t a wizard, explain the things he accomplished for as long as he did. It had to be magic. I have no other explanation.
Funk had an incredible wrestling brain as well, an Albert Einstein for this insane genre. Just listen to any conversation where he dives into the business. He knew how to get things over and he knew what direction the business would eventually go, well before it did.
In 1993, I sat at a wrestling convention promoted by John Arezzi, enraptured as Terry laid out in a panel Q&A that one day, we’d all have 1000 channels for pay-per-view and that there would be all sorts of shows from around the world where perhaps we’d be able to order him wrestling Konnan in Mexico (if I remember correctly) or some other grand attraction.
Funk had envisioned what would eventually evolve into the full-scale PPV channels we have on our cable and satellite systems plus figured out that we’d have what would eventually become live streaming events…in 1993!
Remember, neither of those things had actually been invented yet, much less had become even remotely close to becoming a possibility. Still, Terry Funk had the rough blueprints of what was to come already bouncing inside the periphery of his brain. If Terry thought it or said it, even if it didn’t exist, chances are he knew one day it would manifest itself into reality and that it would be beneficial to pro wrestling.
One of my favorite Terry Funk memories was the one and only time I was able to see Terry and Roddy Piper go at it in the ring. I had flown out to cover a Wrestle Reunion event in Los Angeles as part of the weekend, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla had a live event, complete with a Legends battle royal playing off of the old grandiose Battle Royales that headlined in the Olympic Auditorium back in the day.
In the end, it was Funk and Piper, another of my all-time personal favorites, as the final competitors. Here’s the recap I wrote from the show that night as was posted live on PWInsider:
“They faced off. Terry took the mic. He said that he wanted to thank everyone who was in heaven for everything they did for the business and he wanted to thank everyone for coming out. He said that he wanted to say a prayer asking that everyone would be safe on the way home. He asked Piper to bow his head for the prayer.
Piper bowed his head and Terry said, "Lord, please let me...win" and nailed Piper with the mic.
CLASSIC.
Funk screamed "Amen" over and over and then forced the mic in Piper's face, demanding Roddy admit Terry is the better man.
They battled out of the ring and into the crowd. Funk berated Piper as he beat him with the mic and said, "This is real ECW, you pig." He dragged Piper back in the ring and tossed him over the top but Piper landed on the apron and returned. They battled back and forth with punches. Piper got Terry over the ropes but Funk grabbed the ropes and held on for Dear life. Piper finally punched and punched until Funk landed on the apron and then forced him out to the floor.
Your winner, Roddy Piper!
Funk tried to get back in the ring but was held back by the referees. He tossed a chair, which Piper grabbed. Funk raised his arms to the crowd then gave Piper the finger. Piper led the fans in a chant for Funk. Everyone gave the Funker a nice ovation on the way out.
A hell of a fun match and My God, Piper vs. Funk. So much fun, even at their advanced age. I loved the hell out of all of this. Such FUN.”
It really was such fun and that’s what Funk brought to the table, no matter how young or how old he was, how healthy or how injured he was, or whether he was supposed to be the babyface or the heel in the scenario.
Terry Funk brought FUN to professional wrestling in a way that you could never predict. It was fun that was as real as professional wrestling could be and it was professional wrestling given to you in a way that never mocked the business or made you feel like you had wasted your time watching or attending.
Terry Funk was the truth. The Bible. The Alpha and Omega. He was all that I loved about professional wrestling - and what so many others did as well. We will never ever experience someone like him again in my lifetime and likely, never again in the annals of time.
I think everything was great about Terry, but man, his ability to push through and perform, especially as he got ever older and the mileage really piled up on his body, I can’t describe it as anything but inspirational. If this old man could be doing moonsaults to the floor and fighting through the pain and doing whatever he needed to do to make countless fans rise and sit, cheer and boo and whip them into a frenzy, how you could not get energized by THAT and use it for your own personal burst of energy thinking about Funk when you were trying to trudge through your own personal muck - if Funk could do THAT, how could you not be inspired to do what you had to do? There are lots of times I get goosebumps thinking about some of the insanity Funk performed and I have them now as I write this. Even on this sad day, the magic he weaved as a conductor of crazy gives me goosebumps.
The last time I physically saw Terry Funk was at a House of Hardcore event in Philadelphia promoted by Tommy Dreamer, in the building that adored Funk the most of any modern venue, the 2300 Arena. He was scheduled to be in Tommy Dreamer’s corner but instead, didn’t even step into the ring, cutting a promo earlier in the night that he wasn’t feeling well and was going to head home, but stated that he “hoped to see '' everyone again. He never did.
The fact he didn’t even try to get into the ring was an immediate alarm clanging in my brain that something was truly amiss and when the crowd applauded, it meant something to Funk. It meant so much that when he went backstage, I saw he and a lot of others get very emotional. That’s when I knew, sadly, in my heart of hearts, that was going to be the last time I saw Terry Funk in person and unfortunately, I was right.
The house that sits on the corner of Swanson and Ritner holds a lot of memories and an infinite amount of importance to me personally, but I can’t walk in there without immediately thinking that was the last place I ever saw Terry Funk. I know the exact spot he was standing backstage before he left the place for the final time. It’s etched in my brain forever that I was there the last time the person who inspired me to even start leaving NYC to go to shows exited the venue he helped make famous.
Last year, I saw a screening of Barry Blaustein’s documentary Beyond The Mat at the Mahoning Drive-In in Lehigh Valley, PA. The film chronicles all that is great about Terry and as I sat there watching it in my car, I was smiling and tearing up at the same time, much as I am now. If you’ve never seen it, find it and watch it. It’s Terry Funk in all his majesty as the person giving all he has left to help others, because he wants to do so, even at the cost of his own well being. He lived and suffered for his art. He loved what he did and at the end of the day, I truly believe he died for what he loved.
As I process his passing, I wonder why I and so many others felt such a kinship and respect for Funk. I don’t have an answer to that. Who knows why someone leans towards one celebrity personality or another, but I really do believe that with Funk, many of us saw him as some sort of crazy beloved Uncle or something, one who stood there stoic and strong, representing what we loved about pro wrestling as the scales of what pro wrestling became more and more off-balance, entertainment outshining what just took place inside the ring. As long as Terry was around, there was someone who was always going to represent the physicality, the toughness, the legitimacy - and now that he’s gone, I don’t know who, if anyone, can ever fill that void.
Over the last few years, Funk pretty much stayed to himself in Texas. He had slowed down on taking bookings and unlike his many retirements, Funk’s last match, a six man tag in Virginia teaming with The Rock N’ Roll Express came and went without much fanfare. There were lots of stories of him taking bookings for signings and then canceling them, claiming he needed a surgery, one that depending on who was telling the story, he already had or never actually needed.
— Mike Johnson (@MikePWInsider) August 23, 2023
The last autograph signing I’m aware that he took part in was a virtual one where Highspots went to him and brought Stan Hansen and Dustin Rhodes with them so that Funk could visit with them. By that point in his life, Funk had lost his wife and pretty much stayed in his local area, hitting the same places to eat, his home very much unchanged from the day his wife Vickie passed.
The loss of his incredible wife Vickie to cancer had been a devastating blow and if there was ever an example of how unfair and uncruel the world can be, it was her loss. Funk had raised all sorts of hell over his life, but at the end of the day, to me, if anyone deserved the happy ending of just disappearing into the sunset to go off to be a doting grandfather and enjoy his life with his wife, it should have been Terry Funk, far above everyone else I’ve ever met in this upside-down world of professional wrestling.
Instead, he had lost his wife and then retreated into his own world, his health failing him ever so slowly.
Terry had given so much joy to so many fans. He had taken so many incredible roller-coaster rides to his own physical detriment. He had given so many pieces of important advice to talents. He had given of his heart, his soul, his legitimacy, his very essence to raise up others and ascend them to the next level, so they could have their own legitimacy, but at the end of the day, when you balance the scales of what Terry Funk gave and what he received at the end of his life, I don’t believe it was fair or just or right, but that was life.
Every professional fighter, scripted or legitimate, plays Russian Roulette with their long-term health and Terry was no different. Hell, the older he became, the most damage he inflicted on himself - exploding barbed wire matches, burns to his arms, ladders and trash cans thrown at his head, an endless array of broken tables, once becoming so entangled so deeply with Sabu in barbed wire their match had to be halted, crazy brawls through all sorts of venues and a physical, unrelenting style that forced everyone from Ric Flair to Virgil out of their comfort zones. All of that added up.
In the end, the receipt came due. We all cheered Terry on in the moment, so we are as guilty as Funk himself. But, when Parkinson’s Disease was diagnosed and when dementia was diagnosed the greatest professional wrestler of all time quietly ended up in an assisted-living facility, something that might have never been revealed publicly had Don Muraco not spoken about it on his podcast. For all the love and adoration Funk had the world over, it was Terry and his family who alone bore the brunt of that sadness and the inevitable - and that breaks my heart too.
Sure, Terry’s friends visited when they could and the accolades still came but the reality is, unless you were paying super close attention, Terry was someone who just quietly dipped out of sight. Heroes shouldn’t just disappear, but Terry did. While it was obviously necessary, that doesn’t mean it feels right. If anyone deserved something different, something more than life dealt Terry in recent years, it was him.
Terry Funk gave of himself to all of us and when the time came to be back with his family for real quality time, well, life had a much sadder plan for Terry and his wife, and I’ll always be so, so saddened by that turn of fate. It’s a lesson we should all take heed of - no matter how much we love the things we pursue, make sure we stay in the present and the now for the people who truly love us and vice versa, because we never knew when may be too late to enjoy that quality time we all plan for down the line that may never come.
It doesn’t feel right to talk about Terry Funk in the past tense and if I can, I’d prefer to instead pretend he’s out there on the Double Cross Ranch (which I once drove past while going through Amarillo, so yes, it really did actually exist, although he had long sold it off) waiting to wallop someone with a branding iron for trespassing. It won’t be the truth, but I’d prefer to lie to myself. If I can stay in denial that we now live in a world without Terry Funk, I’d prefer to stay there for as long as I can.
There will be fans who discover professional wrestling in the days and years to come where Terry Funk will be a subject of the past, someone who no longer exists. That seems so abjectly wrong to me, given everything he brought to the business. I can whole-heartedly say that with his passing, some of the greatest resources professional wrestling ever had - his mind, his wit, his imagination, his ability to give in a heartless business, those soulful eyes - are all gone forever, and the pro wrestling world will be forever poorer for it.
To have witnessed Terry Funk live was a chaotic burst of beauty personified into electricity that could be manifested in the moment but never ever captured and replicated. Terry Funk the person turned into Terry Funk the performer. There was a thin slice that separated the two, but if you encountered the latter, you saw him absolutely do whatever it took to make the audience in that moment remember him, whether that was moonsaulting from the top to the floor, beating up referees, going after fans, chasing people through the building, bleeding buckets or throwing legitimate punches that no one could ever question.
From Tampa to Amarillo to Memphis to Tokyo to Philly to Knoxville and so many other towns, cities, bars and arenas that have been forgotten to time, there’s a Terry Funk story that took place in every single one of them . Today, now that his story has ended on this plane of existence, if you can, try to seek them out, because if you do, you’ll find yourself so enriched and entertained if you truly love professional wrestling.
The only thing that would have been better would be to have a personal audience with Terry himself, something that sadly, only God gets to have now, and if God pisses him off, I’m betting on the Funker. Only a fool would consider otherwise.
As for the rest of us, we have no choice but to move forward. The world of professional wrestling will be a lot less vibrant going forward, but we’ll still love it. I just know I’ll never love it again the way I did when Terry Funk was stirring up all sorts of madness, because that was a once in a lifetime occurrence and I am so lucky to have been around for so much of it, and will never, ever take any of that for granted.
As I hurtle towards 50, I don’t know how Terry Funk was able to conjure up what he did at this age, much less older, in order to entertain everyone. I’ll never know - that’s part of the magic of Terry Funk I suppose. There’s no scientific formula that distills work ethic and insanity, each of which he carried in excess.
I truly hope that Terry’s daughters and the rest of his family how much we cherished him and all that he blessed us with. We all loved pro wrestling more because of Terry Funk - but I think a damn good case can be made that no one ever loved professional wrestling as much as Terry Funk did.
Long live the Funker.
FOREVER.
FOREVER.
FOREVER.
FOREVER.
Unfortunately, forever ended far too soon.
Terry Funk, 1944 - 2023.
Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.
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