More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  Another one of my father’s big feuds was with Frankie Hill Murdoch. They wrestled each other 32 times in 1948. The majority of them were singles matches, and every time Funk and Murdoch were matched up the building was full.

  Later I got to be good friends with Frankie’s stepson, Dick Murdoch. We played when we were kids. He always was a little asshole like I was, and we both ended up following in our fathers’ footsteps as wrestlers.

  We would sit around in the arena while our fathers waited to get paid. It took an hour or so, because they had to count the house and figure it all up. We’d go around the arena and collect cups. Once we got around 50 cups all stacked up, we’d set them down one at a time and stomp them on the floor to make them pop.

  I learned a lot more about payoffs later. Here’s what the honest cut of the gate was supposed to be—10 percent came off the top for booking fees, then the rest was to be split, 45 percent to the promoter, 45 percent to the boys. All the promotional expenses were supposed to come out of the promoter’s half, and the boys would split the other 45 percent, based on the promoter’s discretion in regard to where on the card each guy wrestled.

  I started wrestling amateur-style at Boys’ Ranch when I was five years old. My father brought a lot of the great pros to the Ranch to show the kids on the wrestling teams some techniques and pointers. Back then, almost all the pros could really wrestle.

  CHAPTER 3

  West Texas State: Running with the Outlaws

  When I graduated high school, I was very small for my age—155 pounds. I got a tryout down at Cisco Junior College, and that summer I had a big growth spurt and shot up to 185 pounds. There were no steroids then, either.

  I made the junior college team and just kept growing. I weighed 225 and played linebacker and guard down there. When I transferred to West Texas, I was at about 240 pounds. I was just late in maturing. West Texas was where I wanted to go because it was close to home. Junior, my brother, had just finished up there, and the football team had gone to the Sun Bowl where they beat the University of Ohio. I had been wrestling amateur but gave it up my sophomore year in high school. I still practiced my wrestling skills at home. I worked out in our garage, which had been transformed into a wrestling gym, with guys like my father, brother, Bob Geigel, Verne Gagne, Dick Hutton, Joe Scarpella and Lou Thesz, to name a few.

  My relationship with Vicki also picked up a lot of steam during my college years. We had gone to the junior and senior proms together in high school, and I’d been in love with her right from the very first date with her.

  I focused on football in college. Joe Kerbel was the coach, and he was a great coach, but he was also absolutely nuts. He’d come right out there and kick you right in the butt. He had been a sergeant in the Marines and was probably one of the toughest men in coaching. He had a hell of a program there—we were a bunch of outlaws.

  And a bunch of those outlaws became big names in the wrestling business.

  Frank Goodish, who later gained fame in wrestling as Bruiser Brody, had some go-rounds with Kerbel when he went to West Texas State. Brody was an asshole! He was on the third team—not because of ability, but because he had come to West Texas State after getting kicked out of Iowa State University. Another outlaw.

  We used to go to the bar on 16th Street, where you had to parallel park. Brody used to be the champion of running cars. He would take off running at full speed.

  Now he was a big-ass bastard, so when he got going, he’d jump and land one foot on the trunk, next foot on the roof, next foot on the trunk of the next parked car, and so on. That was the deal—you had to see how many cars you could do, and Brody was so damn big, he could do that for a whole block.

  Brody was always tall, but he got huge after he discovered desiccated liver after college, and he lived on it. This was before steroids or anything else. When he left school, he weighed 240, and not long after, I saw this enormous guy walking down the street and damned if it wasn’t Frank Goodish! That desiccated liver had made him huge, but it also gave him the worst-smelling farts of anyone I’ve ever known.

  He was working as a sports writer for the Odessa American newspaper. When he did get into wrestling, I gave him his initial ring name: Frank “The Hammer” Goodish.

  We had goal-line scrimmage the last five minutes of practice. Brody would play on third team, and everyone else was just practicing, but he’d go ahead and pump up the goddamned defense so much that we’d have be out there until the goddamned sun was going down.

  Another West Texas player who became a great pro wrestler (and who became very close to Bruiser Brody) was Stan Hansen. He came to the school a couple of years after Brody. Stan is the greatest guy in the world and was a very talented wrestler. Like a select few others, Stan Hansen got his start in wrestling through the Funks.

  Stan came to me one day in 1972 and asked, “Would you talk to your dad about me wrestling?”

  I said I’d talk to my father. Stan, at six-foot-three and 280 pounds, was driving a Ford Pinto and was coaching high school football in New Mexico.

  I told my father I thought Stan could be a good wrestler, and I set up a meeting between my father and Stan at my house. My father told Stan about all the training he’d have to do and how he’d have to learn some amateur wrestling. That was something that was important to my father, as he was breaking guys in. He also showed them that they could be beaten in an actual wrestling contest.

  At the end of their meeting Stan asked my father, “So how much do you think I can make wrestling?”

  My dad said, “Well, I think you can make $250 or $300. And that’s just starting, Stan. I’ll see that you make more than that before long.”

  Stan said, “Well, I don’t think I can do that. I’m making $550 now, teaching.”

  My dad said, “A week?”

  Stan’s eyes got wide, and he said, “A week? GODDAMN! It’s $550 a month I’m making now!”

  Stan always talked loud because he was half-deaf. He’d use that as an excuse, too—”Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

  Four of Stan’s favorite words were, “I didn’t mean to,” as in, “I didn’t mean to take your head off clotheslining you.”

  Stan was smart, though, because he always saved every dollar he ever made from wrestling. Hansen wore tennis shoes all the time. For four years, he wore the ones they had issued him at West Texas State for nothing, until they had holes in them and were the most godawful-smelling things you ever smelled in your life!

  Virgil Runnels was another West Texas boy who became a big name in wrestling as Dusty Rhodes. I met Virgil playing football. Virgil was a good linebacker, about 220 pounds at that time. He could move, too. That son of a bitch could play ball.

  Truth is he was a better baseball player than anything else, but he was an all-around great athlete.

  There was only one problem—he couldn’t talk. I thwear, you jutht couldn’t underthtand a wuhd he thed.

  My future father-in-law had a filling station in town, and he had this idiot working for him—Virgil. One day, Dusty was working there, and I drove up in my 1965 Galaxy, the first new car I’d ever bought. I’d spent $3,200 on it.

  As he filled up the tank, Virgil said, “Thay, Tewwy, I jutht dweem about a cah like thith thum day. If I could jutht get a cah like thith, it would be tho f-f-fine!”

  As good an athlete as he was, he couldn’t get into wrestling here. We wouldn’t train him. We didn’t have anything against him. It was just that guys would get interested in the business because of how it was portrayed here and its popularity. We had just started Bobby Duncum off when Dusty wanted in, and we didn’t want it to seem like it was that easy for guys just to come in and start wrestling out of West Texas State.

  But to Dusty’s credit, he found his own way into the business.

  Dusty went up to Pittsburgh, told the promoter he had worked for the Funks in Amarillo. They were having some kind of bullshit world title match, and the promoter put Dusty in as the challenger, e
ven though Dusty had “left his gear.” Of course, the truth was, he had no gear.

  At the end of the night, the promoter gave Dusty his $10 payoff, and Dusty wanted to know where the rest of the money was, since he’d been in a world title match and all! It didn’t matter to him that there were only 150 people there.

  Then Dusty turned that into a chance to work in Detroit, for promoter Ed Farhat, who also wrestled as The Sheik.

  He came back down here and said, “Tewwy, I been wukking fuh The Sheik!” He pointed to a bunch of scars on his forehead.

  Well, I wasn’t so sure he had been wrestling for the Sheik. He went into the dressing room, but nobody would talk to him.

  I went in first and told the guys, “Hey, we’re letting this guy into the dressing room, but we’re not sure he’s smart to the business, so watch what you say around him.”

  Dusty went in, pulled up a chair and sat down, and no one said a word to him.

  But when we got word from The Sheik that Dusty had wrestled for him, it was like the arms opened up, and he was welcomed into that fraternity.

  He was a living testament to the will of guys who truly wanted into the business. He made his own way in and became a tremendous box-office attraction.

  The mystique of the business was that we hardly let anyone into it. If you got in, you were accepted in, but we let very few of them in. Some didn’t really want in; they just wanted to prove a point. It never went well for those guys.

  One time, while I was in college, there was a guy who said he wanted in the business. He said he’d been an amateur wrestler and was a tough guy. My father told him to come to the arena, and if he could beat me, then he could be a wrestler.

  Sadly, he decided to bring his wife and daughter to his tryout. They sat in the front row and watched as I beat the living hell out of him and just made a fool out of him. He ended up busted open and blown up, and his wife and daughter were crying by the time it was over.

  I really was dejected afterwards, because it had taken place in front of his wife and daughter. But my father told me, “Terry, don’t feel bad. That guy brought his wife and daughter for only one reason—to show what fools we were.”

  I had never looked at it that way, but my father was right. That man had wanted to ridicule professional wrestling. Once that sank in, I didn’t feel bad for the guy anymore.

  Another guy we refused to break in was one of my football opponents in college. Bob Windham, who became known as Blackjack Mulligan, was a big kid from Odessa, Texas. He used to hang around the back row of ringside at the wrestling shows and say, “Man, I wish I could get into the wrestling business.”

  I would always tell him, “Well, kid, I don’t know if you can or not,” and walk off.

  I had played against him when he was playing for the University of Texas-El Paso. We beat their asses that year, too.

  We didn’t end up breaking him into the business, but he did what Dusty had done. He went around until he found a small promoter to give him a shot, and he worked himself into the business. You might think we were too picky about who we let in, but that’s one of the things that’s wrong with the business today. If you have $500 and give it to someone with a “wrestling school,” then BOOM! You’re a wrestler! It used to be something of a process, not just in wrestling moves, but in some sense of respect for your business and the people in it.

  Mulligan actually had some success, especially as part of the Blackjacks tag team with Blackjack Lanza in the AWA and Indianapolis areas. Lanza had a very distinctive look, which Mulligan came to emulate—slick black hair and a handlebar mustache, wearing a black cowboy hat and vest. Lanza drew a lot of money in the business, despite not having any kind of incredible physique.

  And then there was Bobby Duncum, another West Texas player and future pro wrestler.

  I knew Bobby because he and Dusty Rhodes would sit in the bleachers every Thursday night for the matches. Every week, they sat in the same seats—week after week, for years. We knew they wanted into the business, and we ended up breaking Bobby in. He certainly had that wandering spirit a wrestler has. When the school had the football players answer a questionnaire, Bobby answered the question about what he wanted to do when he graduated like this: “I want to be a truck driver, so I can see the world.”

  Well, he did end up getting to see the world, but not driving a truck.

  When Bobby Duncum first got into the business, we stretched him. That’s just the way it was done. We knew Bobby needed to be in the business when we put a hold on him, really sank it in and asked, “Now, Bobby, do you feel that pressure?”

  He’d say, “Yes,” as calmly as you please.

  “Does that hurt, Bobby?”

  “Yes,” just as calmly.

  That was all the emotion you were going to get out of that tough-ass bastard.

  After Bobby had been in the business for about six months, we decided to try to give him a push in Albuquerque, so he could make a little money there.

  One of Bobby’s first opponents was “Spaceman” Frank Hickey, a bulbous wrestler who was out there, and who traveled around doing jobs. He was wrestling Bobby in Albuquerque, and we wanted to give Bobby a spectacular finishing move. We decided he would leap off the top rope as high as he could, and then land with one leg on the mat and the other foot on the guy’s head. It was a great move for an agile 180-pounder. Of course, Bobby was 260.

  Unfortunately we didn’t have anyone courageous enough to try it out. We got a water bucket to serve as a guy’s head for him to practice the move. He climbed up to the top and came off. He just crushed that water bucket.

  We just told him, “Well Bobby, we’ll work on this later, but we want to go ahead and get it going tonight.”

  That night, we went through the finish, complete with Duncum’s new finish, and Hickey said, “Wait a minute—has he ever done this before?”

  “Oh yeah, he’s done it many, many times.”

  Their match that night went fine until Bobby climbed up to the top rope, and Frank looked up at him. I don’t know what clued him in, but Frank Hickey made the right decision, because he got out of the goddamned way before Bobby could crash down onto his head. Frank Hickey had gone south on Bobby, and it was the smartest thing he ever did.

  Frank had a hard time down here. One night he missed his match because he ran over a cow. He tried to drive up and over the cow and got the car stuck on top of the damn carcass with his back wheels in midair.

  The West Texas State classes that came after us also contained some guys who would turn into big-name wrestlers.

  Ted DiBiase was a good player. I knew he was going to high school and playing football in Arizona, and I wanted him up here. I love Teddy like he was my own boy. His parents were both wrestlers. His dad was Mike DiBiase, who worked in Amarillo while Ted was growing up, and his mother was Helen Hild, a woman wrestler.

  He played football, but then he got under Dick Murdoch’s wing and suddenly he didn’t want to play football anymore. Murdoch always had to have somebody with him, and the great thing was, whoever it might be, Murdoch would make them the only two people with any brains. Everybody else was a dumbass.

  “Ted, you and me are the only two smart sons of bitches here,” he’d say. Then the next guy would come along, and Murdoch would tell him, “You know, you and me are the only ones who know what’s going on around here.”

  Another one was Tully Blanchard, who was quarterback on the team with Merced Solis, an excellent tight end (who became Tito Santana in wrestling). Tully was a really talented quarterback, but he was in a bad auto accident. He had the window part of the way down, with his arm hanging out, and when his car and the other one collided, the glass broke and sliced through the muscle in his left arm, which was his throwing arm. I don’t know if Tully was good enough to go pro, but I do know he would have won a lot of collegiate passing records had his career not been cut short. He would have had a chance at the pros at the very least.

  Tully was a
great athlete, and I think his success in the wrestling business was a testament to that, because he was a small guy by wrestling standards. Tully had a cockiness about him, and I guess I’ve never met a quarterback who didn’t have that. Back then a quarterback had to have that confidence because the quarterback was often the one calling plays on the field. Tully was able to translate that natural confidence into a successful persona in wrestling.

  A guy who didn’t go into wrestling, but who became one of my dearest friends, also went to West Texas State a few years behind Stan. Ted DiBiase was the one who brought John Ayers out to the house.

  My first thought about John was, “What a big goof,” but I liked him from the first time we met.

  He was just a big, South Texas boy, as country as he could be, and he didn’t give a damn about much besides playing football. He didn’t care much about getting grades, although he had a great mind. He’d been at the University of Texas and was doing great as a player there, but he finished up his freshman year with something like a minus-four grade-point average or something like that.

  As I got to know him, I saw that this “goofy country boy” could run a bead a hell of a lot better than I could on a piece of metal when welding. That goofy country boy could figure out millimeters and make them match on the welding projects he did. He could build anything. That goofy country boy could start out with a pile of metal and have a horse trailer at the end of three weeks, which is more than I could do.

  He could also shoot a gun a hell of a lot better than I could.

  In the back of his mind, John knew what he wanted to do the whole time. He wanted to drink beer and play football. Later on, he loved working on his ranch and always loved his kids.