5 Uncredited Architects Of WWE's Attitude Era
2. Terry Funk
Mick Foley is known as the self-styled Hardcore Legend, but he freely admits that his longtime friend Terry Funk is the true bearer of the nickname.
Funk's foray into the hardcore realm was crazy enough in itself - but even more so when one considers that he'd already lived a wrestling lifetime before he elected to head east and blow himself to bits.
Funk through his very name alone legitimised the idea of garbage wrestling, which the WWF would later appropriate during their most infamous period. It was no surprise that he was designated as ECW's top star in the promotion's formative years and as the throughline of Barely Legal, their debut pay-per-view.
Funk's participation in FMW helped give rise to the tape trading culture which whetted the appetite of fans outside of Japan for the crazed style popularised by Onita's promotion.
Messrs Funk and Foley, having been involved in the Federation at the advent of the Attitude Era, are mostly given credit for bringing garbage wrestling to American shores, but Sabu deserves a mention too. Table destruction remains one of wrestling's most beloved tropes, and it was Sabu who popularised it in the west.
Of all people, however, it was actually Randy Savage who is accepted as having invented the spot, piledriving Ricky Morton through the sawdust way back in 1984.