8 Wrestlers Who Broke All The Rules

1. Terry Funk - From Classic Wrestling Champion To Death Match Icon

Orange Cassidy
WWE.com

Terry Funk is one of the greatest wrestling champions in the history of the National Wrestling Alliance - with the emphasis here on wrestling.

Funk's contemporaries in that regard are the likes of Harley Race, Jack Briscoe, Ric Flair, and Dusty Rhodes. With a 14-month reign under his belt as the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion, the Funker was viewed as a great traditional grappler who would always be happy to brawl when called for.

So, it came as a huge surprise when the later years of Funk's career saw him become a death match wrestler and a famed hardcore icon when in his 50s.

A traditional wrestler like Terry Funk was previously viewed as being above what many perceived as merely violent trash that had no place in the wrestling world. Would Ric Flair have partook in IWA's King of the Death Match tournament? Would Harley Race have matched Sabu with his love of barbwire? Could you ever imagine Jack Briscoe stepping foot in a ring featuring C4 explosive boards?

This just wasn't the norm for one of the NWA's finest ever champions. Yet Terry Funk went against all of that, going on to reinvent himself as a fully-fledged hardcore wrestler in the '90s - which in a bizarre way, despite the more dangerous nature, led to Funk's career being extended.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.