8 Things You Learn Reading A Wrestling Magazine From 1990

3. Terry Funk €˜Retiring€™ Was Already A Joke

Terry Funk is an absolute icon of the business. It might be getting to the stage where finally some young people new to the wrestling fandom might not know he who was, but basically if you watched the product between about 1970 and 2000 you were familiar with the crazy old Texan. It seemed like the end of his career was constantly littered with €˜retirements', and €˜last matches' to the point where it became a bit of a running joke amongst wrestling fans. If you watch the movie Beyond the Mat, they do a charming portrait of the man, and you get to see one of these €˜retirements' play out in real time. It's really moving, because the message is that he needed to retire, but he was just too addicted. It turns out that in 1990, the Terry Funk retirement angle was already a bit of a cliché though. In a profile on Funk written by columnist Matt Brock, Brock talks about how after losing an €˜I Quit' match against Ric Flair in 1989, Funk told him he was quitting the game. Apparently while nursing a beer, Funk said to Brock €˜That's it for me, Matt. There have been too many miles, too many wars, and too many knocks to my aching knees€I don't need to wrestle anymore'. Of course, at the time Brock was writing this article, Funk had won the USWA title from Jerry Lawler€so that retirement had not exactly stuck. And despite having 27 years of experience in 1990, Funk would just keep going and going and going through multiple departures. Brock could see through the ploy at the time though and ended the column writing that €˜the only retirement I take seriously is my own'. I don€™t think he had any idea just how right he was, and just how many more retirements were on the horizon.