Terry Funk Brings Me Along

By Tim Livingston: 

When I was 5, my brother and I took naps in different rooms because otherwise, we wouldn’t go to sleep and we’d upset my parents (still can’t nap for shit to this day). On one of those napless Saturday afternoons in late 1989/early 1990, when I got bored and decided to turn the TV on at an extremely low volume to hide it from my folks, I turned it to TBS, where they just happened to be running a special called “The War of ‘89.” Jim Ross was in studio and they played (mostly in full, if I recall) the matches that were part of the Ric Flair/Terry Funk feud, beginning with the angle at WrestleWar ’89 and ending with the “I Quit” match at Clash IX. Easy programming instead of doing a full Saturday Night taping.

I had seen Funk before on the WrestleMania 2 VHS I repeatedly rented from Blue Moon Video. I rented it mainly because I wanted to see WrestleMania III, but someone else rented it and never returned it basically every time I went in. Late fees must’ve been a bitch. Funk didn’t really stand out then to me outside of the finish of the tag (in retrospect, the best match on the show), as my sports-loving self was all about the NFL/WWF 20-man battle royal [Eric nods in Russ Francis approval reading this]. Funk didn’t stand out to me then. But once I saw this feud? He never left my head again.

That’s because of the Great American Bash. It’s one of the best singular performances I can remember. When I watched this match so many times when I was younger, it was always Flair who was the focus for me. Coming off the Steamboat series, how does he do against Funk, what does he change up, etc. I smartened up something fierce in the years since. And this always stands out as Funk’s most impactful performance to me.

Funk comes out flanked by police and Gary Hart, branding iron in hand, “Man With A Harmonica” playing him to the ring. I can’t really begin to tell you how instantly cool this makes Funk look; the contrast is seeing Flair come out with the best women 1989 Baltimore has to offer, but Funk sees him arrive, meets him outside right away (probably to warn the women how much of a womanizer he was, sets Flair off, and the fun begins.

Funk plays the invading heel archetype to the best of almost anyone’s abilities. He postures and gets his ass whipped, then gets pissed about it as Flair waits for him to get back in the ring(s). Instead, Funk decides he’s not in Baltimore, but in San Juan; trying to remove the guardrails from the floor, pacing the front row and stalking anyone who wants to get fresh. It’s the threatening shit everyone tries but can posture with today; there’s an aura to someone who calls himself “middle-aged and crazy” actually decides to just do whatever his id tells him at any moment. Stan Hansen had the cowbell on a bullrope to instill fear; Terry Funk just needed a reason.

The escalation here is delightfully impactful: Funk tries to go blow for blow with Flair and fails due to Flair being amped up. Flair tries to literally rip Funk’s neck off his body to get back at him for the WrestleWar piledriver, then tries to go the full monty, following up with his kneedrops to the neck and two piledrivers of his own. You even get Flair getting a cowardly Funk back in the ring and locking in the figure-four, until the literal greatest transition spot in history occurs: Funk opens Flair up with a branding iron to not only break the hold, but bust his skull open.

Normally in a match where the babyface is out for revenge you get a hot start before crashing back to Earth; here Funk lets Flair have basically half the match before he gets in his first meaningful shot of offense. But then it’s all to the neck, and all nasty. A stiff piledriver. A wild dive off the apron where a glancing blow with the knee makes contact with neck and Flair sells it like whiplash. Three SICK spinning neckbreakers. Funk even decides to lay the seeds for the “I Quit” match by yelling at Flair to give up after the third one, an unequivocal master of the craft. The match goes just over 15 minutes and Funk barely needed a third of it to make the point that he could own Flair with just one small opening.

Then we get to the part that forever lives in my memory. For my money, the best 10-minutes of pro wrestling ever produced: Flair bloodies Funk, misses the Harley Race knee, trips up Funk on the spinning toehold, and reverses the small package for the win. After knocking out Gary Hart, here comes The Great Muta, resplendent in blood red, misting Flair to the mat, trying to break Flair’s neck with a stuff piledriver, whooping Doug Dillinger’s ass (civilian or not). Then Sting comes out to even the odds, giving us the amazing visual of Flair’s half green, half red face fighting off the invasion and standing tall next to Sting in his chipped face paint.

But we get MORE. Muta throws the ring stairs as Funk retreats with Hart, Flair and Sting give chase and whoop Funk and Muta back towards the entrance ramp, Flair swinging his belt begging for Funk to make a move. When we cut to Jim Ross and Bob Caudle's closing remarks, the brawl continues with chairs and branding irons and everything else. Sting somehow finds a velvet rope and chokes them both. And then, as if you needed a capper to the insanity, Flair gives you the full show: the bi-colored face, title over his shoulder, eyes bright in contrast lit up with the fill lighting, threatening to wear Funk’s Texas ass out. His face looked like he had just survived a showdown with Jason Voorhees and a Xenomorph and lived to tell the tale.

Funk was an agent of chaos, coming in and leaving destruction in his wake, even as he was defeated by Flair. It was another great nod to how he amplified the booking. There was no cheap DQ finish, you can look good even with a loss because chaos reigns supreme, and when you try to get your heat back, you make things crazier. The win or loss barely matters. Flair won, but Funk took part of his soul on the way out. There was a delicate balance where Funk wanted to put everyone in a better position as the show ended, while also bringing up two young dudes who needed the rub. Everyone in a better position coming out of the show than when they came in. The best way to do business.

It's everything anyone could ever love about Terry Funk in one neat package: The absurd, the nastiness, the execution and sloppiness, the unbridled passion and effort; knowing that after a quarter century in the business having done and seen it all, he’s more than happy to show ass. It means the fans want him to get it whooped again next time around. He took the loss, he lost the post-match brawl, but he was - as he normally was - the thing folks remember.

He was absolutely the thing I remember most from that July night, and on this October night, as well. I’m happy to know that many years after my napless kindergarten self saw the match, I was fully able to appreciate his greatness. The singular professional wrestler with a singular performance; timeless as a Morricone tune.