10 Best Late Career Runs In Wrestling History

Professional athletes tend to peak at a relatively young age. There are plenty of exceptions, but for the most part, physical capabilities usually start dwindling when an athlete hits the wrong side of 30, after which success can be hard to come by. The average footballer retires at 35, and outliers aside, it's incredibly difficult to maintain a high-level career beyond that point.

Wrestling is different, however. Age and the sport's gruelling nature bring the same decline in athleticism, but by that point, many performers are seasoned and experienced enough to fully grasp the mental side of the game. They might be a little slower, but they adapt their style accordingly, and develop an approach that's more dependent on character work, psychology, and ring smarts than agility and explosiveness.

This allows many wrestlers to compete well into their 40s, and in a few cases, even longer. Some of the most iconic performers in the sport's history have cemented their legacy on the back of their late-career eforts, and in spite of their athletic deterioration. Some of these runs came on the back of a character rehaul, and others through years of steady improvement, but each produced some of the wrestlers' best work.

Terry Funk has likely had more “retirement” matches than anyone else in the business. He walked away from wrestling for the first time in 1983, but returned just a few months later, and his propensity to quit and come back has since become a running joke. Funk just can’t stay away from the business, and by the time he joined ECW in 1993, he was already 28 years into his career.

At 49 years old, Funk promised to use his name and notoriety to spur the fledgling promotion towards greater success, and that’s exactly what he did. Already a wrestling legend, Funk’s presence drew countless eyes to the product, and when Eastern Championship Wrestling went Extreme, Funk reinvented himself as a fearless hardcore brawler.

Completely moving away from his tradition Southern wrestling style, Funk cemented his reputation as one of the toughest (and craziest) men in the business. He held the ECW Championship twice, with his second victory coming in the main event of ECW’s first pay-per-view (Barely Legal, April ‘97), and that August, he partook in a legendary barbed wire match against Sabu. Funk left ECW by the end of the year, but he was presented with a “Lifetime ECW Championship” on his way out, signifying his importance to the company.