3. Terry Funk Is The Toughest Man In The History Of Professional Wrestling. Fact.
flickrPain is temporary. Pride is forever. That could sum up the attitude Terry Funk and I shared toward wrestling Harley Race. Terry Funk and Harley Race (another of the toughest guys to ever live, in or out of wrestling) wrestled each other hundreds of times in their respective heydays. Weve spilled each others blood countless times, and weve literally scarred each other for life, says Harley Race in his autobiography King of The Ring. Race and Funk beat each other to a bloody mess in chain matches, No Holds Barred bouts and brutal, bloody Texas Death Matches. In Lubbock, Texas, Terry and I were beating each other so senseless that he left the match with a concussion and cracked vertebrae in his neck. Of course, for Terry, thats just like a stubbed toe Wow. And thats decades before ECW or the insanity of the IWA...Speaking of which, heres Mick Foley again, this time relaying the infamous Death Match... Terry stayed down a portion of the explosion had caught under his right triceps, and he was in considerable pain. (...) I rolled into the ring and shouldered the ladder lengthwise. As Terry turned, I charged him, and the impact to his head was so severe that I felt somewhat guilty. I got over it. I set up the ladder to the side of the fallen Funker. (...) I ascended to the fifth step about six feet in the air. The blood was really flowing from a cut in my hairline. It was so thick that it resembled more of a solid mask than a liquid (...) I stepped from the ladder and dropped a perfect elbow on Terry. Keeping all this firmly in mind, remember that the scene in Beyond The Mat, in which Terry is told by his doctor that he has severe degenerative arthritis in his knees (and that he shouldnt be able to get around without experiencing acute pain), was filmed almost 20 years ago now. The man is unstoppable.
WWE.comEven in his youth, Terry was never afraid of doing things the hard way. Even before he and Abdullah The Butcher helped to invent hardcore wrestling with the fork incident in Japan, or before he had pile-driven Ric Flair through a table (possibly the first time anyone ever did that), Funk was well known as a tough guy. The business was tougher (albeit less violent) back then and Terry was as tough as any of them. As the years have rolled on, Funk has precious few of his peers left. His contemporaries are either retired, dead or broken down by a hard life spent in an even harder business. Funk, on the other hand, continues to take bookings. He just cant seem to stay away. Heres Bret Hart, discussing Terrys appearance in the 1997 Royal Rumble match, from his autobiography, Terry Funk was only there for one night, to be in the battle royal. It pained me to see him hobble across the dressing room afterwards. He was barely able to walk after taking so many hard bumps throughout his storied career, yet he had still given it his all, part machine, part masochist ..,And it isnt like Terry slowed down in old age, either. His matches now are as tough and wince inducing as ever they were. Anyone can be tough at 21; almost nobody can still be THAT tough at 70. Terry Funk is a born survivor, an apex predator. He is undoubtedly the toughest man ever to step between the ropes.