1. This Funking Interview...
WWE.comAt the end of Jeremy Borashs 2005 ECW documentary Forever Hardcore, Terry Funk pretty much sums up everything youll ever need to know about ECW, the wrestling business and, um, Terry Funk. For me, if I could only watch one clip of Terry Funk for the rest of my life, it would either be the one transcribed below, or the infamous forever! speech, delivered by a blood-stained and weary Funk following his first retirement in Japan, 1983 - it really is pro wrestlings equivalent of Yo Adrian, we did it! Funk is always great on the mic and came across however he needed to (usually as a bloodthirsty Texan madman with one motherf*cker of an axe to grind, as it turns out), but it is in his quieter, shoot interview moments that he is often at his most intense and spellbinding. What follows is one of those moments. At the end of the film, a relaxed, yet slightly plaintive, Funk explains, I had an opportunity to go into the WWE at this time (referring to the WWEs first ECW: One Night Stand Pay Per View. Terry came back for the sequel in 2006...But who the hell cares?) And they sent me a contract. They sent me a very good contract. This is the contract here (holds the document up to the camera). Not that its anything special or anything, but its for quite a sum of money...And it certainly isnt for what Hulk Hogan or Triple H or Ric Flair or The Undertaker makes but it was for quite a bit more money than for this group that Im going to perform for. ...And I had a choice, I had to make a choice between the two companies because I know, at my age, my time again, I cant perform two shows that close together. So...Did I want to go for the man that possibly...Not possibly, that DID a lot to destroy the company? Did I want to go for the fella that made millions of Dollars with The Rise & Fall of ECW (DVD) that had nothing to do with it? Do I want to go for the man that is going to have an ECW show that could give a damn about ECW? Did I want to go to a show that is going to have fans that are simulating the ECW fans? No...I wanted to go to an ECW show. I wanted to go to the show where (it could be) an extension of the guys personality, not a Vince McMahon group or whatever it is. ...So I chose to go back and enter the ring in a three way dance. That took a lot of thought on my part. I talked about it with my wife and she said Honey, at your age, sixty years old, you ought to be looking at the bucks...And youd better be up there at that Vince McMahon show. And I said Honey, I said...(begins to tear up) Honey, I cant do it (he is now openly crying). I wanna go back for the guys that I love. The guys that Ive been down the road with and... (He pauses, taking a few seconds to compose himself). ...And thats why Im not a millionaire. Because Ive done the things that Ive wanted to do instead of the things that I probably should have done. The movie tastefully fades out there and we are left with little more than an afterimage, an enduring memory of a company founded on brutality, bloodletting and brotherhood. It is an elegy delivered for ECW by its beating heart and battlescarred soul, the man, the warrior, the elder Statesman of the squared circle, Terry Funk. However, it is also a portrait of a noble man bearing his simple, worthy soul. It leaves us with a flavour of what wrestling was, is and could be again. In short, it is everything you could reasonably expect to hear from a man dubbed Wrestlings Living Legend. Frankly, if you STILL dont see why we older fans love The Funker, then you never Funking will. God bless you, Terry.