More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  So as we come to the end, I hope I’ve given you at least a sense of the great, crazy guys who made pro wrestling such a wild business. I encountered so many great characters, and it’s sad to think they’d be forgotten in future generations.

  And me? I wouldn’t move for anything. There is no opportunity in the wrestling business that could make me move from this place.

  And there’s not a lot I regret about my career. I got to wrestle almost everyone who was a top guy over the course of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I do wish I had gotten to work with Chris Benoit more than that one time, just because he was so talented and such a pleasure in the ring. I worked with Joe and Dean Malenko just a few times in Japan. They were a great tag team, and I would have liked to work more with them. And this might seem funny, but one guy I would have loved to work with was Art Barr. Art teamed with Eddy Guerrero in Mexico as Los Gringos Locos in the early 1990s, and he was so far ahead of his time it’s not even funny. Art died of a drug overdose in 1994, just a couple of weeks after his biggest match ever, on a pay per view put on in the States by the Mexican promotion AAA. Art and Eddy just burned the house down whenever I saw them on TV.

  I also never got to work with Verne Gagne, who I got to watch when I was just breaking into the business. Verne’s AWA ended up dying a slow death in the 1980s, and a lot of people knock Verne for his company going under, but that son of a bitch was a phenomenal worker.

  There are others, but I was lucky enough to work with a lot of the true talents of this business.

  I do miss being around my brother. Junior moved to Florida a little more than 20 years ago, to book for Eddie Graham, and he never moved back. We still see each other now and then, but not like when we were young.

  You might have noticed that I have lived my life somewhat differently than a lot of wrestlers. I haven’t been on the road, nonstop, for 20 years. More than 30 years ago, I let myself get sucked into the business to the point that it cost me my marriage. Well I was surely blessed to get her back and get a second chance, and I was sure as hell not going to let it happen again. And I haven’t.

  And I’ve been very fortunate, very lucky. I enjoy the hell out of my home, and the wrestling business has been good enough to me to allow me to be centered in the middle of nowhere. And no matter where I’ve worked, I’ve been able to come back here as much as I want.

  Stacy lives in Amarillo, now, and Brandee’s in Phoenix, but she travels quite a bit in her job, and we get to see her a lot. I wish Brandee was here, of course, but I love the fact she’s only a couple of hours away on an airplane. She’s also a registered nurse, helping to deliver babies and working on her master’s degree, to become a nurse practitioner.

  They’re both flight attendants, and I do worry about them being in the air so much. When 9/11 happened, everyone remembered the policemen. Everyone remembered the firemen. Everyone remembered the people who died in the World Trade Center. Everyone remembered the passengers on those planes.

  The travesty of the crashes was that those flight attendants had their throats cut, and hardly anyone has mentioned them. That’s a pretty hard way to go. I tell my daughters constantly, “Watch out! Keep your eyes open and be aware!”

  But at least I see them regularly enough that I get to tell them that often.

  And there’s one more member of the family I haven’t mentioned—my Jack Russell terrier, Tooter Brown. I’ve had dogs all my life and loved dogs, and when the girls were growing up, we had three dogs—Masa, Scooby and Boo. They all died the same year, and it was tough. I told Vicki, “I don’t want another one.”

  But she found Tooter in Waco, and brought him home. And we haven’t had a quiet moment since. One time, he went down to the creek on our property, and found a beaver hole. He wouldn’t come out, and we had to dig a 15-foot tunnel for his little ass.

  But I love the people here, I love my family, and I love to be home. If you want to know why I’ve done all the crazy things I’ve done, it’s very simple—it was to be home, to have a life, other than just wrestling. Believe me, I love the wrestling part, but I love this part of the country and I’m not going to go anyplace else.

  Why did I go to New York City 12 years ago, only to turn right around and come back? Hell, I don’t want to spend a lot of time in New York City. Why did I go to Japan and do the insane things I’ve done? I’ve been able to do something that a lot of wrestlers, even in this day and age, would love to be able to do—to have fun in the profession and be my own boss, and still get to spend time at home, where I want to be.

  It’s not the most successful thing for me financially, and I realize that, but it hasn’t been bad. I can’t think of much else that I want. Money has always been a necessity, but it’s not my guiding force. My guiding force has been my family.

  I’ve seen a lot of guys get those things reversed, and believe me, I’ve gotten them reversed in my lifetime, but by God, I got it straightened out. I’ve had it straight for more than 25 years, and I’ve done it right. I’m proud of that fact.

  In fact, you probably won’t see me out on the independent circuit too much, anymore. I know that sounds like bullshit coming from me, but it’s the truth. It’s getting to where it takes more and more to get me to leave the house.

  And there are health concerns. I have had some retinal injury to my right eye, I recently learned. It’s not something that bothers me constantly, but it is the kind of thing that can get worse if I take a blow to the head. At times it’s worse than other times, and sometimes looks like my right eye is looking through wax paper, because things can be that hazy.

  It’s not just my eye, (or “My eye! My eye!” for you empty arena match fans). If you saw Beyond the Mat, you might remember the scene where the doctor was telling me I needed a right knee replacement, because I’m bone on bone down there from the years of taking a pounding in wrestling. Well, seven years after that doctor visit, my knees are still godawful. My body goes ahead and screams every morning when I get up. What it usually screams is, “Stay down! Stay in bed!”

  But I get up every morning anyway. More than 10 years ago, I had knee surgery by Dr. James Andrews, a well known sports physician. He later treated Ernie Ladd’s knees and told Ernie, “Geez, Ernie, I’ve only seen one person with a worse knee than you.”

  Guess who?

  I realize I could get a replacement, and people wonder why I haven’t gotten one. Well, they say those things only last for about 15 years, and I don’t want to have to get two of them done, so I’m going to wait until I’m 105 to have my knee replacement. That way, it’ll last me the rest of my lifetime. But just barely.

  I’m still able to get around, which means I’ve been pretty lucky, but I’ve also had cracked vertebrae and more concussions than I could count, all because I like to work physical.

  Besides the physical aspect of it, I’m getting too damned old.

  Every now and then, a wrinkled, old man will shuffle up to me, tap me with his cane and say, “Terry Funk! I used to watch you wrestle when I was a kid!”

  I know that one day soon, I really will retire, from the entire business, once and for all. I wouldn’t mind going around the country and having a retirement match in every town, but whatever it entails, I’m pretty near the end of my wrestling days, and pretty glad to be there. I can promise you one thing—if I do accept an independent booking, and you go to the show, don’t be expecting to see any goddamned moonsaults out of me! I don’t have any left in me.

  We all have windows of time in this wrestling business. They open and they shut. I’ve been lucky enough to have a window that’s been broken, on the open side. I’ve seen a lot of talented guys whose windows were just jammed shut, for whatever reason, but mine’s been open for a great number of years, and I’ve been very fortunate. A few times it’s slammed shut on me, but I’ve always figured out a way to get it open again. Nowadays I’m looking at closing it, once and for all.

  I have a friend who just passed away from liver c
ancer in May 2004. He spent more than $100,000 on special treatment he could only get in Philadelphia. He got the treatment, but he still died.

  I don’t mean this specifically about him, but maybe the way we’ll know who wins and who doesn’t in this life is by seeing who lives. For all the guys who lived fast and died young, maybe I win when I live one more day than they do. That’s how simple it is.

  You can have all the money in the world, like Bill Gates, but what would you pay to have that one extra day of living, especially if you’re home, where you want to be?

  Right here on the Double Cross Ranch is where I want to be.