More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  Seriously, WCW was thrilled about the idea of getting Sabu, and Heyman threatening the possibility of legal action put the kibosh on the whole deal. It just chilled the whole deal.

  With all of this going on, Mick Foley’s autobiography came out. It was called Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks, and it jumped to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list. It contained a less-than-flattering portrayal of Ric Flair, who was something of the elder statesman of WCW. Flair was booker when Cactus worked in WCW, starting in late 1989, and Cactus wrote that Flair was too concerned with other things (such as his hair) to book him in a way that he would get over. We did a short program with me against Flair, and we made the comments in the book part of the angle, but Flair never said one word about the book to me privately. If it truly bugged him, he never let me know about it.

  That deal with Flair also exposed me a little to his son, David. Talk about a tough act to follow! I like David, and I think that he would have had a much easier time in the business if he wasn’t the son of one of the all-time greats. It was kind of like Dusty and Dustin, except Dustin finally found his niche. David never did, and it was just impossible for him to walk out to the ring without having people making a comparison to one of the greatest professional wrestlers there has ever been. Him having to suffer that comparison was a travesty in its own right.

  Being out there with Ric didn’t enhance his career; it limited his career. It was different for David than it was for my brother and me starting out. A lot of that had to do with the image my father portrayed, as opposed to the image Ric portrays, and I’m not knocking Ric when I say that. My father had a different image to the Amarillo people—they knew the Funks. We had been around that place for a lifetime. Dory Funk, our dad, was just a regular guy, which was true— he was just a regular guy. The character Flair portrayed was larger than life. Dusty Rhodes was another larger-than-life image, and I think that made the difference between David and Dustin, and Junior and me. Greg Gagne ran into the same problems in the AWA, when Verne tried to push him. Verne had pushed himself as the larger-than-life man in that area that he had become the one and only. And he was to those fans. Today you see the same thing with Vince McMahon’s children, and you might notice they pull back from having his kids on TV all the time.

  Unfortunately, my issue with Flair kind of fizzled out, just as my issue with Kevin Nash had done. It was almost as if it were written in stone that in WCW, there would be no continuity, no building on anything. It was as if, every week, they just threw a bunch of stuff out there, and none of it had time to get over with the audience, which was rapidly shrinking. In 2000, WCW had the unmistakable stink of death on it. There was a feeling in the locker room like everyone felt it wasn’t going to last much longer. I don’t think anyone doubted it. I knew it was doomed from the moment I walked in the door.

  And I wish I could tell you what Sting was like in 1999 and 2000, compared to the Sting I knew a decade earlier, but I was never around him. Sting, like so many other top guys in WCW, appeared and disappeared into his own quarters. I’ve been in thousands of locker rooms in my life, and I think separating the top stars like that is completely absurd, and completely demeaning to the guys those top stars are wrestling. I wish I’d thought to ask one of them, “You mean that this guy is going to go out there and make you look great, so you can continue to be a star, and yet you can’t bring yourself to change in the same room with this guy?”

  If I’d been in my prime and someone showed me that kind of disrespect, they might have found themselves doing real battle with me, in the ring. It was insulting and showed no dignity or respect for the people who were making the stars. Maybe I was just never a star the caliber of Sting, Hulk Hogan, or Kevin Nash, but when I was world’s champion in 1976,1 never dressed separately from the other boys, nor did I find myself bothered by the other boys. I can’t think of anyone who was or is so big a star in wrestling that he’s just too good to dress with the other boys. Take The Undertaker, for example. He never did that when I was around him, and I’d bet you $100 he doesn’t do it now. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was a bigger star at his peak than anyone in WCW was at his peak, and I’d bet you $100 that Austin never did that bullshit.

  To get away, to get out of the dressing room for a minute to discuss a finish is one thing. But to alienate yourself from your peers is beyond my comprehension, especially since those peers are doing you a favor by putting their shoulders to the mat.

  WTiat that company needed was someone to take the reins a lot sooner. Kevin Sullivan tried it in 2000, but he had a lot of enemies in the company, and in truth, by then it was too late. It had gotten down to a level where a resurgence would have been impossible, especially since most of the guys who had been WCW’s top stars were just gone. Kevin was left with a group of guys who, except for Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair, were not the superstars WCW had been focusing on for years. It was also a group that changed constantly, which made long-term planning impossible.

  Sullivan was still a great idea man, but it wouldn’t be long before he was also shown the door. I think Vince Russo played a part in that, and he was the guy who ended up back in charge, along with Bischoff. The entire company was falling apart, and Kevin Sullivan was there, trying to hold the pieces together. He ended up being WCWs fall guy, the guy blamed for all of that company’s problems, even though those problems were there before they put Kevin in charge.

  I talked to him right before he left. He said, “Damn, Terry, I’m having to come up with shows, and no one’s here.”

  Kevin Sullivan was one of those rare realists in wrestling, and I think he knew from the day he started that he was there to put together a TV show with whatever he could gather. I think he also knew he was only in for the short term, and that he’d be gone when it all started going to hell. But at least Kevin was trying to create. The ones who would replace him ended up doing nothing but destroying.

  In April 2000, Sullivan was out and Bischoff and Russo both came back. Hell, could have told them that wasn’t going to work! The last year of that company was a period of total idiocy.

  Here you had Vince Russo, who was supposed to be a writer, and all of the sudden, he’s Vince Russo, the executive in charge. And then, he’s suddenly Vince Russo, the performer! Having a writer as a performer was the wrong move for the company, especially since WCW had the money to hire as many performers as it needed. What WCW ended up with was a “The Emperor Has No Clothes” scenario.

  I’ll use Sylvester Stallone as an example. We were filming Paradise Alley in 1977. Sly was the director, and he was also the lead actor. Sly would finish a scene, and no matter how he did, people on the set would say, “Academy award!”

  You get the same thing with someone in Russo’s position. No one was willing to be honest with him. You gain more by dishonesty. Remember the story about Dick Murdoch and Jim Herd? Dick told him the truth, but Dick would have been better off by lying to the man.

  And if all you hear is how good you’re doing, it’s easy to start believing you actually are good, especially when you’re in main issues and you’re the one writing all this stuff.

  As a creative person, he needed an overseer, as any creative person does. I think the guy could create good stuff, but he could create godawful stuff, too. And somebody needed to be there over him, to tell him which was which. And it needed to be someone who actually knew the wrestling business, someone who knew the kinds of things that worked and the kinds of things that were too off the wall to get over with anyone.

  Even Vince McMahon has that problem sometimes. Sometimes McMahon’s WWE (as McMahon’s company is now known) does something completely off the wall, and it doesn’t work. But Vince has people around him, people who can be that conservative voice and help sort out some of those ideas. And even then, the “Stallone syndrome” still exists in that organization, as advanced as WWE is.

  You just need a conservative voice, and that’s not hard to find in wrestling. Crea
tivity is what’s hard to find, and Russo did some creative things. But if you just let a creative person go unchecked … well, that person might think it’s a good idea to go in front of an audience wearing a nylon stocking and baby powder over his head, and carrying a chainsaw.

  And even if they did do well onscreen, pushing themselves is not what they should have been doing. Of all the talent WCW had, the best they can come up with to push is … Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo? What kind of ego would you have to have to think that was a good idea? Bischoff and Russo became the stars of the show, and to make things worse, the show went from being wrestling to being a sitcom of absurdities.

  Russo did try to find things to do with guys who had been underused. Hugh Morrus was one of them. He was a guy who could work. I always thought he would find a niche somewhere, but he never really did, and I can’t understand why, because he had plenty of talent. He might just have been born too late. He was almost, to me, a Bob Sweetan type. Sweetan was a guy who a regional promoter would take one look at and think, “I won’t make a dollar with this guy,” but you could! Hell, Sweetan drew a lot of money for Bill Watts in Oklahoma, and he did well for Joe Blanchard in San Antonio. If Hugh had been back in that era, he would have found a niche and his opportunity to show he could draw a buck. But in this business and time, it’s very difficult to get a guy like that over. He’s not six foot six. He’s not the most handsome guy on the show, but if he had gotten a chance, he could have proven himself. But he never got a chance because so much of the business is based on the outward physical appearance of a guy.

  Another guy Russo had an idea for was former ECW champion Mike Awesome. Unfortunately, his idea was to turn Mike Awesome from a sadistic monster of a wrestler into a guy who loved fat women, and then into “That ‘70s Guy.”

  I’ve seen some bumbling bullshit in my life, but that is the most absurd thing I’ve ever seen. That was nothing short of being the destruction of an individual. The way they handled him was a travesty. I mean, here’s a guy who is a monster, a big boy, who could do anything. He could backflip off the top rope. He was a good-looking guy, too, with a great physique. He was pretty much everything you could want out of a pro wrestler in this day and age. He had it all!

  So what did they do with this incredible piece of talent? They had him lusting after fat women and wearing leisure suits!

  I saw him on TV once, wearing some stupid Hawaiian shirt. Well, hell, he was That 70s Guy! Think about it—how could you more effectively destroy an individual any more than that? In the year 2000, with wrestling changing quicker than it ever had, with the top minds in the business striving to keep up with the changes, WCW tagged Mike Awesome “That ‘70s Guy!”

  They totally destroyed the guy. It was right up there with the Ding Dongs and Dr. Knows it All. The sad thing was, he’d worked his ass off to get his shot in WCW. He worked for Onita in Japan and was over as a top singles guy, but what you might not realize is that “That ‘70s Guy” hurt him all the way around the world. He was no longer Mike Awesome, the incredible Gladiator. He was now “That ‘70s Guy!”

  Another thing about Russo, and his sidekick, Ed Ferrara—when they were in the WWF and I got there in late 1997, they never took a minute to say one word to me. I have no idea why. Later, when I got to WCW, I think they were too ashamed to talk to me very much. Maybe they were too busy thinking up their brilliant plan to screw over Hulk Hogan on a live pay per view and cost the company a few million dollars. How innovative!

  They booked me into the hardcore division. WCW had just started a hardcore title after the WWE had some success with the idea in 1998. The hardcore title matches were different from other title matches in that you could score a pinfall anywhere. You could fight out of the ring—hell, you could fight outside of the building!

  On one episode of WCW’s “Thunder” show in May, Chris Candido and I had a hardcore match where we ended up fighting in a horse stable. We were going at it when the damn horse just rared back and kicked the living hell out of me. I was actually very lucky not to be very seriously injured, because he kicked me right in the head. I went loopy and without thinking, jumped up and knocked the shit out of that horse.

  I have never had any desire to sue anyone, but that was an instance where I probably could have. We were out at the stable earlier in the day, and I asked the guy running the stable, “Well, how’s the horse?”

  He said, “Oh, he’s just fine.”

  I said, “Don’t you think you ought to ace (meaning give the horse a tranquilizer to keep him from getting riled up) him?”

  And they aced him. If they hadn’t, I might not be here today, because that horse probably would have torn Candido and me to pieces. As it was, even on ace, the horse got surprised by us fighting in there and momentarily regained all his strength and bearings, just long enough to scramble my brains.

  And none of this was the horse’s fault. I ended up OK, but it sure could have turned into a bad situation. I’ve had a horse kick his way out of a metal horse trailer and completely destroy it, just by kicking, so a horse’s kick is a pretty powerful thing.

  Another time, I was wrestling Jerry “The Wall” Tuite, when I went for a moonsault outside the ring. You guessed it—he completely missed me! I loved The Wall—he was a great guy and a lousy cribbage player. He was also a lousy, lousy catcher!

  I yelled at him a little after the match. “Goddamn, how can you miss me?” He said, “Sorry, Terry.”

  Another of my hardcore opponents was Norman Smiley. Smiley was a great guy who got the gimmick of being a coward named “Screamin”’ Norman from Russo. What a lot of guys didn’t realize was that Norman was whole lot tougher than they thought he was. He had worked for Japan’s UWFI, which was a group working in a shoot style, a brutal, punishing way to work. I knew Smiley could go, although he never felt like he had to prove how tough he was. I was also glad I was never someone he decided to prove it to.

  And he really had fun with the “Screamin”’ Norman thing. He must have loved it, or he wouldn’t have done it so well. The only problem I saw was, that was going to be a hard gimmick to overcome later. It was a fun character, but it was a character that was going to stay near the bottom of the card. There was no way “Screamin”’ Norman was ever going to be a main-event deal.

  They even had a deal where Bischoff beat me for the hardcore title. It was kind of a goofy deal, but hell, I didn’t care, it was their title. That was their business, and their business was amok.

  I should take a moment here and talk about Eric Bischoff. He was brilliant in some of his first endeavors. He brought in Hulk Hogan when a lot of people in the business thought Hogan was washed up, and made millions with him. He launched Nitro, the first time anyone dared take on Vince McMahon on a weekly basis. He brought in a lot of other WWF talent and gave them new leases on life. I probably wouldn’t have done any of that if I’d been in his place.

  Having said that, Eric didn’t have a real understanding of the business overall, and I think he knows that now. His biggest mistake might have been becoming so involved with it himself as a performer, or allowing himself to be manipulated by others while he was supposed to be the boss. I don’t think he would allow that to happen now.

  And it wasn’t even so much the guaranteed contracts themselves—it was who they gave the guaranteed money to. You have to use good judgment when you’re giving a guy that much power.

  But hell, what do I know? Maybe Kevin Nash understands the business better than I do, after all. I was always someone who had compassion for the other guys in the locker room. Nash made himself a lot of money with his philosophy of the business. That philosophy was to make Kevin Nash as much money as possible, at the expense of all others. And he was certainly not the only one who thought that way, either. Worst of all, those guys had no concern for their profession. They didn’t give a shit about wrestling itself, or else they’d have been working every week. Not one of them was concerned with the product they were putting out
.

  Actually, one of the guys who got a reputation for being a difficult guy was someone I thought a lot of—Scott Steiner. He was a good kid and I always enjoyed being around him. When I was around him in 2000 in WCW, he hadn’t changed and still hasn’t, at least to me. He was still a great guy, and I still talk to him to this day. Scott and his brother Rick were two great guys, and they were smart. Both of them saved their money from wrestling, and I’m sure they’re doing OK now.

  In the end, Bischoff had a good plan for short-term success, but that was all he had. If you’re running a wrestling company, you have to surround yourself with people who love the business, in order to succeed long term. You have to pick the guys who are going to be good soldiers, and eliminate the other ones. The beauty of the wrestling business is you can do that. A company can handle one or two people of that mentality, if they’re big enough draws to justify it, but WCW had a locker room half-full of people like that. And that was no one’s fault but the guy running the company—Bischoff.

  Making movie actor David Arquette the world champion would have to rank up there with the stupidest ideas ever, too. How much does he weigh? 180? Hell, that shows that everyone has a chance! Anyone can be a professional wrestler! That was nothing short of an insult to the fans and to the other wrestlers.

  So Eric was a guy capable of both a great idea and total idiocy. I don’t think he was a wrestling genius by any means, and I think he ought to count himself lucky that he’s able to draw a weekly paycheck from this business, working as an on-air character for Vince McMahon. He should be damned thankful for that check.