You know, good for nothing eggs that being dumb. We did it our way because we love it that way. We love it that way. And I have this wonderful gun feeling and I've had it all my life. When it's time to go, I think it's now. There's time to go.
It's the Lapsed Funk going national Part two and Boss. If you've experienced Tulkamania, if you're Terror Funk, if you've headlined a couple of cities with if you've worked NBC with him, and you've done your tour of duty through the rock and wrestling era of the World Wrestling Federation, where else is there to turn in the eighties for Terry Funk. Well, he could go to WCW.
Is Jim Hurd getting a budget in order down in Atlanta? Well, I've got a pizza budget going on, but I'm not sure about like a budget of for the wrestling stuff. And I have a question I do have. I should say this, I do have. I do have a catering budget. And he's going to be catering quite a bit to the Funker, as it turns out, because there's an opponent down there who's just waiting for someone like Terry Funk to come through and create a serious sense of momentum.
After Ted Turner and Turner Broadcasting purchase mid Atlantic CHAMPIONIP Wrestling and World Jim Crockett Promotions in late eighty eight, the calendar turns to eighty nine, one more year left to make an impact in the eighties, And of course it's nature boy Rick mm not only the world champion at the time, but the booker, the head guy in charge, essentially the entire heart and soul of what was to become the NWA post Jim Crockett Promotions was Rick Flair put in pole
position and establishing a booking committee of course to Jim Hurden Company. And I don't know what doll we learn so far in the lapsed Funk. When you're looking around and you need a shot in the arm of your territory, you need someone to come in and raise absolute hell and then ride out on his horse sight unseen. I think you call the Funker. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. And Rick Flair was well acquainted with Terry Funk and indeed
counted him among his idols. Flair talks a lot about Ray Stevens and Dusty Rhodes being his idols. But it was a time period in the seventies when Flair was first breaking in after training with Verenganga, where he was paired up in terms of road travel partners with Dusty Roads and Dick Murdoch, who, of course we're working AWA at the time, had a goat in their apartment and a dina. So and wait, wait, I know they had a goat and a diner. Yeah, the then Dusty went back to Boston and
had goat in a dina. But Flair was, you know, the young rookie helping goat cheese omelet in a dina. He was the goat all right, just breaking in. And you know this is the Dick Murdock and Dusty Roads of the wrestler in that famous barroom brawl scene, those couple of Texas cowboys couldn't be more Terry Funk asque sure couldn't be more Terry Funk. Adjacent was the young Rick Flair in terms of traveling with those two and learning their
ways and learning their let's say, their culture. And so it made a nice clean fit when Terry Funk is NWA World champion was making towns that those that trio was making as well, and there was a fair degree in the seventies of cross pollination between a young Ric Flair and Terry Funk, to say nothing of the fact that right after the A W A and seventy five, Flair goes to Charlotte George Scott as booker and Crockett Promotions and absolutely, you
know, set this career on fire such that he's in the conversation for NWA World Champion. Really as soon as Terry Funk wins the belt, there's buzzed down in Charlotte that Flair his time is coming, and it's coming much faster than anybody might anticipate. In fact, when it came time for Flair to Funk to drop the championship to Harley Race, as we talked about in our NWA title episodes of The Lapsed Funk, there was no shortage of suggestion Boss
that it might already have been Ric Flair's time. That's how impactful just three four years in the business, I believe it. And so there was a chance for Rick Flair, a young Rick Flair, to see Terry Funk had his absolute most sort of you know, traditional top pro wrestler sort of idiom. Not the hardcore Terry Funk, not even the wild and crazy Terry Funk that mixed it up with Hull Cogan NBC as we talked about last week.
But the Terry Funk of the seventies, the the you know, the the prodigal son of the legendary Funk family, the power family in the business. This only brother tandem to win the NWA Championship. And here on his podcast that he used to have with Mark Matt and Ric Flair, flex on a story he tells all the time when Terry Funk's name comes up in in addition to when he passed away, this was a time that Terry Funk came by the house when a young Rick Flair, just married, just breaking into the
business, had him over for a visit. And you can imagine where things go from there. Oh boy, So we're Raleigh TV and Greg Valentine and myself. We're bringing Terry back from Raleigh TV to Charlotte. And we were drinking that Foster's Leger beer, right and we bought a bottle of grain alcohol and we were pouring it, you know, or just be like we're crazy
the old days. And we came to a stop on Monroe on Monroe Road in Charlotte, and Terry got out of the car naked with the world championship belt on him, and this is like, now, this is seventy six, seventy seven, maybe seven, yeah, seventy seven or eight, and he's actually like direct traffic. There was no cars, but he was turning like it was. It's two in the morning. So from there we take Greg takes out and all the way home he kept letting Greg Greg Valentin tear
on fire in the car. So we get to my house and I had a pit bulld and jumped over the fence. Came over the fence and jumped and bit Terry and bit bit him right through his nose. I mean a bad bite his nose. Yeah, bit through, bit through his nose. They jumped on top of Terry. No wonder, drove me through the table. No, no, this was later on. Yeah, so this so
he's the world champion. So we go inside and my wife is out for the evening, and uh, I paid the babysitter to go in Meghan's room and she was a little baby at that time and just staying there and Terry. Terry came in the house. He took a knife out of the you know the cannons to the hose knives, and put it bet s teeth like he was a pirate, and crawled around my backyard tin he catched that dog.
Well, I had gotten sick, which I'd never do. And my wife came home with one of her friends and opened the door and said, well, this is my husband. I'm embarrassed to say, and let me see. Oh yeah, and that's Terry Funk, the world champion, out in our backyard. She took all my clothes, got my first stick, and took all my clothes, threw them out in the front yard of the house. Three o'clock in the morning, And the next thing I knew I had a silver Eldorado. And the next thing I knew, I woke up
in the downtown or in Charlotte, which is sad to say. I remember how I got there, and Funk was already gone to another city, and I had to figure out a way to get back into my house. So it was never a dull moment, seventies with Nature Boy and Terry Funk together. Jesus, is it right? Is it not all there? Yeah? Yeah, I mean Jesus thoughts on what you just heard? Uh, I mean, I'm I guess I'm not surprised, really, right, there's always
something, but I guess I'm not surprised. I mean, Funk chasing the dog and you know it's there's comedy there, But I can kind of believe that Terry Funk really was trying to get back at that dog. I'm not suggesting he would have stabbed the dog, but he well, but yeah, exactly, but he flew off the handle. You know, he would come backstage after if something went wrong in the ring, and he would throw chairs and he would curse, and he would scream and he would break shit and
he was inconsolable. He would shadow box if a dog bites him on the face and he doesn't expect it, because I've heard other versions of the story where Terry kind of gets down on all fours like to see the dog and the dog snips him that that'll piss him off, of course, And it's like you want to be crazy, Like it's like Terry Funk wasn't going to rest until that pit bull was more intimidated by him than he was roight pitbull.
Right, I mean, he'll just Chase and Chase and Chase and Chase, and oh my god, I ended up at the downtown or there's always a hotel name with Flair. There's always a hotel with Flair. Absolutely God, So to put it mildly, Rick Flair and Terry Funk were already well acquainted before Rick Flair became the nature boy we all know, and he absorbed a lot from watching Terry Funk. In fact, in his book, Flair says, the knifetch chops that have become such a big part of my routine
were largely inspired by Wahoo and Terry Funk. Hmm. So when they're kind of programmed together in the mid seventies and in Jim Crockett Promotions. In fact, Terry Funk was campaigning for that territory stop championship, the US heavyweight title at the time that the decision was made to put the NWA World Championship on him. That was the territory that he was he was camped out in at the time. Flair rights WA, who was an incredibly physical wrestler who worked
in a very rugged style. It was never his intention to deliberately hurt his opponent. He was just wahoo sometimes to get tired and hit you in the mouth, or he'd throw you off the ropes and you'd come back to a chop in the nose or ear while who also kept his blade taped in his wristband, and the thing would come loose and Norfolk. Once he grabbed me to the hair and went into his Indian war dance while his blade pierced my eyelid. Jesus a normal business. As much as there's a lot of wahoo
in those chops, someone else deserves credit to Terry Funk. Flaire wrote when he was the NWA World Champion, I watched him wrestle Paul Jones and Raleigh one night. Jones grabbed Terry's arm and Terry started backhand chopping the guy. A short time later, I began doing the same thing in my matches. I also copied Terry's habit of holding onto the ropes with one hand and chopping his opponent with the other. Whenever Terry came to town, I knew it
was going to be a fun night. And then he tells the story about lighting Greg Valentine's hair on fire from the big seat. Terry Funk doing that, which is just I'm sure Greg Valentine totally changed the expression on his face when that happened, Mama. For Kelly as as as as hard as it is, I'm sure he did change the expression on his face. Fucking stoned stone and stoned face, and he was stoned as well. It's exactly right. And I want you to meet my husband in the whole the whole scene
there. So that's Rick Flair's earliest impressions of Terry Funk. But you know, Jesus Christ, can we will this list ever stop growing here in the lapsed funk of everything we ever loved about pro wrestling that you go to the guy who did it and he said, ah, that was Terry Funk. Rick Flair's chops, for Christ's sakes, Yeah, I believe it, because of course, while we throw chops, but they'd meet a lot of open
handed they'd be there'd be knife edge two. But the extra touch, which is so Flair of holding the rope with one hand while you chop, right. Yeah, yeah, we know how crucial that is that he does that. And we've we've touched on Flair Funk before and it's going to be a pleasure in the context of the lapsed Funk to really dig a lot more into what these two did together in the magic they made in nineteen eighty nine and
what the raw material was that they had to work with. What you've touched on the nineteen eighty nine we've covered in fact, the nineteen eighty nine Great American Bash. The first time these two met in eighty nine, sure, and that's part of the art of war Games, because there's a War Games cage match on that show, and just boss, you're sort of you know, it was a while ago, but what do you sort of recollect about the dynamic and intensity between Funk and Flair. I remember it being a whole
it just it felt. If I'm not mistaken, I believe I remember it feeling very different and very intense and like they were, you know, like they were kind of taking it up a notch, yes, from from what else was happening on the show, from what not only that, but what maybe maybe what Flair even did, you know, like everything just seemed a little more intense. One thing Flair's pointed out, and I think it's an
interesting point. You know, he gets the reputation of never wanting to be babyfaced, because there was such a great heel and just always wanted to do that routine and you know, live that life and cut that promo. One thing he always says is, actually what I hated about being a babyface was I didn't really have a hell of a lot of babyface offense. I didn't have a lot of weapons I could go to. It made sense as a babyface. All of my stuff was perfectly suited to feed a babyface and be
the heel, which of course is true. But he said what he loved about working with Terry Funk was he was a guy who would stand in front of him and let him chop him in a way that the chops became a babyface move and the chops became an aggressive comeback move. Because Flair wasn't a big, you know, Jerry Lawler punch guy. He wasn't a big hulk up comeback guy. Flair didn't have a comeback. He never had to develop
his wrestling career. No one ever looked to him to be that guy, even when he was a babyface in the Carolinas, and so Terry Funk actually allowed him to use the moves that were in his repertoire, and people were used to and wanted to see from him, and they could be received in a baby face way because finally, here's someone who can soar for Rick Flair chop instead of just return fire, Here's someone who can stumble through the ropes
and you know what I mean, and create this sense that Rick Flair is
a world being and he's actually kicking some fucking ass here. And Funk was not shy about taking those hard chops, though he would lament them years later, you know, with his tongue in cheek, but still definitely one of his primary memories of working with Rick Flair in nineteen eighty nine was the solid, stiff impact of those particular matches, And I think that's kind of what you were putting your finger on their boss, remembering kind of a higher level
of intensity when these two got in there, and he was imble when leash Ric Flair in a way that Flair wasn't accustomed to and really had very few
opponents that could you know, bring that out of him. Yeah, that absolutely, And when we announced the Lapsed Funk Journey, this was almost the first thing people started geeking out about, was that we were going to get to the Flair Funk series in eighty nine, and not only Great American Bass Match, which we covered before, and the wrussele War Wrangle to launch the whole program, which we've talked about several times, including out of the Cinemat
most recently. It's it's as quintessential Terry Funk as it gets that whole angle, but also coming your way here on the lapsed Funk the I Quick Match from Clash of the Champions Troy, New York, the Knockout Special on tbs OH that ended up marking the end of Funk's run for all intents and purposes in the NWA in nineteen to eighty nine, with Rick Flair getting his hand raised, high business having been accomplished, and Funk, you know, having
the eggs that he always thirsts for, the graceful eggs that he so thirsts for. Though as we'll get to that's kind of been painted over with rose colored glasses as the years have gone. At the time, Terry Funk was not entirely thrilled with how it all went down with the Nature Boy, And you know, the further along you got, the less you would talk about that part of it, and the more it's all good in the hood, but of course at the time Funk is finding reasons to be rankled, feel
just a tad disrespected, a tad jilted. And that's why it's always hard to tell that line of work and shoot with Terry Funk as it regards his great opponents, because you go back far enough, and he in a shoot context is expressing real disregard and dislike, or at least a proclivity to point out shortcomings or to say little verbal jabs. So his opponents, you know who might think that, you know, Terry Funk is their best friend in the world, can listen to an interview and go, you know what,
yeah, not so short. We heard it in Jerry Lawler's voice. That's this guy actually hate me. Is that why this actually keeps going for thirty years? Yes? All the Funker is never going to let you know, well, because he's a worker. Yeah yeah, he don't make me play the sound. Terry's a worker. He's a worker. He's a worker. He's a worker. Terry's a worker. Oh I like that. I actually
don't have to play it. You incorporated that interestingly enough. When it was time for Terry Funk to drop the NWA World championship because of the riggers of
the year plus campaign wasn't entirely clear who it should go to next. Funk wanted to pass it along, of course, to Hartley Race, who really never had a proper reign with the championship because he just served, as we talked about, to bridge the gap between Dorry Funk Junior and Jack Briscoe due to the nw WA power politics and Funk and Funk Senior not wanting the championship to go to a fellow baby face in Briscoe right away and all of the
Shenanigans involved therein. But Terry Funk had a very close bond with Harley Race, who of course booked for Dori Senior and Amarilla and really got his teeth in the business down there and helped the Funks ushered into Saint Louis where he
was one of the top dogs. And so Terry Funk wanted the belt on Harley Race, even though there was buzz that this kid out of the Carolinas Rick Flair has all the tools and he could, you know, sort of be a really fresh coat of paint, really young, youthful, vigorous champion, and Terry Funk was while he was traveling with Rick, and while he was, you know, fraternizing with Rick. He wasn't ready to anoint Rick
quite yet. Ah. Yes, as he says here Terry Funk, I never cared about doing jobs, and that one in particular was about doing what was right for the business. And that was the approach I'd taken in deciding how I wanted to drop the belt to Harley. When the time came to drop the title, I had wanted to see it go to Harley because I felt obligated to him. I was the one who wanted it to be that
way. I didn't give the NWA a lot of notice that I needed to lose the belt, and they hadn't really prepared anyone else by that time. The closest they had to another candidate besides Harley was Rick Flair, by now a top star in Crocketsmith Atlantic territory. But I felt like Flair would have another time and Harley deserved a good run with it. I knew Flair would be champion someday, but if it had gone to Flair, Funk wrote, I'm not sure Harley would have gotten another chance at it. So when we
talk about star k eighty three. Boss. When we talk about how definitive Flair Chasing Race was in terms of defining Rick Flair for a generation, it's because Terry Funk didn't want to see it go straight to Rick. And so you know, he was the one that put Harley in that position in a lot of ways by saying, no, that's the guy that I'm going to campaign in politic to lose the championship too. And then that was the rain
Funk losing it to Race. That was the definitive Harley Race rain that it took us all the way up to eighty one when he lost it to Dusty gets it back, and then Flair he lost it to Dusty before that, and then Flair gets it in eighty one from Dusty yep, and then they build Flair Race and we're off to the races in so many ways, So again, Terry Funk setting in motion the definitive moments of every single wrestler that he ever came in contact with. It seems like so crazy. All roads
lead to Terry, All revolves around the nucleus of Terry Funk. He says, I knew Flair would be champion someday, but if it had gone to Flair, I'm not sure Harley would have gotten another chance at it. I'm not sure I could have said I was a good fair man if I hadn't helped the championship go to the man who came close to getting the votes when
I ended up with it, that's right. Don't forget how close it was Fritz van Eric mm hmm casting that tie breaking vote to get the belt to Terry and sort of accede to the Funk family's wishes instead of Harley Race Who was the candidate supported by I believe it was Eddie Graham and Sam Muchneck. We touched We already touched on that earlier in the series. I wanted to
do something Funk rights to see that things were done right by Harley. It was a pretty damn big deal for Harley, who started wrestling when he was fourteen, to be able to be the top dog in this business. I felt like it was important to Harley. I talked to Junior about and he felt the exact same way that I needed to do right by Harley. I never was approached about being NWA champion a second time, and if I had
been, I never would have taken it in a million years. I was at a point and it was a point I was lucky to stay at for pretty much the rest of my career where I could pick my own dates instead of letting someone else set them for me. And that's the heart of Terry Funk. He is a guy who showed a way where you can actually be a total legend in this business, make a clean, good living in this business, and call your own shots, and never really feel like you're under
the thumb of some shot collar hm puppeteering your every move. And Funk wanted that so badly that even when he went national for a cup of coffee in the WWF and the NWA in the nineteen eighties, it only lasted so long because eventually the point came where that imbalance was presenting itself, where suddenly someone else had more say over what he did and said how it conducted himself than he did. And that's just not who Terry Funk ever allowed himself to be.
I really don't think that's a platitude. I really think that that it's the only thing that makes sense to explain the career paths that he chose, and the moves and decisions he made at critical junctures, whereas Rick Flair when he got the NWA Championship, he was everything be damned, his health, his domestic life, his marriage, his kids, everything, and he's owned
up to it. It was just like, I'm just going to completely grind and obsess over being worthy of this championship, no one else being able to match me after I walk back through the curtain defending the NBA Championship, and that's just the way it's going to be. And Funk just he felt that that was too much annuring to the benefit of someone other than him, and he was right, and that's why, more than anything, in my opinion,
he deserves to be celebrated. He says, I was at a point, okay, like I said, instead of letting someone else set them for me, I was heading the rules with my ability to build up an issue. I think I could have gone into any territory and been a good draw even if I'd never held the world title. Besides, I'd gotten back a
much better prize than any wrestling championship. Of course, that being a reference to being able to get back together with his wife shortly after relinquishing the top spot in the industry, but of course Flair goes on to those great heights
as predicted. Flair has talked in several interviews about how, in addition to you know, the colorful scene back at the house with Funk chasing his dog around and all that, that, he used to absolutely hound Terry Funk on car rides about, Hey, you think they'll ever make me a world champion? Do you think? Do you think Oliver be the champ? Do you
think do you think they'll ever pick me? Over and over and over and over again, and oh my god, and Funk doing the whole Oh, one day, you know what, I want to go ahead, and well, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go on ahead and say maybe one day, maybe two days. It took more than two days. It was he wanted to be exact when Rick Flair becames and way World heavyweight champion for the first time, defeating Dusty Rhodes to become champion, and it was during that reign.
It's probably not the first time they met, almost certainly is not, but in terms of surviving videotape, this would be the first Terry Funk versus Rick Flair and w WA World heavyweight title match. It would be October seventh, nineteen eighty one, and Boss, it's taking place in the ring of
All Japan Pro Wrestling. I invite you to consider a world where the nineteen eighty one Brick Flair, the brand newly meant to champion, sort of still unproven a little bit, is about to step into the All Japan ring, which, of course the Funk family defined and essentially owned, to defend the world championship against Terry Funk before the adoring All Japan public that loved Terry Funk so much. So, we're gonna pull up Disc eight, all right,
Disk eight. I think that's a good idea. I think you should do songs for each disc. It's time for Disc eight. Disc eight. It is here disc aid will conquer my fear? Oh shit, where what's time? Going to start? At the very beginning, Right at the very beginning? All right, here we go, reve your engines. Before it was Flair and Funk on TBS, before the nation pushing back in the scrappiest way against Vince McMahon's national ubiquity. It was Rick Flair, newly minted world champion,
letting the former NWA World Champion Terry Funk. Take him for a two out of three falls ride on home turf if you will. For the Funker in All Japan, we're going to hit play here three two one play. Not much in the way of audio to worry about here, because this is essentially fan cam style without much in the way of a commentary. Look at Flair, Look at him? Yeah, Sam, he's he's very very big
haired. Is young? Oh yeah, God, that's pretty much the star KDD three robe the light Blue. Yeah, he just looks so young. He looks like a does he looks like a child. Yeah, there's the Funker in his collegiate letterman jacket. It looks like he's throwing out those coins. Huge shootout to shootout his whole shout out to Fumisaido, who we played
a lot of clips from on the Al Japan episodes. Yeah, because someone had found a video of Terry Funk tossing what seemed to be like candy like you would at a parade route mm hm into the crowd, which he's doing here before an All Japan match, And yeah, what's he doing is candy? No? In fact, it was Terry Funk Forever commemorative coins that he would have made up specifically for all japan cards and the fans. You know, the only way to get these coins was to be in attendance at a
Terry Funk match and catch them when he threw them. So it wasn't it was just it was fake coins, fake coins. But I'm sure they're worth all. I'm sure they're worth something. Now it's the k fabe currency. Ric Flair handed a large bouquet of flowers and keeping with the ceremonials around a match of this import in Japan. I wonder what they did with the flowers, like, you know, did they keep him or are they just fucking like the moment they were out of the arena this fucking toss him in the
true I think that's pretty much. Yeah, I probably saw it in the dumpster, let's be yeah, yeah right exactly. I mean I can I can picture Flair like by the side of the arena outside just fucking pissing on them. This is this is eighty one Terry Funk. This is the one battling with the chic and Adula the butcher for his fucking life with screaming, you know, young Japanese girls dressed like cheerleaders. Yes, begging for him to survive and fight, fight through. There's the ten pounds of gold flare
hmm, taking off that coveted championship. It's being presented here. I think this is the Buddhican. So this is not you know, this is not the Terry Funk that Rick Flair feuded with in nineteen eighty nine. This is not unstable Terry Funk. So it's fun to get a glimpse of Flair and Funk doing it technically, you know, yeah, oh yeah, that's very
exciting. It's not the the blood feud style that they brought to TBS to to and successfully so sparked the territory right all japan public wouldn't have expected that of Terry Funk there. It's the introduction. Yes he hung, look at that shit, all that fucking streamers and confetti and nowadays and with streamers is here on twitch. Mm. There's Rick Flair. But again, kind of a mixed career in Japan. I mean he would go over there and have
great matches. Yeah, but I never really sensed that the public like fell in love with Ric Flair in Japan like Funk and Hogan. I do agree, like, you know, you don't really hear about that that much. And you hear about certainly some of the times and some of the more famous occasions, but you don't hear the love like you know, you don't hear how like he could just go over there and let me put it this way,
no albums being cut by Rick Flair in Japan. Yeah, yeah, I feel like that there's little evidence that the Japanese quote unquote got Rick Flair, you know what I mean, Like what above is in ring ability, which of course is world class, made him such a resonance star in the United States. You know, these promos, that style of promo just there was no really there's no platform for them the way the Japanese wrestling scene was
set up, Like where's he going to cut those promos? Yeah, and have like a studio television show going out on Saturday mornings where it was designed to you know, build your character up. It was just matches and yeah, you did interviews backstage with the media with a tape on your forehead and a towel around your neck and talk about competition is tough in Japan. And I woke up in the downtowner, never woke up in the never woke up in the uptowner, I did hear, I did know that about Let's to
be clear about that. So Funk keeping a low base. They tease the knuckle lock, but it's a coloradlbow tie up. Flair back to the corner. Now, Funk keeping a low base, trying to shoot in on Nate s who's got the under hooks. Just love being able to get just one glimpse of how these two would work when put in this context. Yep, you trying to Flair gets that. Oh look at Flair. Flair already got to strut light strut, light strut. I mean, looks like the animated
Brick Flair from the Camp w W E thing this. Yeah, coller and elbow to the top, wristlock they go, and it's a test of wills and strength. He eventually he looks more like a Triple H is terror Rizon at this point, Yes, he does. That is definitely one of the things that that's crossing my mind right now. It's almost like from the very beginning, Triple Ah realized he wasn't sit unless he was trying to, unless he was trying to be Rick Flair or or and or Harley Race Terry Funk
with a decidedly Harley race wing outfit. Definitely, but the navy blue tights, but the knee pads. Tap, that's it. It's over. I saw Flair with a yank of the hair act that was probably you know what, that was a signal. That tap was a signal. I'm telling you what when Fun tapped that No, no, when when Flair tapped funk shoulder, that was a signal for him for for for Funk to take a bump. Very good, good eye. I'm telling Pallor an elbow to the arm
ringer ghost Funk, who's got a taped left fist. We'll see if that comes into play. I look at that Terry hauling off with the point of his elbow to the shoulder. Elbows galore, twist, full arm dragon twist, as Tony Sheivoni would say, though there's no arm dragon, no arm
drag at all, full twist and hammer lock yep. I always love that when you have your your arm barred and you try to arm drag out of it, and yeah, the guy flips, but then he holds onto the arm and so you flip a second time, so the guy maintains control of Funk controlling the arm of Flare on the canvas. Pretty sure this one's on YouTube, not too ar defined nineteen eighty one Terry Funk verst Ric Flair as sex Fancam. You know, we've seen so many pristine quality ultipan videos from
the scenes and eighties to the point like you cannot believe you're watching. Yeah, like, but think about it, Think about the fucking camera that this person snuck into the arena essentially, Yeah, I mean, who knows, it's a giant fuck It's gonna be a shoulder thing. You know, this is the days of fucking you know. I don't even know if like VHS tapes were a thing you could record on yet, I don't know. And eighty one, I don't know how much Japan has always worked as strure they're
alway ahead of the game. Yeah, hell, this was probably like mini DV for Fuxation. No shit, I mean that those the quality of those, you know, real world, real world Tag League matches with Abby and stuff. I unbelieving. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it basically like HD. Yeah, Battle of Wills here is. I don't know about HD. That's a little, I know, extreme, a lot closer to HD.
Than you ever would have expected video to look like in seventy nine. Yeah, I'm I'm, I'm, I'm gonna beyond that kind of a chicken wing almost being converted into a camel clutch position here by Terry Funkus flares on his knees, trying to find a way to get free, a lot of flash bulbs going off media while covering this methoughtical You know, this is not only
get to w CW, No, not at all. No, It's gonna be fast paced, high impact, and I feel like as we go through the lapsed Funk, we run the risk of under representing this part of Terry Funk's career for no other reason than the tape is fairly limited of his world title reign, as we've talked about, but also, you know, his most legendary stuff happens to be knockdown, drag out fights. And it's right,
it's not because he couldn't do this style. It's just because he was so remarkable and so revolutionary with what he did with the Brawlin style that that's understandably what most people remember and consider the essential Terry Funk. It's sort of like, you know, you can't you can't take in the essential ric Flair without the steamboat classics, right, and with Funk his version of that are
not technical classics. There matches that, you know, turn the violence level up, in the intensity level up to a to a degree that people hadn't seen be at Memphis, be at Florida, be at Japan. Now it's Flair back in the driver's seat with those two arms hooked. What do we call this move? It's like a bow and arrow. I don't know. We just grab the guy by the wrists and I feel like I know it, like if you're a moment well, it's like, uh, what's what's
that? Like? I think it's like is it a boone and arrow? I don't know a boone and arrow? I feel like is and you've got one where you've got him on the knees? Yeah, isn't that that's a bone arrow? I think this is just I don't know. Uh, you just go up behind the guy, grab him by the wrists and just pull pull his arms back and like try to bring him together the wrists together. Now Terry Funk has reversed it again, almost converting it into almost an abdominal
stretch position. Stepping over the knee of the nature boy. And this is it, this is in the Funker's repertoire, if this is what the moment calls for. Yeah, you can work a hold for eight minutes and hold your attention. That's not a problem. Ye, not at all. In fact, I like it. I like it quite a bit. Yeah, I think you know he's when this is all said and done, I think
that's going to be. One of the coolest parts of Lapsed Funk is that we really aid like an equal faith effort to engage this Funk than the one ever Yes, Yes thinks about when we say we're going to do a tribute show to the Ropes Flair looking for a clean break, see if Terry Funk is inclined to give it to him, brother sort of grabs aside headlock, Funk pushed off, hits the ropes, tackle down, goes Flair. Here
we go over the top and from the other end comes the Funker. Flare back to his feet, tries the hip toss, blocked by Fog, who sends Flare soaring through the air. Yeah, that's mind atlantic work rate. We live to see Flare hip tossed and then arm dragged in successions. Yes, yes, take that away from me, and I fuck, I might not even be a pro wrestling fan. Funk now controlling the arm of Flare on the canvas, target it in on that limbs here at the Japanese teady.
Hey, yes he did. Yeah, Flare using both boots to kick off his back. Bunk loses grip on the arm and they both stand and the people pop. Yeah, standing up because Terry's got the Duke's up hear him? Listen. Yes, they're going nuts. I'm sure many of them showed up thinking they might very well witness the crowning of a new world champion
here. Yeah, I suppose that's true. Huh. It's not like a giant Baba hadn't found ways to peel the belt off, Jack Brisco when no one just hanging out a little extra cash, you're frond, that's sam much Dick wanted to taste off when he touched down, even though he was against him doing it in the first place. Well, you know, Jack, if you're gonna do it, I mean, we need to talk about my
percentage. I don't like the idea, but I'm obsessed with like people who have pristine reputations in wrestling for being like honest brokers, like still being greedy. I love it. Oh yeah, Like tell me a story about Hazano and fuck someone on a payoff because nobody's because you listen, nobody's honest in this business. I just feel like I feel like we're not close enough to the truth until I hear a story like that in wrestling, You know what
I mean. I guess in life in general, but in pro wrestling in particular, it's like you can't you can't feel right about actually doing something other than a hay geography until you're like Dusty sing there's only there's only because like you know, there's only one Tom Hanks that's exactly right, okay, and that's why he's Tom Hanks because no one's got right right the flip side of
the coin on that guy. Ooh, that was a miscue there, Funk sort of jumping out of the way to avoid a tackle a deep and wow, this is a big elbow player right to thatadlog take over good stuff good Yes, dare you say it? And dare you say it? Hard? My god? Still love that about the seventy style at this level, like you'd have holds and you'd have like slow, subtle jocking for position and then
an explosion of action. Yeah, and then and then and then if someone feels like they're getting a little you know that they're that they're losing their momentum, they slow it down. Now bring the other guy's gonna run away with it if I don't do it right. Player is doing right now, get back on the mat with the headline right, and he's trying to think about what can he do to to you know, subdue this guy. It's it's it's that kind of shit. I just don't understand. I guess I just
don't understand why people don't find that interesting. Yeah, why people don't think that that's the building blocks of pro wrestling, like not just a style or time and period. No, it is pro wrestling, it is, right, it's not it's not pro wrestling until it starts from that place something else. It's you know, an exhibition. Why people need all the flippy floppy ship Like what's the like? What why is this not entertaining? I mean,
oh my god, wow, holy shit, how about that? How often do you see Rick Flair send someone into the corner and they go inside out? Even more dramatically than then Flare would fucking dumped and get dumped on the fucking oh you hit through the ring post there, fans are just there, They're not even There's not even a fucking barrier, not even a cheesy rope. I know. Yeah, Funk not only went inside out of the buckle, but he like he almost bounced off the other side of what's soaring
to the floor as well. That might be something else we can say he crystallized in Rick Flair's mind. As you take a corner that way back in and here come the chops, Flare throwing Bunk brought to a knee with a stiff right by nature hook. Here we go, Here we go, Here we go? Fair is the very Claire Wow. Do you see the flash bulbs on that delayed Flat over the locked out Funk in trouble? Could Flair take the first fall here? But again, that explosion of offense, that's
just great. It's like Funk zigged when he should have zagged. He ended up getting that nasty ride in the corner, and then Flair just went nuts capitalizing. That's how it should be. Pounce, pounce, Yeah, because you had to be looking for the window. That's exactly right. Terry Funk's struggling mightily, smacking his arm down on the canvas, trying to you out the pain that the hold has been broken. Yes, it appears, Yes, Terry Funk is conceived. He tapped world champion Rick Flair takes the first
fall here. Yeah, the altrapan public not accustomed seeing Terry Funk submit. I'll tell you that that's a So he's given Rick Flair a lot of credibility in front of these people by doing that. No bullshit DQ count now you know, which, of course was something all Japan as we saw in a lot of those dorientary tag matches. They weren't ashamed to use that. Yeah, but like you know, again back then, they're they're they're just has become this and I don't I don't really know what it what it it was
that that hurt count out victories and whatever. But there was such a thing because I again I remember as a kid, you have a count out or
DQ, you're still happy that the guy you want one or not. You know, like there's there there was something there is Jerry Lawler Terry Funk match that ended in a in a count out yep, Lawler was content to beat the shit out of Funk on the floor with a chair and then stand in the ring and watch the ref count them mount And what so what was it that made it not okay, like to make it disappointing that that was going
to be the way? Good question? I think as fans became smarter and they started to see that as the booker shortcutting them instead of the logical outcome of two people having a real fight. I think it's probably that. And you know something else just came to mind. Look at Flair, go look at as soon as the second pounced, he jumped on Funk and peppered him in the forehead with shots. Jesus, you know you know what else though
too? I thought about it's it's when they started doing when they stopped doing squash matches on on TV and started just having you know, real superstar versus Superstar matches and you do DQ's on TV to set up a real finish on pay per view? Right? Who tells you didn't see the real deal?
Right? And that's the problem that ten Bruno matches were DQ's anyway. It wasn't like it felt ripped off, right, You are like, how many fucking times have we seen world title matches in promotions because that just wasn't the way you did business because the champion wasn't going to lose the belt there, yeah, you know, but they ended on a It didn't always end with the champion winning. It ended with the champion getting disqualified or counted out or
something. You know, there was a way to make the other guy look look great. And it's pretty fascinating. We're talking about this in the context of All Japan because it was Baba's decision to pivot in the early nineties to an all clean finishes format that created all of those legendary All Japan matches with
Masau and Kowata and Kobashi and Tawei and all the rest. Because people actually could show up to the mega matches and know that someone was getting pinned clean that became there a key point of differentiation for them from New Japan was that, you know, you could get a roster that would put each other over in that way, and there Johnny Ace played a role on booking a lot
of those finishes. That's why WCW brought him in two thousand to handle finishes because he was a guy who had a proven track record of having one guy go over another and it not sort of killing the promotion or the marketability the loser. Oh my goodness, geez, So quite a bit has happened here. First of all, I'm fascinated. Flair played it really straight in the first fall to get to pull ahead, and then the second the second fall
starts, he gets ultraviolent, just like a complete mania. Yeah, he's like just trying to fucking kill. And he was chopping the shit and Funk. Funk was hanging, you know, by his ass on the ropes and then just took a header to the concrete and then he came back in and now he's kicking Flair in the balls from the blind side. Referee kind of admonishing Funk for it. But Funk can maybe a little plausible deniability there.
He's looking at the people he's fucking. He's strutting like Flair is Flairs throwing a few struts in. There's getting a little two cocky, oh, by the way, And there it is Funk holding one rope and striking with the other, holding the rope with one hand and striking with the other. Flair swim and back totally with Wow. Funk drops him with a huge left and it's Funk stepping over with his leg locks admission. Oh he's look at that, the spinning toe hold in the flashbulbs going off here in all Japan,
Flair, will he concede? Even a streamer falls hunt up of Rick as he gives up, and that's it Flair And look at this Funk immediately but punching the shit out of Flare on the canvas, even though we're supposed to reach the rest period. That's good stuff, that's great. I love him.
Pro wrestling when guys have similar finishers. Yes, you know Kurt Angle versus Ken Shamrock, Yes, please, you know it never happened, but I know, remember remember the triple threat match we always dreamed about, which was which was Kurt Angle versus Ken Shamrock and Chris Benoi Because he stole all their moves. Oh, no, one's safe from chain grappling and no isolating a limb, not at all. It's an The rest period is set in Terry Funk and Ric Flair have both split a fall for the n w A
World's Heavyweight Championship here in Tokyo, and the Steaks couldn't be higher. It's a hibachi, I was gonna say, And you know, we get that some Wygo beef cut that right, the Flair big on the cell of the spinning to the steakhouse afterwards, absolutely, oh my god, and knights,
Oh my god, knights and pungi that sounds. Here we go and Flair is trying to keep his distance, you know, kind of swatting away at Fund's hands, knowing his leg is compromised, throws a kick and they both should have compromised legs, though should Yeah, Funk's kind of limp and it's doing it, but Flair's is more fresh. Flare tossed violently through the ropes
to the floor by the Funker up above the people. Atomic drop. I love how when they have like a single camera shot like, yeah, you can't cut to the atomic drop, you just have to see you sore above the heads of the people. Terry found taking this to a very violent place in the third fall, this one. You know, we did get a lot of technical give and take, but this one's more of a brawl than I expected. Yeah, what's need is that it's evolved, though you know
it's evolved to it it didn't. It didn't start out that way, right, there's desperation setting me right. Yeah, they're both they've both got bad wheels. Funk grabs a sad push off tackle and both go down. Wow, they're both nervous. Song's flying by mane the people. It really his saying, Terry, is that what they're saying. Claire stumbles out to the apron and Rick Claire is climbing the rope. Uh oh, we know what's
happening. Bunk cuts them off. Look at that. Look at that nineteen eighty one, nineteen eighty one, and they're doing that perfect press lamb off the top. Funk going back to the spinning toe hold, Flare trying to kick off with he does Funk craw them up google one two, Funk kicks out. Oh wow, I thought that was going to be it. He grabbed tights too, I thought for shows. Back up right and an elbow fucking double under hook's here. That's the signature funks who play. He can't
out fucking him. That drop to counter and Funk falls on top of Flare arms and tangles one. Oh, here we go. Two. He hit three, but Flair's foot it's on the bottom. Rope and the reft his side. Nope, nope, nope, that's right Flare hanging out of the title by the skin of his teeth. Funk comes up with his arm rights like he won, referee informing Funk it's not over yet. There Funker Harry Funk, looking like a Patrick mahomes Sunday with the call. They re engage.
Whoa, what the fuck? What? Terry just both flaired the ropes. Terry jumps, puts his asses on the top and then they tumble out, flips backwards and takes Rick Flair with him straight to hell because he doesn't give a fuck. He didn't give a fuck, then he doesn't give a fuck today. I sends double count out. Oh no, they think I'm backing reft lane in the count. I send double cross, I send I sense double Aha. It's like Funks ramming Flare in a furniture there at ringside.
We can't quite see. We're getting he's counting the referees, counting fast twenty count in Japan. Of course, hey, Flare might be opened up. There's busted Flair's busted referees outside now a restaurant again between him, because this is just yeah, there's the sound Yeah, there's the bell yep well, Flare throwing chops. They're still brawling, flashbulbs going lefts flying. Used to work a lot for the photographers because we've talked about the influential role.
Oh yeah, magazines played in Japan way more so than the United States, and so everyone was always jockeying to have the greatest action shot so that they could be on the cover of the Japanese wrestling magazines. That's so funny. A lot of the extreme things that like him and Foley would go on to
do in the death matches. Yeah, you know, really, the primary motivation was, like, the magazines can't not put this on the cover because it's going to sell that it's the most dampest thing you've ever seen in the wrestling room. So the bell of Sounder, these two are still brawling. They're back up on the apron now and Flare is throwing shoulders to the gut of Funk from the apron, shopping away his bad hand as well. What's going to take to stop this one? Flair's in there pepping them with shots.
They're still working here. It comes all japan personnel. Oh my god, Funk just launched a chair from the bottom of the frame in at right, the fucking head on the apron. Oh he never lands with those wild No, he doesn't. I hope that was I hope that was on purpose. So let's it pause. There quite a piece of business. Jesus, that's wild. So that's Flair and Funk and in the nineteen eighty one context for the World Heavyweight Championship. But it's time now to move to the definitive
feud. The definitive year nineteen eighty nine many considered kind of the greatest year of wrestling ever, you know, pound for pound, match for match, territory for territory, and Terry Funk playing no small part and making nineteen eighty nine the legendary year that it was. Of course, this being eighty one.
Funk goes on to retire from Ultrapan in eighty three, comes back in eighty four, but then sort of, you know, starts working a collection of independence including going to Pro Wrestling USA as it started to get going to counteract what Vince was doing. Goes to the WWF as we talked about last time in nineteen eighty five and nineteen eighty six. Then does a lot of work in Puerto Rico, which we'll we'll get to when we spend some time
focusing on Terry Funk's international exploits post the nineteen eighty three Ultapan retirement. Anti also gets out, I think, mostly Puerto Rico, and you know, does Wildside and tries to make the Hollywood thing happened, does over the Top, and of course does Roadhouse. And we know how important a Roadhouse shoot was to this initial brick flare angle in nineteen eighty nine. We we do indeed talked about it most recently on the episode of Under the Cinemat that's available
now on Patreon, covering that film. But as Jim Hurd takes over in November nineteen eighty eight and Ted Turner buys Jim Crockett Promotions, he makes a phone call and it's uh, it's Jim Hurd for Terry Funk. That Atlanta zip zip code showing up on the caller idea in Amarilla, No question about it, that Terry Funk. Huh what they tell me that if I need to pop the territory, you're you're just the man for it. I've heard you're pretty good at uh at at getting in numbers. Is that? Is
that true? You get a good Uh, you get a good thing going on there? Is that? Uh? You know, I'm not very familiar with with you at all. Uh. Can you give me a list of maybe your credentials. Oh, you won the NWA championship, it was Uh, it's a top man of the business for a little while there. And of course, my father and a lot of ways to find wrestling in West Texas, and so I grew up under the learning trend. I'm sorry. And your and your your father was was who who? Oh those dory functions?
I see, I see? I know you used to if I'm not mistaken, mister Hurd used to be the television director at the television station, used to broadcast wrestling at the Chase. Is that correct? Used to know Sam much Nicking company? Well, I listen to be To be honest, my passion lies in pizza. That's the title of his book, My Passion Lies in Pizza. It's just him holding a pie on the cover. Stupid smile. It's like, how can we make this book as much of a
stock image as possible? Well, your passion lies and and and what now? Why I'm I'm a pizza man. Actually that's the title, and who comes over in the transaction, not only Rick Flair, but Jim Ross. Jim Ross had, you know, slowly but surely ascended to the top announcing position at the tail end after Jim Crockett bought the UWF where I was working for Bill Wattson and come NWA WCW, launching Jim Ross as the voice of
the organization, working out of the offices in Atlanta. And you know, as he would say, when the booking committee would get back on flights when they finished their business at the office and be at the airport for four o'clock. Jr. Who was living there, would still be there by lamplight with
Jim Hurd and they'd go out for drinks and became a trusted advisor. Jim Ross rather became a trusted advisor to Jim Hurd in those early days of w CW, and to hear JR. Tellett most recently on his podcast with Conrad Thompson Jr. Playing no small role and putting the bug in the ear of Jim Hurd, that you know what we need right now in a territory like
this, in a position that we're in we need the funker. Well, you know, I talked to Herd about a lot of things, and because again you know, you know the dynamic there, the booking committee and all that stuff. As soon as three point thirty or four o'clock came, those guys are on planes to Charlotte or wherever getting home. And so that would leave me with mister Hurd, which I didn't mind quite frankly. You know,
we had good conversations about football and sometimes about wrestling. But I told him that I thought that Terry could help us, and I thought he could help the roster, not just a match, I said. And plus, he's got a great way of booking himself. He understands what he can do, what he can't do, he can he'll do a believable angle. And I think he's a fresh face, and he's got a great name, great reputation. And at that time, you know, we were honoring the NDA
a little bit more and he's a former champion. So uh, but Terry exceeded what I perceived he might do when he came to w c W at that point time. He over he over delivered, in my opinion. And do you remember the first time he would have caught a glimpse of Terry Funk on this run on a show we covered m It's a pretense under which he
was brought in because it's illustrated by the wrestle Worredy nine finish. It wasn't like Terry Funk came in as somebody that was advertised as wrestling for the nw He was digitary, he was he was a judge and stuff like he was judge for that match. But I don't recall what outside of that what he
is. The April second Clash of the Champions in New Orleans, Flairsteam vote two out of three falls Raging Cajun Superdomin's Right against WrestleMania five, and it was a night where the nw A was going to honor past world champions, sort of like they did at Bad Blood nineteen ninety seven in Saint Louis, and Uh, Terry Funk was among the former champions on hand. And not only was he on hand to be honored at that clash, he provided color
commentary for the Flair steamboat match. He was on the car. I do remember that shoulder the shoulder with Jim Ross. As a matter of fact,
yep, yeah, and damn good at Color so good. The fact that after the Flare program was over in eighty nine, they started transitioning him into an announcing role, sort of putting Terry Funk a little more, a little closer than he was comfortable with to signaling to the national television audience that he was done as an active wrestler without necessarily consulting him on on that portrayal. But he came in if I didn't agree to this, I didn't agree to
what what's going on? Wait a minute? What are your suggesting that I'm well, you're against Flair or I quit the business? Because did you? Are you Wait a minute, mister Hurd, did you say is that I quit match? Are you saying that? What are you saying here? I just quit the match? Well, not Terry, you quit the business.
I don't know if you, but I know even not in the head a few times, and I mean that's it does say that in your It does say that in your contract that you know your your career will culminate in a your time here will culminate in a quit match, and your time here on earth will culminate in the UH the declaration that you quit the business in this in this match. So when you said I quit the Flair, you said I quit everything, not what what Wait a minute, mister Hurd, I
never said I quit the business. I said I'm gonna quit the match. And I don't wait, how is what I think He's trying to say? Where am I right now? I gotta wait, what are you saying? I'm saying you're just another topping on the pie that Terry Funk. And he goes, what the fuck does that even mean? He's already been insulted.
He just doesn't get it. And he was good on commentary and he was straight laced, and yeah, that was part of why the turn on Flare at Wrestle War was so impactful because the fans watching week to week had seen and heard Funk play it totally straight, like he was coming into be an announcer. You didn't expect him to have like a sudden outburst of physicality because he was never presented to the audience as a wrestler. It didn't You didn't
smell angle coming, you really didn't. And when he was offering commentary for the Flair Steamboat two or three falls match on TBS, he was very calling it down the middle and sort of like, you know, taking on the role of an enthusiastic fan who just was marveling at what these guys were doing in the ring. I still remember, you know, him adding some real
gravitas. He was a great person to say, like, no, what these guys are doing a special like I'll stake my reputation on praising these guys like big time on the air, never once sort of as far as I can recall, intimating or hinting that he's kind of pissed off at rick Flair or wants the next shot after Ricky Steamboat or whoever might emerge champion and indeed
come wrestle wards. It's quite an issue for the Funker. But in terms of bringing him in in the conception of it and and the dollars and cents of it, here's Jim Hurd also with Conrad Thompson is Conrad, to his credit, was able to track down the form of Pizza Man for probably be his last interview conversations with Conrad where he talks about bringing in the Funker.
I paid Terry more money than he had ever made. He was at his name, crazy name of his ranch, the Double Cross Range, the Double Cross Rate, Double Cross Ranch, and and he can name that after double Cross sure anyway, Terry. Of course I knew Uh, Terry's brother Dorry when he was champion for Sam Mutchnick right here, and we can get into one of the most important names in wrestling if you want to, at some point, which was Mudsnick. But uh, the Dory Funk Junior was the
NWA champion at one time. And that's why. That's how I knew his father, Dorry Funk, Sr. Who was one of the toughest guys you ever want to meet. And uh, and his brother was Terry. And Terry was the caboose of that family wrestlers out of Texas. And Terry was a funny, funny guy and uh, and a pretty good wrestler. I'll say, Jim pretty good, you know. I just I don't know if he was good or whether he was bad or not. I think he he was a wrestler. I can tell you that I knew that his brother was
a wrestler. So I assume that Terry. Do you know he named the Double Cross Ranch after double Cross, That's what he says. No, really, I thought he named it after did you know that he named the Double Cross Ranch after two Crosses? You know, we named the Double Cross Ranch after Groucho Marx? How does that work? Jim? Did you know that he named the Double Cross Ranch after Hulk Hogan? Yeah, so I guess it didn't go down to New York as cleanly as we were led to believe.
But yeah, heard saying he paid Terry Funk more money. I don't know how he knows this than any than he'd ever made in wrestling before. So there must have been a lot of zeros on that check man. But here's the thing which no one seems to talk about. Terry Funk wasn't just brought in to wrestle. He was brought in not just to wrestle and announce. He was brought into book as well, So that salary was in contemplation
that he could help with the pencil. The same thing with N ninety three when he kind of comes in and hears the pitch from Vince and says fuck this and leaves right. You know, he's been around so long, he's booked, he ran a territory, he knows the business inside out. He knows how to show up in a territory and light it on fire. You think he'd be a great booker, But Terry really never wanted to do that.
Although he took several meetings and several opportunities, and apparently even signed some contracts indicating that he was coming to book, but he always got to look under the hood and said, you know, this is not going to end up inuring to my benefit, he says in his book. I also announced the main event of Rick Flair versus Rickety Steamboat with Jim ros Steamboat was a
world class pro wrestler and a hell of a guy. Of course, Steamboat and Funk had a really great singles match on a Clash of the Champions before Funk tussled with Flair again. He was one of the few guys I know of who never turned over the course of his career. They also wanted me to do nangle with Flair, and they wanted him to serve as a member of the booking committee. That appealed to me because I thought I would be
a chance to use some creativity. The booking committee was me, Brick Flair, Jim Ross, Kevin Sullivan, Jim Cornett, and a few other guys. They didn't exactly work together, though there's a lot of division and conflict within that committee. I had no idea I was walking into a loaded situation because the committee wasn't in agreement with herd. I walked into my first meeting completely unaware of the problems. When heard talk to me about coming in,
he'd made it sound as if things were smooth as glass. I ended up being the outside individual, almost alone compared to everyone else in there. What was asked of me. I ended up being damned near nothing. It was a pretty shocking situation. All I knew that on one side was Jim Hurd, who had just signed me to one of the better deals I've had in my life, and on the other was people in the business I knew and respected. Not long after I started, Kevin Sullivan approached me before a meeting
and said, ASH need to no one thing. Who side do you want? I said, what, I'm on the NWA side. He said, no, that's not what I mean. I am on that side of Jim Hurt's I'm on the n side. I'm on my side. I'm on the double cross side, on the wild side. As a matter of fact, out on vas just right now, Dad that's right, your piece of ship. I want ahead and work with Meg Ryan. I want ahead and fuck you right. No, I didn't say funk you. I said fuck you,
pal, I said fuck off your goddamn piece of ship. I thought that was the most ridiculous question I'd ever heard. But my answer was not the politically correct answer. But I'm not a dummy. I saw that the best thing I could do for myself was to keep from falling into one side or the other. So I love the idea of Jim Hurd paying Terry Funk top dollars so he has some guy with crad to fight the people that are opposing his ideas on the committee. Well, Funk thinks it's a great idea.
And what are you saying here? You deserve more respect than Terry Funk. What are you saying? Funk's an idiots? Exactly. You just said, Hey, Kevin Sullivan, Terry Funk just yeah, they Terry Funk, Yeah, Terry. He just said, Arry, I want Kevin Sullivan just said, let me tell you something. Kevin Sullivan just said, you're a piece of ship. That's a good booking committee. Verbe that's a verbatim quote. If you need me. I got it. I got it on record. I can play it back for you. Know what else I got is
a is a loaded forty five. I'm gonna tell you something else I got. I'll tell you what you want to know. You want to know something, Terry. This is what I got to now. I'm not afraid, not a problem. This is this is a this is my executive you know, VP of wrestling firearm. It's my veto power right here too. All
right, this is it right here, and I've got this gun. All right, I've got this firearm and right at your fucking ball sack, and I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm gonna double cross your nuts, yes, with a pair of fucking bullets. What did he do? Exactly? What how did this escalate? You didn't say a word. I want ahead, just sat down, mister Hurd. I don't even know why. Why are you I'm just you know the thing about this is, I just went
here. I just went ahead and came inside, and you told me that that Kevin Sellan called me a son of a bitch, and now you're aiming firearms at my ass. I didn't I don't even think I said anything in response to what you said, Kevin Sullivan said, and suddenly it was my problem. Suddenly it's my fault. What the lesson here that if you want to survive in the NBA, you hope no one ever calls you an idiot, because Jim Herd'll be pointing a gun at you. But I thought I
was the victim. I thought I was the vicky. Here's an example, he said in his book of how little control over things I had. I brought in a talented young man to wrestle, and even though he put me over in his first match, I thought his talents were obvious, but they never brought him back. His name Eddie Guerrero. Maybe you've heard of him. I hadn't brought Eddie in to just do a job for me. It wasn't like I was sitting around one day and had the brilliant idea to bring
it Eddie just so I could beat him up on TV. I knew he was a hell of a worker because I'd watched in his early matches, and I told her and the rest of him, this guy's got it. He's really good. I thought the world of his work, and I was shocked that he didn't get an offer after a match. I had everything I could to get him in there, which shows you how much influence I had as a member of the booking committee. So Boss, let's add another ornament to
the tree of people that owe their fucking lives to Terry Funk. Eddie Guerrero does the generational lines know no bounds with this guy. No from fuck Hey cheese, it's great, from Gene Kiniski and Louthaz to see him punk and Kevin Owens to Eddie Guerrero to of course you know, Tommy Dreamer and Shane Douglass and Nick Foley, and how about Rick Flair and Hulk Hogan. As we've discussed, I mean, last two episodes. He's the He is the
single most important and influential wrestler in the history of the business. Say it again, motherfucker, because we've reached the conclusion he is the single most important and influential wrestler in the history of the business. Thank you, Boss. Mission accomplished, but we sold her forward Eddie Guerrero's book. In nineteen sixty six, my dad decided to escape the complete control of Salvador Lutarov in the EMLL organization in Mexico, he'd been the NWA World Light Heavyweight Champion, the
most prestigious title in Lucha libre, for more than three years. Ludaroth wanted my dad to drop the title to Ray Mendoza in a way that my dad felt was bad for business. Rather than do as he was told, Dad rebelled, leaving EMLLL and taking his title belt with him. He settled in El Paso, and this is where the Guerrero's in El Paso start to become synonymous, and began working all over the United States, mainly Los Angeles,
the Carolinas in Texas. He even worked a couple of matches for Vince Mcmahonsenior in the old Worldwide Wrestling Federation. Of course, he continued to work in Mexico, wrestling in border cities like Juarez and Tijuana. As he got older, Dad began cutting back at his wrestling and concentrated on training and doing joint promotion with who do you think Salvador Lutaroth did joint promotion with or Eddie Garrero's dad, Gory Garrero did passo U fucking sew Michael's guy there? Oh,
not a bad guy you talking about? Joseel O Thario. Yes, no, it would be Dorri Funk Senior. Oh, of course, that's how far back the Guerrero's and the Funks go. Gory Guerrero set up shop after leaving Mexico in al Paso, Texas and basically became a promotional partner of Dory Funk Senior. Eddie writes they worked together all over West Texas and El Paso
and Amilla and other towns. When Dorri passed, Dad continued to put on shows, mostly in Juarez, featuring wrestlers he trained, like my brothers Chavo and Hector, as well as such legendary stars as El Santo and Buddy Rogers Junior. I don't know who that is. Even into his senior years, Buddy Rogers Junior. We wrote, yeah, even into his senior years. Dad's whole world was wrestling, needless to say, it was also the world where I was born and raised. After Chavo and his family moved out West.
Of course, his brother Chavo he was talking about, not his nephew that we know is Chavo grog Joh. I would go out there every summer to spend time with Chavito. Chavo and I actually got along better during those trips than we did when he lived in Opaso. One time he took me in Chavito, camping up in the Sequoia Mountains. The plan was to put up a tent, but it was so freaking cold we all slept huddle together in the van. Other than that, we had a blast hiking, swimming
in the river, sitting around the campfire. It's probably one of my greatest and dearest memories of Chavo. My brother, Hector was working at Smoky Mountain Wrestling at the time, so we decided I'll go live with him in Tennessee. I really enjoyed hiding out in Tennessee. I worked with Hector wherever I could, continued to gain experience with each show. While I was there, I was invited to do the job for Terry Funk at a WCW house show. I was thrilled. Not only was it WCW, but it was an
opportunity to wrestle one of the all time greats. In this business, a lot of guys are called legends. Terry Funk was the real thing. But Hector didn't want me to do it. He pointed out one of Dad's cardinal rules, don't ever do a squash job. It's just not worth it. But I was stubborn. I saw it as an opportunity to be seen by the WW bookers, thinking that if they liked what they saw, maybe I had a shot of getting hired. I called my dad and told him what
I was considering. He was cool as always. He didn't try to talk me out of it and staid He explained to me that there were ways of doing it without burying myself. Just because it was a squash job didn't mean I had to come out of it looking like a loser. But when I got to the arena, I was totally paranoid that I'd made the wrong decision. I told Terry what I was thinking, and he was great. Don't worry, kid, He said, you mightn't do a squash job. I'll
make you look good. That really gave me confidence. Instead of being afraid, I was determined to do my best. More than just wanting to impress the bosses, I really wanted to justify Terry's support. That is a key
lesson of funk YEP. What he did for these guys that were having crises of confidence along the way was make them want to be worthy of the faith he put in them, yes, before the audience and saw anything in them, and he enlivened entire ECW locker room because he was that guy telling people you've got something before the audience saw it, or even before Paulie or Todd
Gordon saw it sometimes. M hm. And that's key. That that that's that's right back to the point you made about him being the most influential. Yeah, because I don't think anybody's going to say that about Rick Flair. I don't think anybody's going to say that about Steve Austin. No, I don't think noybody's going to say that about Hogan or kind of Bruno. Bruno made a lot of people in a way not like like, yes, he made a lot of people, but did he make as many legends? Right?
And and not only legends, but we're talking about people who transcended the business. Yeah, like he Terry Funk is responsible for so many fucking people.
He's like an indispensable part of so many people's stories. It's not like he alone, yes, is responsible, But you take Terry Funk out of the lives of all the top wrestlers of the seventies, eighties, and nineties, and to some degree the two thousands, and you're not convinced that they made it as far as fast as they did without that Terry Funk moment.
Ye all have them, including Ede Guerrero. We're just taking them off one at a time here as we go on the lapsed Funk, starting all the way back with Tito Santana when he was at West Texas, not sure about himself and remembering a scene where Terry Funk tells him, you've got this and do X, Y and Z and you'll be in a better position. He was awesome. Eddie Guerrera wrote, he gave me room to get in a bunch of offense. I also did a few high spots. I hit Terry
with a headsis or he caught me doing a top row planchia. That kind of stuff just wasn't done in WCW at that time. I heard afterwards that the bookers were impressed with me, but we're too apprehensive about my size to give me another show. Would you like to see this match? Boss? I think I would like to see this not serve more than anything else. Really is a tribute to Terry Funk. A match like this, a story like that, I think it might be a necessary step. I think it
might be time to toggle over to Disc fifteen. Disc fifteen fucking I went to Disney World. The first time I went to Disney World. It was the fifteenth anniversary, and I, for some reason, will never forget the There was like you know, they had like a bunch of different dance shows and stuff like that, and I just always remember the main like the song for the main show at at the Castle fifteen yees, we have in a party fifteen years. We're gonna party oh year long. Those yeah, those
songs have a way of sticking with you. Those gym all they hit your breath at the right moment. That's right, we're looking for fifty seven to fifty nine fifty seven. Eddie calls it a house show. It was, in fact a TV taping this he doesn't know ship anyway. It was on the Saturday Night TBS show Center Stage, Atlanta. Navy Canvas yep. Yes, pre renaming the company WCW. All right, I'll look at that that n W A TBS banner yep. I'm ready three two one play from Mexico
City, Mexico Eddie Girl. And there's a moment from Amello Texas. Oh you shut up, you shut your fucking mouth, the fun from barking like crazy, I'm getting my chefts off, and you fucking cunt, you under you understand what Ladies and gentlemen from Amarillo, Texas. Terry funk Kid, don't put the cowboy hat on? Yeah seriously, Well there he is a man with a personality of a rattlesnake who will be in Richmond, verg your original Texas rattle g and yellow underwear, white boots, that's about right,
making his debut here on World Championship Wrestling Coller and Elbow. Let's watch the
thing. Let's watch the Funker pay tribute to the man in the arena with the dirt and blood on his face, the job or the man he committed his decade a book coloring Elbow to the ropes and Eddie Guerrero swiftly ducks the knife fetch chop of the Funker and Terry with his hands on his hips like all right, we gotta we got a quick one on her hands here, right, Eddie does look tiny, man, He looks like a a g I joe against a hasbro figure Eddie, Eddie looking like fucking Hiroshi hasse here,
Yeah yeah again, Eddie Duck in the chops tumbles away chops and just the face of the Funker telling the audience that this kid has got something he's he's proving harder to get to than even a veteran like Terry Funk expects color and elbow to the ropes. Now Funk with a single leg will keep Eddie and his clutches, but it won't protect him from an Inzaguri Guerrerol Lands slips to his feet. Terry takes a powder. Terry pop has got to be
very pressuret Jr. On the call. Obviously, that will break the momentum and the concentration of the youngster his old school, making somebody you know fall intoim its setting. It's great, Terry just crumbla on that table. Crack. This is the post that Russell Worridy nine Angels Jr. Is discussing.
So we're gonna go back in time a little bit. In a moment the corner off the lock up and Terry Funk open hands slapped to the chest to Guerrero pinpoint elbows to the top of the head, corner to corner on the whip coming up, Eddie kIPS up to the middle rope, climbs all the way up to the top, back flips, look at that, and then back rolls on landing, leaps into a drop kick, but ends up caught
in the catapult position. He's giving him the sorrow giant swing, I think, so yep, look at that, turning Guerrero time and time again, oh, jumping him unceremoniously. No idea. That was in Terry Funk's repertoire. A lot leaner than he was in the WWF. Yes, got his hands on some ship that melted away, fat but wearing pants. One thing I did notice in the w w F matches against Hogan is his legs were very underdeveloped, small legs. And now he's yeah, he wasn't a day
fan there, unless you're talking about you know, Turkey. That's right, series of chops drops Guerrero Funk choking him across the middle rope. I've been making no mistake. Terry Funk is, you know, conducting himself as a guy that's Eddie Garro superior here. But he's he's picking his spots to make Guerrero shine Funk misses the sit out across the ropes, end up all entangled in the ropes and takes a massive drop kick Eddie Guerrero with an this time
a head scissor Funk going all over the place for the kid. Wow, Jesus, it looked like a failed leg larried attempt and Guerrero crashes to the canvas. Funk back on him now from the gut wrench shifts up to the
shoulder. Funk on the running start like a javelin. Oh Jesus, whoa absolutely launches edde Guerrero the top to the mats on the floor, kind of like what Hogan did to Savage your Restuminia five exactly what it was out after him as the Funker, the bizarre mister Funk, I'll say, jr. So you just call them heavy chops, puts Guerrero up against the post. Funk gos where a wild larryot and clips the steel the stand hands and ask lariat and Funk going bicep first. Oh no, Guerrero's climbed to the top
with Funk on the floor, It's time to soar. In nineteen eighty nine, Wow, I want a plancha by Eddie Guerrero. I'm not going to find many people of Terry Funk's stature and heritage in the business. We'll going to take that for Eddie Guerrero. National team, not at all. Guerrero went to the well, went too many times with the piscado attempt. Funk side steps and Eddie Guerrero goes splat. Now Terry Funk's in the ring on the running start, hits the ropes twice, three times. What the hell
is he doing? Four times? Five times in a baseball slide? That holy shit, he fucking sends Guerrero over the guard rail. Time steam on that one. Wow, that significant distance between a front row, if even one exists on that side of the center stage. I mean, yeah, guardrail even yeah, bar went flying into it. Now floor by the Funk, Oh don't yeah, that Planche should have got him a job for sure. Yeah, just considering how spectacular that was capabilities in nineteen eighty nine.
All the while Jr. Putting over you know how psychotic Terry is back in a simple knee drop and front sends Guerrero for the one, two, three, And then of course Funk goes over the rail and he's gonna fuck with some people at center stage, fucking love. That's what he always does, just goes out there and starts yelling at people, making you feel uncomfortable. Know the look at this, My god, he's crazy. I did right here, got file Driver and he stuffed him. He can say it,
just lack Flair. His neck just snapped and crumble underneath him. And we're going to try to get Terry Puff over here. I'll get a promo too. Here's how you can order a Wressell War. All right, I play it. I get a break here. But he did show back up. As I mentioned fans. Next week, I'm going to be busying with Rick Flair's doctor about his injury, and we'll be following that report here next week
than the program. I'm sure Rick Flair is watching this program right now, mister Funks hitting the sign of his world championship because Russell I am the best in the world. Now, as simple as minded as you are, you might be able to understand the story I am going to tell you. Daddy was a wonderful person, but he understood life more so than the executives of the NWA. You see, when I was a young lad, I had a jackass, and I loved that jackass. But that jackass broke its leg.
And when that jackass broke its leg, my father took that jackass and put a gun to that jackass's head and blew that jackass's brains out. Wow, I said, Daddy, Daddy, why did you de merse of the NWA? Can put him out to pasture? Now is a time to put Rick Flair out to pasture. Now, I know I believe that the man was injured. You say he was. Whatever the story might be or the truth might be, Let's put him out to pasture and get to the top
ten contenders. Now, Rick Steiner is no longer a member. Why can't I take his possession because of his injury? Who do I talk to? Who is they? Who runs? Who is they? Who? Yes? The top ten list? Is it you Ross? No? If it's you, Ross me, I will get down on my knees and she'll beg to you. Ross. I will beg to you to put me in that category because I am the best wrestler in the world today. Why can't you and you people out there realize that. Please, let's get this crazy. We're
all very concerned about the situation. Yeah, Jim, we are very concerned. We are. So how about that Boss Funk on TBS WCW eighty nine. It's great, I mean, it's it's it's what's expected. What's expected is exactly correct. So what were they referencing? What is all this about? The top ten and everything? We've played it one hundred times, covered
the show on our tribute week to Rick Flair. We played it when we did the Roadhouse under the cinemat episode where the promo was, you know, referencing the fact that Funk was on set of set film before showing up in eighty nine to the NWDA demanding a shot at ric Flair's championship. It was
one of the great pay per views in the history of the business. Wrestle Were eighty nine, Rick Flair wins back the World Championship in a rematch against Rickey the Dragon Steamboat and that incredible concluding capping that incredible trilogy that they had in nineteen eighty nine, sort of a creating an identity for the post Turner broadcasting w C. You sort of a single handedly were Rick Flair and Steamboat in those matches and then slot in Terry Funk so here on disc fifteen.
Let's let's go over to forty nine to fifty three and watch it just one more time and tribute to the Funker forty nine. So we're not watching, of course, the Steamboat Flair match, but we are watching the post match, right, And so Rick Flair is in the ring, you know, tauseled hair, having fought a hard battle, big old belt over his shoulder. Jim Ross in the ring to conduct an interview, and if you're ready, I'm ready, three two one play. Well, that's sixth time.
I want to present ladies and gentlemen number six, the heavyweight Champion of the World. Night sure, boy, Rick Flair. I think also we have to give credit where credit is to the Dragon Steamboat in Rick Blair. Boat competed in one of those the greatest matches that any of us, I think have ever witnessed. CHAMPI congratulations, thank you very much. Not in character for Rick Flair, but Rick Steamboat. He's the greatest champion I've ever faced. And I'm proud to be here for a six time. All right,
Hey, Harry is in the taxedo. I'd be the first to you, Rick. I want to be the first New World champion. Terry, thank you very much. We do appreciate the judges being here. Hey, Rick, I also want to say that if it would have gone sixty minutes, that I would have liked to have bomb. I would have voted for Rick Flair because I think that you're the greatest wrestler in the world today. Very nice, Thank you very much, Jerry, thank you very much, Thank
you very much. So awkward. But he's not leaving the rings. Nope, he's still standing there looking at champan. You know, you know it really is. Go ahead and be the first one to challenge Rick Flair to that new championship. Why, Terry, I'm honored that you'd like to get in the picture. But as a wrestling fans, no, you've been an active You've been in Hollywood Selvester Stallone while, and we got a top ten. We got a top ten at the world champion is obligated to wrestle,
and that's why we are number one. Quite a minute, are you are you really saying that I'm not a contender. Let's range here for the funker. You are a gray wrestler, but right now you're rubbing shoulders with Sylvester Stallone and not the world champion. No, no, no, no, I would just no no no no, You're I'm not good enough. You're saying that I'm not good enough, aren't you? Rick? Not saying that
at all? Terry. Here we go. It's a serious face and I got a problem a guy to spit out in the Hollywood for five years. It's a bottom line. But I'm looking at the top ten and you're not in the top ten. No, Rick and Rick, Rick, Rick, No, hold it, I was just choking Rick, Please please let me just say one more thing I was. I was just kidding you about going yeah, oh, it's so awkward challenge you. I didn't want to really challenge you. I was just kidding your soul led gumman. Let's go ahead.
He speaking down, had a handshaking. No, it is the second they shake hands. Funk drops into the left and now it's time for Terry Fugg to go from straight lace judge, respective former champion to a fucking maniac. It's time to print money, nutcase, Harry, that's fucking go on the lapsed fun. This is totally on, boy, He's taking it out. It's totally called for j R. Terry fuck is a man and Rage Jr. Is great here too, Ye where's shaking the rail like a psychopath
in here? Can believe we are witnessing Here's fuck snip were the guy in the front row of the blue shirt. He's horrified hitting the table. He first goes nag Bob con Oh, Jim, jim My Campal, what we're watching? Jim Jem up to the table. Funk has got flairing position for a pile driver in the Damon outs table. Listen out Flair's vertical. Here we go, stuffs Flare's headed to the table and fuck the best part fun fucking falling over the table just tilts and Flair slides a fun slides on still
with this cumber bund on trying to stab Rick with a table. Look, I mean, Jesus chrazy, look at him. I love how he fucking he can never stand up straight. He's always he's like it's like he's got like tripping over a million of those you know, like balls in a in a ball pit, you know, like he has no sense of balance. That such a good call. It's like he's always in that state of like
that saloon scene on Tuesday Night Titans when there's all over the floor. Yeah, and then he absolutely slammed a chair across Flair has had a heavy one too. Oh, he's gonna go after ringsiders, and they're in Terren's face. They're pissed off at him. You don't understand. How's a world champion? Oh they grabs JR. Get them up, fat fuck? Look at yes, look at the heart too, but no, jerky, Wow, you got it, Terry. I'll look at a pause. There they show
Flare and a complete heap there on the floor under at the table. I mean, we've said it a hundred times, you might as well say it again here on the lapsed Funk proper. What do we just see? I mean, what we just saw is just one of the great, the great kind of angles I think of the of the at least the eighties, if not maybe of all time. It's just something money instantly right in terms of in terms of taking a guy who was retired and wasn't even wrestling, and
you know, it's funny. It's funny how he says you're not even in the top ten. Funk makes himself number one. Yep, right there by knocking the shit out out of Rick Flair and it's perfectly timed in that he's exhausted. You know, he'd be exhausted. He you know, he just wrestled what like thirty five minutes with with steamboat. Yep. It's just great stuff and just the acting range. He was on another level here. He starts from this place. You know, that's exactly how a psychopath would behave.
Yeah, totally like a sociopath, almost like a guy who gets in the ring and even though under the surface he's bubbling like a cauldron with psychotic urges to take the belt and the glory from the sky, he knows enough about how one is supposed to act in a situation like this with his tuxedo on, you know, show class showed dignity and expected to be reciprocated. You know, it's like he's like the guy who is only nice to you
because he wants to see if you're gonna be nice back. Yes, he's a guy who doesn't offer praise unless it's designed for you to offer praise back.
And when Rick Flair sort of you know, meets his praise with a rejoinder and kind of a flippant comment and takes his you know what, Funk probably thought in the character's mind was like, you know, like a totally respectful approach and request challenge him for the championship, and Flare snaps back at him in the way he did with you know, a totally justifiable comment about how he's not in the contention for the belt and there's a lot of worthy
contenders right now. Even though I respect you that that's what a guy does when he's you know, offering that sort of thin, vapid flattery. He acts out because he can't he can't deal with you being ungrateful for how classy he was to you. Yes, because Terry knows what he could have done is just go in there and fucking murdered you the second you turned your back. But he didn't do that because he's too nice of a guy, and
that's of course a psychopath in action. He goes, he progresses. I've never seen anyone do it better in a wrestling screen, ever, to go from one code of paint to another, from one sort of you know, sort of like animating facial features to another. He's just the way he like takes takes umbrage with Flair, kind of big leaguing him, and still stands there, but doesn't immediately attack Flair. You know, there's like three four steps to what today would be like one step, you know, just remarkable.
Yep. And the way he's able to forget it. I mean, once you once you tell Terry Funk, this is the this is the part where you act psycho, that no one, no one's better at the world at that Well, I want to add an act psycho. Yep. Yeah, but so I think, uh who I think the followers checking the boxes they hired him to check boss. Yes, absolutely, laire Wright in his book, the show went off the air with the image of me seemingly unconscious
under the wreck of a table. Terry Funk was still raving, acting paranoid, despondent, and gleeful all at the same time. He said that I wasn't good enough. I'm not a contender. Look at him, look at the horse tooth banana nos jerk. I had personified evil for most of my career, Rick Flair wrote, Terry Funk may have been the only SOB crazy enough to turn me good. In the coming weeks. The fans were told that I had a severe neck injury, and I convinced them by wearing a
brace around Charlotte while running errands, even while on airplanes. So they're going full in on this angle. It's crazy. It's good stuff, even though the rigid probably there were of the last of its type that I can think of where guys took the angle into the public like that, unless I'm not thinking of something, well, I guess bretton Owen refusing to deal with each other in public after they turned on each other. Yeah, that's kind of
an example of it. Even though the rigidity over protecting the business was diminished Flare Rights, the claim was more than plausible. Kernanngle went in to WrestleMania nineteen with a broken neck even after surgery. Stone Could's neck damage forced him into a non wrestling role in WWE. Before anpisode of Round twenty oh three, I watched Christian spend the day in the arena wearing a neck collar. He only took it off to wrestle Rob Van Dam in a ladder match.
For more than a month, I teased a possible retirement, then announced that I wanted to come back for revenge. Terry remained bold as hell, freaking out TBS executives in September, We'll get to that later. Terry was forty five years old at the time and had been getting his brains kicked in for a quarter century. People who saw him hobbling backstage were astonished that he could actually wrestle. But Terry could deal with pain. Once in Japan when he
was champion, he was scalded with hot water. He gutted it up and wrestled with third degree burns. He was fearless. I cut some fucking nuts and right, yeah, you take your pick. A level of devotion to wrestling that just has to border on insanity. Oh yeah. I cut some really intense promos on Flair. This is funk now talking, including one where I brought out a skinny Brick Flair impost with a yellow stripe painted down his
back. Flair was really bothered by this stuff. Here we go, this is where it gets good, okay, And I was told to tone it down a little bit. I didn't see the problem because I was the heel. The ending was going to be that Flair was gonna kick my ass. I sure wasn't gonna say all those outrageous things only to beat up brick Flair and then go home and hank of my tights. Yeah, what is this triple Ah and Booker t in two thousand and three. I don't know if
Flair was upset because he was insecure or because he wasn't there. You see, he was home selling the injury angle, and all he knew about was what I was doing was what he saw on TV. All he saw was me blasting him every week. With all the divisions in WCW at that time, I wouldn't be surprised if he thought I was working on behalf of someone else there to make him look bad. He wouldn't do that, would you,
Terry Mmm. He had been having his problems with Jim Hurt even then, fighting over his contract, which Heart thought was too much money for him to make. All that stuff was done to create a heated atmosphere for a match. If it hurt him, that certainly wasn't my intent. I'm certainly not sitting here apologizing because I didn't see any real damage that was done to him. I did it as a kick in the ass for business. I'd certainly done heavy heel promos like that and had never heard a baby face before.
I never did hear about Dusty Rhodes being upset about the things I'd say about him, because he understood it was business to build up revenue at the box office. And while the Funk Flair for You did very strong business, I think it's box office was hurt by me having to tone down the heat. I toned down promos a few times before when the heat got to be too much, particularly in Puerto Rico, but I had never before I had to take it down a notch because someone's feelings were hurt. Ric Flair,
Yes, hurt feelings. Mmmm. Mc flair has always been missed. He's a bitch. He's always I know, he's always gonna yeah, and he'll absolutely pretend and we'll play sound to prove it that it wasn't true. And he never had any problem with anything anybody said about him, but from he did never mental never had a problem with that. Nope, nope, nope, never had a problem. JR. You know, did Rick have a problem or is Terry just talking out of his ass? Oh? Yeah?
For him being upset with Terry, Yeah, I do. And I remember getting phone calls, what are you guys trying to do? Kill me? No? Rick, we're not trying to kill you. We're selling a fucking angle anybody, Yes, an angle, and how you sell it? You so? Uh, No, we're not trying to kill you. Uh. But you know a lot of the guys he knew he'd get Rick would always get a straight answer from me. He always also knew I would take his
call. If some of the booking committee guys saw that Flair was calling him, they might just avoid that phone call as long as they could until they got they had to accept it. And I was I didn't have I didn't have any guilt in that regard. I knew what we're trying to do. We're trying to get heat on Funk and make him a heel that god damn he was. He was middle aged and crazy then, and we knew our our hero is going to ride back in on his big white horse sooner than
later. But yeah, he didn't like it. I remember we did an angle one time with Uh. He's passed on now. We worked in the office, Uh Ron Uh, and I just had to tip my tongue to uh. But he came out. He looked a little bit like Barney five, had a flare like robe On. Yep, remember that Ron Ames. I think I think Ron died of HIV or something. Oh ship. Yeah, a nice guy. He really was a nice guy, hard working at PR and things like that. But Terry season in the office and says,
there's not guy for play. The part of Rick Flair and Ron was about, like I said, he looked like Barney five. He looked like Don Knots And that was one of his impressions he'd do at at Happy Hour. Uh it was. It was funny. Yeah, you're exactly right. Ron passed away in uh nineteen ninety three, so, uh, but a good dude. And all he did was he did a very limp woo and that offended or that defended night and uh again, it was like, you're really
getting paid, so this must be working if you are pissed off. You're smart to the business and you're pissed off, it's working, and it may be working to these other folks out there and has heard would say the ter Lands and it did work. What now the show that that was a great marriage and you know, thank god Flair and Funk Are you kidding? So come on, Rick, So he got over it, as we all know, but he did get his feelings hurt. But he was out of the
he was out of the picture. He didn't want to be out of the picture, but that was the angle and how the angle is set up to sell. Somebody's got to be out of the picture for a while this injury. And people aren't dropped on their head on tables outside the ring very often, So that's that's kind of where that was. Rick was pissed off for a lot about that. I'm totally obsessed with flair at home, wondering,
like hul Cogan, if they're trying to get one over on them. Oh absolutely, And I'm sitting here, Oh god, damn, you know, I blame Luger. You're talking to lugamage and they're all talking to Luger, you know everyone. So let's turn this. I heard what what brother fuck Terry? Is that you Terry? Oh my god, brother dud, who's sneaking up behind you? Brother? Hold in the l f X. So, of course, flare you you look at me now? Brother? You
know do you're freaking You're freaking me out. I'm freaking you out. You're freaking me out. You don't have what it thinks. I'm what, brother Flaire, dude, I'm I'm I'm as scared as you are. Brother, look into my eyes. What do you see in these eyes? Oh ah, it's a trick question. It's concerned about his answer. He's very concerned about his answer. So do you think Flair pretended later when he'd like, you know, see Terry Funk, that he was never really bothered by these
kinds? Of course, of course he wasn't bothered. Never were you ever bothered by any of the Tory's promos that he did on TVs about you? I know he did want with the fakeerite Flair, and I don't know if that ever bothered you or anything like that. I don't know were you It doesn't like I try to tell people this, can I take this business serious? Wonderful all this? You can go ahead and you can ask that question. Yeah, you know what that means that it was It was the right
It was the right thing. You're still questioning energy and you it entertained you, but it grabbed your imagination. You thought, maybe that ship's real? Is that real? To this day you're asking that question, is it real? Where are we going to tell you that it was not real? Now? I know not. I don't want to know either. No. Sitting with Rob Einstein from our video. So, uh yeah, but Terry, all of what you said is well and good, But were you trying to
really piss off Rick Flair? I mean, don't act like, oh, you know, you know, I never you know, I went ahead and did what I had to do, and and if I pissed somebody off, I didn't. You know, That's just kind of the way things happened. You know. Sometimes I'd just sit there and go ahead and and then and and cut a promo and I'd pissed myself alf off. I wonder did I
do that on that I really pissed myself off? Was I really pissed off with myself or did not do it as an angle or did I just you know, piss myself or did I piss myself and say I'm a cartoon talk about three D chess huh funk man funk. Yeah, we've heard it. He doesn't rest until he's saying something that legitimately bothers, of course, and the guy, the guy knows its business, but Terry Funk uses that to get four more shots in than are necessary. That's what you have to understand
about this guy. Like, yeah, he doesn't he doesn't point to the fact that they're working together justify it. He points to the fact that they're working together to take advantage of the situation, because you can never you could always hide behind that veil if somebody takes umbrage. And we've heard the bass and the voice of everybody from Dusty Rhodes to Jerry Lawler here to Rick Flair.
We heard Hulkogan talking about how pissed Terry Funk was, you know, talking to the media about beating him in South Africa and being legitimately terrified of Terry Funk. I mean, this guy, Yeah, he's working with you, but he's gonna make sure to fire live rounds in the process. He's not gonna absolutely soft pedal it. And you can hear almost the anguish, anguish in his voice in his book there at being told from on high that he has to tone things down, and how just antithetical that is to who
he is. Like if he let people tell him that in his career, he would not be Terry Funk. It would not be where he was. If if he let Sam Muchnik and Larry Mattison and Pad O'Connor tell him to not do the hit angle, the heat angle with Johnny Valentine on Saint Louis
Television. All the way back from the very inception of his career, he was like this, and here he is sort of bumping up against the tensions that are created in a business where people, you know, a Flair is sitting there not just taking what Terry Funk says at face value, but is Terry Funk tells us very helpful? They're thinking who's behind the words Terry Funk saying mmm, because I have enemies and Terry Funk might not be them, but Terry Funk, you know, might be willing to be a puppet for
them if it positions him favorably. Because that's how it's three paid in this new corporate run turn around WCW. Fascinating stuff, that's right. Are you still at the marker right after the Edi Guerrero match there on your tape? It's about one four fifty on disc fifteen, one O four fifty. Oh no, because I was at the Flair thing. But here, oh wait, we saw that though, we saw that promo played that one. Okay, so we'll have to go past the one O four to fifty one.
Okay. I got a weird guy on Ric Flair's physician. Yes, here we go. What's your time code on Ric Flair's physician. Yeah, I've got I have one, seven thirty seven. All right. We're gonna line these up here, all right. And so we've heard so much about these promos that Terry Funk is cutting on TBS that are causing Ric Flair to call the office and belly ach to Jim Ross and others. What was he doing?
What was he saying? What of this fake Ric Flair promo that's been referenced to a hundred times so far with this guy who worked in the office, Ron Ames, Let's take it in as part of the lapsed Funk.
First, we're going to start with the physician of Rick Flair who went on TBS and talked about the injuries to Ric Flair's neck suffered in the pile driver at Wrestle War by Terry Funk and the whole idea, the whole component of this where Ric Flair has mentioned what was forced to stay home to sell the severity of this injury and the unique circumstance that created for Terry Funk to go hole on the promo. Is that any comebacks? Yeah? So here we
go. We're going to take a tour through the legendary Rick Flair Terry Funk feud in nineteen eighty nine leading up to their clash at the Great American Bash. Here we go on three to two one play has hand some problems with wear and tear of his neck. To this point already Doctor Eastwick, and with the recent injury east Wenn has actually now gone ahead and ruptured a disc in his neck in the lower aspect of the neck, actually between the fifth
and the sixth vertebrae. Because of that, he's pinched a nerve going down the left arm, and our examination shows that that's left him weak. Rick tells me that he's actually much weaker in his bench press, for instance, than ever before, and he used to be a competitive powerless This is a doctor behind the desk, on the lap coat, with tie and the weakness, the signature stitched into his lap coat, the whole deal. Oh yeah, some of the fingers and of course lot of pain traveling down there.
An injury like this takes quite a while to heal it. It's very difficult to call it early on in the in this situation, and what we need to do is give him some time to heal. Uh and by that we really have to tie into it. Sounds like you're giving Terry fun. We've got to get working on his strengthening of the neck, got to work on the range of motion. And then we use the tools of traction at times
and a neck collar to help stiffen the neck and hold it protected. Then we can't beat or ever best father time I'm obsessed with like a real doctor agreed to just completely fabricates. Oh yes, absolutely for the cameras, fucking George Horion style. They're very crazy. Is how to perfect his career and yet that's a really tough decision. We don't need to make that decision right now, but we really worry about the safety of of him returning to the
ring. He doesn't have a desk job like I do, so that heroically he did of protecting his neck at work every day. And what I would like to see is that we go through all these recovery mechanisms hoping that it doesn't take surgery to do it. We're certainly going to try our best to try and work through this in therapy, and if he can rest the neck and has any luck and healing, then a lot of this can resolve,
but a certain percentage of life could not. Really really, he has no idea how to take that, and we'll get to had no idea that Terry Funk was going to do that until they were live, and is it safe A new Funk was going to do some hyper violences on the floor back and white, and there's nothing that's one hundred specificity of preparing the discovery. I think that's unfair. Doesn't make it that way, but we do hope that he can get well enough that we consider it a reasonable risk and safe enough
to try. He won't do it halfway, and so that if he goes back, we want to be sure that it's recovered enough that he's not in any immediate danger of further injuring the muscles on it. Are all right, fans? As we mentioned earlier in the hour, kry Buck said he had a big announcement to make a surprise announcement. I hope that you and I can keep this to civil level. What is it talking about next Thuray nine
here on the superstation. Well, absolutely, I wanted to come out here and tell you that I called Rick Flair's attorney and Rick Flair wouldn't talk to me because he just didn't feel right about it. And I can understand that. And I said that the attorney. I said, Sir, I said, I would like to pay Ric Flair's round trip ticket to this show next week if he would come here and appear and tell us about the extent of his injury. You know, Rick Clair's neck is hurt, I believe the
doctor, but his legs aren't broken. And that's exactly what I told his attorney, and the attorney said, Rick Flair will be here. So I am so happy to say that you people are going to have Rick Clair explaining the extent of his injury next Saturday night. Right here, we are governed. Jerry Funk is going to produce Rick Flair in the TV Claire back in person, and I am so proud to say that he is back. You're telling it may not be wrestling again, but he might even possibly accept the
challenge for the World Championship. If I do challiot, he's going to be we oh, yes, but I'll let him have the chance and opportunity to get well. Yes, I will. All right, Fancy and the psychon here we have left in the program, don't forget next week as we first Superstation next Saturday night plus the Midnight Express will be back with Jim Cornett. Welcome back, ladies, and there's the teas for next week. And Ric Flair, poss said earlier in the program, Terry, I don't know.
We made the comment that he would have Nature Boy Rick Flair here with us tonight, and we if that is true, we started to look forward to seeing the Nature Boy back here in the center stage here Superstation TBS. Here comes Terry fun Now all right, Harry, A little dubious of this situation. Where is he? Well, he's here. Rick Flair is here tonight, and I want to tell you people, black leather, cowboy hat, big ass belt, buckle, right, because he had enough intestinal fortitude to
come out here. I'm very proud of him. Let's go ahead and bring let's go ahead down. Yeah, here it comes boss. All right, Wow, there's a music coming down Wreck. The crowd is panding here, fanding ovation. Oh gosh, who's that clown? He worked in the office. Jr. Just said it in the clip. It was like a marketing guy. Ron names was oh funny. Terry Funker was in the office one day and saw the guy and said, that's my Rick Flair. All right, So the real Rick Flair is home not loving this. Oh, grow
up Flair. The woo that sounded like a woman. Let's hear a Rick Claire scream like a man. WHOA, that's awesome. Have anymore Rick Clare spell it r I C K F l A. Yes, they do as you say it is, which, of course was a mistake they made unintentionally a raging kilt. Another way, how are you well? You have a bad stomach, don't you yet? What it is is you have lost your guts and Ric Flair also has a bad back. Take off the robe and show him your bat comes b Wait a minute, my, what two weeks
of hiding in a closet does to a person? My doesn't Rick Flair look and get that robe all get it off now and show him what's wrong with your bat? Yellow Street down his back, God Street down his bet. This is ridiculous, This is embarrassing, Carrie. You're talking about the world shipping of the NWA. Hey, I'm I want to tell you a kid something. Don't believe in Santa Claus. And remember, oh I don't believe in Santa Claus. No dumb there, doll yeller, Wow, oh my
got in a world. Sting isn't gonna stand on that back there, line up, listen to your stop. Let me tell you something. I got a cold kill going right at my fine and it makes me sick. Funk just whipped off the cowboy hat. You one another pen in my whole life. Pal Let me tell you something else. I thank you well. The shirt comes off the functor. Hey, guess what else you're ambassing me? You'ressing people? Are your am passing the nature by? And you ain't got
no you know what? I'm Terry Funk. It's in the ring, challenging the Stinger to bring it. Wow, you come staying, and we're back on the Memphis TV station. I'm throwing, not allowing stinging into the way in the ring. Christ I love it back and we're reversed by the stinger. Funk hits the ropes Larry and down goes Terry and they go nuts at center stage starting oh sting clothesline. Oh just creates little ropey sours like a gazelle does this Stinger with a flying clothes line. Funk hits the floor.
Stay out after him, and there are woos on those rights. Funker spills over the rail. Here the Funk work the railing. How did you Bronis come out? They're going nuts and they were building a Sting Terry Funk House show program at the same time. Here, all right, there's one of those oh man, Funk puts two Jabroni's down there are in between him and Sting and then lunges at Stinging headlocks on the Now that's a pigpile trying to break this thing up. Funk hanging off the ring, Apron throwing at the
back of Sting's head. That's just fucking money I got here. Let's go to the Wrestling out of Here station. Earlier this week I had the occasion to be one of the great n w A cities to conduct an interview with Terry Funk. The subject of that interview was this Wednesday night primetime live broadcast here on the superstation, the Class of Champions seven. Of course, we all know Funk now the number ten contender for the world's heavyweight title will number
ten tonight the number one contender, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat. That was the subject of the interview, and it was most interesting let's play it now. Well, ladies and Jellain, where here to talk to Terry Funk about the big class of champions coming up this Wednesday night. That's how the top ten in the n W A number one contender Ricky the Dragon Steamboat this Wednesday night, Jim Ross, I want to tell you and the simple minded people out
there, the cold hard facts one time and one time only. I am from a professional wrestling family, and many years ago my father was a wrestler too, and my father died in my arms after a professional wrestling max. They had his funeral and thousands of people came to his funeral, and they brought every kind and color of flower imaginable. That's like I said, was
many years ago. Then the years went by and I went back to the grave Heights and all it was there was me in the West Texas winds, and I looked down at that headstone of his and had said, Funk, if you n k and the iWar to the heavens to Bob that I would make that name synonymous with wrestling forever, forever. If I have to step on Staying, I will. If I have to step on Luger, I will. If I have to step on steamboat his family. I will that
includes that little pig notes half breed child of his. Because what I want to do is I want to have Rick Claire. And I've set my last west, I've set my heartbeat. Oh well, good mind right composite there,
Okay? As a Ricky Steamboat interrupts Terry Funk to build the Clash of the Champions match that would qualify Terry Funk to challenge Flair for the belt at the Great American Bash, well we saw most of the substance of promos that fuck cut between attacking Flare at Wressell War eighty nine and wrestling him at the Bash eighty nine. Thoughts on Funk's work here, boss, I mean,
he's spectacular. He's just he's able to mold himself and and just transform into so many different I don't know, like he's got like you know, you said it, he's got layers. Yeah, he just struck a totally different tone there and that go home, going back to his father's grave, And as soon as he opened his lips, it's like, whoa, this is a different tone of voice than I expected from him. Yes, this isn't the guy that brought out the fake Rick Flair with the streak down his back,
playing you know, foolish and or screaming psychotically into the camera. Either. Right, He's just he's a different guy every time he steps in that WCW microphone. It's it's it's remarkable. It's a remarkable performance from Terry Funk, who, of course was given the blank canvas because Ric Flair was home selling. It was all Terry that had to paint the picture, and goddamnit,
he did it. And then they did like a press conference on television where Rick Flair took the dais and announced that he had recovered sufficiently that he's been cleared to return and he's looking forward to coming back to face Terry Funk. At of the Great American Bash. They had Jim Heard up there introducing Flair like they were like they were on the same page and you know, talking in positive, glowing terms about our Flair's dedication and so uh, that's
the the on screen harmony. Behind the scenes fair degree of turmoil. Here's a Terry Funk talking about it in a shoot interview. I say broke my back, I broke my sacrum. Yeah, and I was in just an extreme extreme crew. You know. Pay if anybody's had a broken cycrum, I don't know what I'm talking about. And Uh I did that wrestling and WCW at the time, and I'd have to get on an airplane and I couldn't sit down, and I'd have to turn around in the seat and lean
over the seat for the entire flights. You know, I'd just sit down where we landed and took off, you know. Yeah, and uh kept on joining the towns. Uh things happened to the other disappointing things is like uh telling them that that was wrong with me and continue not to continuing on right, but having them not believe me in sending me to several other doctors
didn't make me and them the top. Yeah. That Uh, creating uh tremendous interest in something and having somebody getting so upset with it they couldn't stand it, Which was the flair situation that we had that they're doing and have repeated in WCWN versions of it in WWF to this day. Yeah. Uh from the the from the from the famous uh uh flair of Ron Ron Aims dressing up like Rick Flair. Yeah, to all of that, you know.
I mean, but uh that was uh got treatman his heat from Flair and yeah he he he went to the office and told him about it, and yeah, that was shut down. You know, really putting a paper sack over somebody's head suddenly turned into something that they couldn't play on the air.
And a lot of uh of uh of underlying turmoil at that time, uh point where where I would be doing uh commentary and they wouldn't even let me know what the card was till pre minutes before time, and I was supposed to speak to the producer of the show at that time, and we just absurdities that took place. You know, Yeah, who do you blame for that? You blame the company as a whole, just for complete this organization or individuals, and I mean, I don't want to go into yeah
it was. Yeah. Is there a lot of tension between you and Flair at that time? M somewhat? Yes, Yeah, thank you, Terry. Yes, your your matchup Batch eighty nine with the injuries and everything going in incredible match and you know, was there a lot of pressure on you going into that to have to have the match that you guys? Did I think that you know. I mean again, as I said, all this time and this pressure of that pressure. Yeah, I think I did feel
pressure from that match. Yeah, at that time, had had to be the best, had to be the best. Mmmm. As he talked about there, he did. He broke his sacrum, which is based like your tailboat up your ass, like he broke on a house show match with Sting. I mentioned there the Sting Terry Funk Mike Showdown is setting up a house show program, And that was several weeks out from the big you know return,
a flare of the Great American Bash. The pay per view hinged on him getting his revenge on Terry Funk, and god damn it, Terry Funk wasn't not going to be there. And as he said, he's rankled because he's still making towns with this huge injury and they're doubting if he's really hurt. They're having him go to other doctors to confirm it. It's all that stupid politics of who's on whose side behind the scenes and everything being read through
that lens like, of course he's hurt. Yeah, of course, there's a last minute hiccup where all of a sudden, you know, we can't deliver this right, and he's you know, he's just he's just playing ball, not being told what matches are going to be coming up next, even though his contracts says he's a producer. That's fucking hilarious. It was all in there and of course, you know, being told to tone it down
by the office. So that's the version Terry Funk tells about this time before the situation's changed, and he was around Rick Flair socially and worked right again at ws W and softened at Big Time, and he would never repeat that. You know, you know that that's that's that's such the game right there, that's the that's it. Like something else, Terry Funk was the master I hate you until I like you exactly. You know. It's such situational,
very transactional, very case dependent. As for working in the ring with Terry Funk. Upon his return, even in that you know, state of injury, Rick Flair had some comments reflecting on, well, this is actually Terry Funk having comments on how tough the match was, not just getting in there with the broken sake room, but as the match played out in real time with live rounds. You know what it was, the work you know, but Rick can never realized that when it came to those shops, So
go ahead and beat me to death. I had a fine chest anyhow, he never had been doing to me. Damn bench prescious. But anyhow, Rick Love, he's zero men on that right away. Then I'd come home with my wife would look at me and she'd say, oh my god, she didn't working with blood blood Prance. I just know why. I didn't mean, I've been with blood blusters. You know. You can hear Flair like trying to like pipe up and stop Terry from Nope, nope, nope, Flair, No, no, you hurt the guy. I went out
there and that was a shoot. Accept it. And he's very sensitive about that because remember Brett Hart criticized him for that, a Brett who didn't love taking those hard knife fetch chops. You know, to Brett, the art is not actually hurting the other guy. I know, right, that's exactly so Fla was very much in his feelings about being told that he went out there and just brutalized people with chops to get himself over, which is great.
I mean, Funk was more than game, but he but Flair can't even stand to sit there and hear Funk pointed out right, like, just accept the fact that you fucking did it. He starts olling, what about wah waho with big hands? He chopped harder. It's like, okay, brick, he chopped talking about wow chopping, yo chopping like a bitch?
So uh, why are you? Why are on my ass? And so that's like, yeah, they're both doing a smile and backslap sitting right next to each other in that are a video feature they did, like ah what they call face off where they sit two guys down at the same time to talk about their love it. I love it and it's wonderful to see how differently shaded the comments are about working together in that setting versus when they did shoots in isolation, in particular Terry Funks. And so it's all building towards
the Great American Bash. And while we've done the match in the archives, I do think it's appropriate to do it again because this is Flair coming back off the neck injury. This is Terry Funk putting his absolute best foot forward. This is why he got after the contract to do this match, to
do this pay per view, and it did great business. It was the first bright spot that WCW had seen in years in terms of a really respectable house, a pay per view by rate that showed that if they did, in fact put the right guys out there with the right storyline and it all clicked, that they could draw it. Wasn't this sort of like black hole where no matter what they did, the fans weren't willing to support it.
Yeah, nineteen eighty nine and Terry Funk in particular showed that there was there was something that they could reach for, even in a WWBF dominated marketplace. So let's go to Disc sixteen, Boss Disc sixteen, and it's going to start at zero zero, zero zero, right at the very top. July twenty third, nineteen eighty nine, widely considered the greatest pay per view in
the history of professional wrestling, the nineteen eighty nine Great American Dash. After matches Sting versus Mudo and Luca versus Steamboat and the Wargames, we get Flair returning to make Terry Funk pay for what he did to him at Wrestle War and all he said in the promos that we've sampled here on the lapsed Funk Are you ready? I'm ready three two one play Ladies and gentlemen. Flair,
Yeah he is six time. Whoa baby please a gentleman high praisen the world Chippy nature Well, then on every arm Boss and and Morph that's that's yep, kind of nature boy and wearing kind of a baby face smile, baby face fire jem gem. I don't even understand where I am right now. Pop Coddle on the call with good Old Jr. There's the two rings of the war Games. They set off pop Gun Pyro above the rings for
the return nature Boy. Rick Flair is first time in nineteen one has he defeated Dusty Roads and try to raise him Elboss, I'm ready ready for the Funker to do it on pay per view of course, and even though he went through New York Man, he never had the chance to go all out
Terry Funk on pay per view until this moment. This is the moment on pay per view and Terry Funk and Flair talks him in the isle away and the chops are flying in Baltimore. Baltimore was a great market for WW relatively speaking for years, and this Funk Flair match, if the gate was any indication and the buyer rate was any indication he played no small part. Funk is just rattling the ringside railing. He's amongst the people. Everyone look at
the just beside himself. That Flair got to him that quickly, in that aggressive way to those fans. They're talking ship to him, but they're backing up the second he looks at him. I'd be horrified of him. Kidding me, God, I would have loved to go with the show. The brother Oh bunk one leg over the rail, trying to go after fans again. Rick Flair attacks off the handle and now he's pummeling Harry Funk across the
time keeper's table. I love those buntings, those red, white and blue buntings, not only the care Oh jesus, Oh, he's just fucking there. He goes, grabs a chair, and Laundry goes Garry and Michael Capetta getting out of the way. Flair scooping up. He's right back to it. He's climbing the he's why is he going over the rail, Because you're fucking crazy gold here. I love like maybe the subtletee that like, yeah, he's crazy, but he's actually doing it because he's kind of afraid to
get in the ring. Yep. And he's so mad at himself that he's intimidated by his opponent that he's taking it out on ringsiders. But he enters the fray Collem, okay believe in that Fair, I'm okay believing that. What's that? Boss, I said, I'm okay believing that. Oh now, Funk, I want to work with Chop. Yes, yes, here comes Flair. I want to chop and turns Funk almost all the way around were good, middle aged and crazy, big chop over the top. There
he coaches, right. Hogan was the beneficiary, Jared Lawler was the beneficiary, Dusty Rhodes was the beneficiary. And the fans, the fans and fans. Oh Funk catches up to Flair and posts him on the outside his baby face. Flair, Man, it's a you know, I mean, it's when was it so before this? When was the last time he was a baby face before this? It's hard to say. I mean, probably the Carolina's in the seventies, honestly, well, eighty three he was a babyface
against Starcade. Yeah he was, that's Charlie race. But by eighty four he's a heel again and certainly eighty five through. Yeah, I guess it's been the first time and it was eighty three. Yeah, because remember we did the star Kad Memorial tour. We were noting how starkly different Rick Flair's
tone was on promos. He's much more sportsman like. Yeah, Calm collected that was who he was in like his formative decade, first decade, and Crockett, even when he was a heel and he was flamboyant, he still kind of had a little more of a serious tone. Yoms to his promos outside and Funk brings in Flair the hard way with the verticals who play he's nice. Bunk floats over lateral, pressed Tommy Young down for the two, and Flair pops the shoulder up eight years ago. Another supplex on older here
from the Funker. Oh but Flair puts the block on Ric FLAIRLA was the only one is first title eight years prior. That's the nuts. Oh, we just saw it. We saw him Russell Terry Funk during that ragn. I know, it's still crazy to think though that it was only eight years at this point. I know, I know, it just seems like the equivalent of twenty years today. Yep, yep, to see something that would look that much of a different era, to see like the transformation in Terry
Funk alone in eight years. Right, So flare up to the apron Funk, rabbing him by the hair and driving chops behind the head Funk using the blade of his taped hand. And look at that Rick Flair with a head butt, Thank you very much. Flaire looking at Suplex Funk out of the rain. No, no, nope, they fall and I'm okay with that.
Yeah, it was a hlacious collapse that made sense. Yep. Yeah, nine times out of ten, if you try to sup like some motherfucker out of the ring against his will, you're probably gonna both come crashing down because he's gonna fight like hell to not take that blow. Yeah. Ok, the chops on the floor, that's an exchange. That's all flat chest on Funk. Man. There's no meat there. I know that he's got, Like, yeah, there's there's there, really isn't. It's just such
a fucking I don't even know what to call it. Just just bone, bone and skin. Okay, this guy swing go out of the eyes as well. Claire rolls back into the ring, in agony, Terry Funk in pursuit. I really like you gotta wonder about the conditioning of Flair. I don't know if I have to bow. I know I'm clanding up a pile driver now in the ring. Now it's that dreaded flare. Can't take all of those Oh back drop and Funk spells violently to the floor. Terry Funk
thrown out of the ring. Man, I think it's another's it's really conclusionable. Yeah, that was a big part of this too. Is Funk revealed Gary Hart as his manager. Oh, that's right. It's like a surprise element for a Flair. I like a Flair trying to break Terry Funk's neck wrenching into the floor. Funk cell, it's like the Zeus neck break. He's doing Gary Hart motionless. Yep, his head's moving, but his body
is not. Yep. He's thinking of all the ways. Yes, he can kill if he needs so. I mean, that's it, right, I mean, let's big. Let's be Frank here. Want ah Flair at the back of the head. You drop a US in the back of the
head of Terry Funk is now in an extremely vulnerable position. JJ Dillon back there behind h Gary Harder song, not really sure he was working for Vince by this point and another he dropped by the nature boy pulling the knee pad down, turns over a Funk lateral price hook at the outside leg, gets two? Or does the champione the player thinking pile driver? Here there we go turnabout's fair play for the nature boy. Oh yes, don't see many brick Flair pile drivers. Man, Oh, look at him, do the
fucking Homer Simpson. There Funks spinning around like a top on the mat. Look at him, flingers. What is he doing? He's such a nut that it's perfect. That's the that's the moment for Rick gets his hands on Funk and pile drives his ass. You can do it again to triple pumps him too, whether it's Jerry Lawler or Rick Flair. If you're gonna pile drive Terry Funk, we're in business. And Terry Funk's on his fucking feet. And then he stumbles through the ropes again. I love the h I
love those those like half circle American flag things. They look like it's a fucking you know, like we're at the town hall in like eighteen eighty seven or something. The bunting Yeah, out to the Aisleway we go, as Flair continues wrenching the neck of Terry Funk and attacking him from every which way back into the fray. Now there's the wounded funk er Rick Flair gon to capitalize slapping the shit out of Terry Funk. Here we go, Here we go. Yes, ah, that was a bad punch, but you can't
win them all. Fun comes alive with the series of jabs. Flair hits the ropes and drops Funks with a forearm cover two little kicks out. But he taught me, you'm making the count from the outside of the ring. Do whatever he's got to do based on ring positioning. Look at that fucking camera crane, right Jesus Christ, huge backsupplex by. Flair puts down Funk flosition for the figure four. We go, Doug Dillinger board out of his fucking mind. He really knows how to convey electricity. Step over, Flair
hooks it up. He's got the figure four locked out. Oh fun trying to maneuver, and we see the branding iron is in the ring. Yep, I believe Gary hardis like the branding iron Face figure four will relinquished. Just Gary hearts up on the ring, apron distracting Tommy Young, Terry Funk. What's his butt there? Oh my god, I can't think of his fucking name anymore. Bishoff's partner Jason Hervey, Jason, thank you. Jason Hervey is sitting on the hard camera side. If you saw him, Yeah,
he's lucky he was at this show. So Flair is run the razor, selling the branding iron shot and Funk of course peppering closed fists right in that cut. What a battle looks like. We are the women in dresses. I know, I know, what do you fucking wearing a dress for it wrestling show? There's Hervey right there? Oh yeah, yeah, oh, look at that fucking He claps for his godfather. Hey came out of his seat for Terry Funk. Spile driver. Flaire is dead cover by Funk
one two and Flair gets the fun under that funds out. Tommy Young, calm down, brother, calm down, Gary, Michael Flair got in and got the opportunity the uh oh uh oh ring side. He's removing the uh the blue ring mats, exposing the concrete dable you never know what he's going to do. Terry Serry's on his feet. He's like excited now, Terry brand Gary Hard got a couple of the old Hogan Neatch tricks. Here. He's choking in the tape using the branding iron of the head bloody mat.
Tell me young, all right, pat rabs Funk by the hair to try to stop him from choking Flair with the wrist tape. You can just deeply Genknisky, Jesus Christ stopping Gene Kinisky, looking Doug Dull and Jesus like yeah, all right, to the floor. Then exposed concrete. Terry Funk. This is lining drivers to do this. Jason Hervey can not miss it. He is so excited. He stood up, fucking walked over and it's so
funny. Claire with a huge backdrop to Counterfunks pile driver and they both landed on top of each other on the stacked up part of the the ring mat that Funk could peeled back. Claire still forced to crawl around on all fours. Terry funks to his feet first up to the apron now as the funker. Oh, and he goes directly down head first. He's such a nut he just dropped his body on Rick Flair's head, basically off the ring apron.
I don't know how this guy comes at every match. He comes at you from an angle vent you couldn't possibly anticipate, right accenter rang the Funker with a swinging neck breaker. I'll tell you that could. Jason Hervety wrapped his enraptured yep, very very intently looking watching on another swinging neck breaker by the Funker. The end, Funk screaming, say it, say it at Rick Flair, but a foreshadowing. Perhaps you never know what he was going to do. It gets you in trouble. Oh yeah, by the way,
doing this broken sacrum. Third neckbreaker, Flair bloodied, convulsing on the can. You can see it just pouring out of his fucking pouring hot, very heart, screaming, Come on, Terry, take the pin. But the Funker wants to lay in more pun wishment. This is Rick Flair, vulnerable babyface, right, yep, yep. Nothing more dramatic than Flair's blood leaking into his into his blonde hair. Time was visual. I'm's trying to grab the branding iron, but Flair kicked him enough. Flair has the branding
iron a boom. Wow. There he is colaps Funk in the head with it. Funk collapses through the ropes to the floor. Tommy Young didn't see it. He was admonishing Gary Hart. There he's cut himself. You can see it. You can see it. You can see his fucking left hand just gigging, gigging. Terry Funk come to Baltimore to slice his forehead open so that people deem him worthy of the ticket, right, I mean, look, he's he's here. He is here to show the fans that he
means business, that he's a serious Series Is contender. There's the color and like you said, you call that it's Flair sends Funk headfirst into the ring Post Jr. Going off And I've never seen a more physically contested battle for the corner. Now, Flair mounting Funk and here come the close fists to the cut of the Funker. Turnabouts, fair play. Tommy Young is like horrified about blood spread and blood and all that shite. He's like convulsing in
the corner. He's like a corpse right now, stumbling out of the corner like a zombie. Funny enough, he's a corpse now. Shit. Funk lands on his seat, can barely stand the punishment of Rick Flair piling up here in Baltimore. They've battled in both rings. They've battled a little up the aisleway and the floor. In the crowd, Jr. Screaming like all this the lines about how we're real wrestling and all that. Yeah, God, look at the fucking blood coming out of Dairy Funk. He's a mess.
Slaps in the corners the Funk or Flair takes off, flies but misses and crash his knee first into the buckling. And that's a perfect setup for the spinning toe hold, and Terry Funk, even his discombobulated state, to be thinking just that. He steps over spinning toe hold Jr. Calling out that that's how he won the title, which is not true. Step over inside Terry Wow. Claire reverses on top two, Rick Flair Wow reverses the inside cradle and pins Terry Funk. Great great finish, and they rejoice.
In Baltimore. Gary Hart is not happy, but he takes a show, trying to dig into the heel managers. I don't think Terry's done. Huh oh, Murda, there comes Muda oh, because because the fucking green mist would make you bump. Oh yeah, funk. Flaire hits the deck on that. And now this is kind of like the announcement the unveiling of j Tex Corporation, the Gary Hart led stable that would include Dick Slater, Dragon Slayer, the Great Muda and Terry Funk and then Flair forming you know,
a baby face alliance with Sting and the rest. So this all plays out in a prolonged way. Sting comes out, they fight all the way up yep. Jim heard With criticized Flaiir later for fighting outside of the camera lights because because he's looking at you know, nitpicking and understand and what do you have, Flair? I don't understand. I mean we're sitting here trying to you know, I'm trying to see your face, and you're finding fucking Dylan
Flair. Fucking moron. What a moron from getting fucking loser. He is, like, you're supposed to be head of security, idiot, Like you've got no there we go. I forgot that Sting had kind of dirty blonde hair at this point. It's not the bleach blonde. No, it wasn't peroxided. He was he was letting it darken like it's nineteen ninety six, so we can pause on that, right. It's total legendary stuff there by the way. You know what I love, You know what I love more
about this more than anything. I love seeing all this classic WCW NWA footage with the WW logo. Oh god, yeah, I'm a lower left hand the height that's that's money right there. That was the thing man. Once they released their DVDs, like, this is the highest quality versions of these matches by a mile. Yeah, But I just love seeing the WW logo, and so every time you see it, it's probably going to be the WW version of it because yep, you know, it's just such high quality
compared to people's toes. So I just sent you a little blurb here. This is Terry Funk reflecting on working with Rick Flair here in Crash Here we go in Regardless of how he felt personally about my promos, Flair was a pleasure to work with. I truly enjoyed every one of our matches. We had some very solid encounters. How could I not love a match when I was in there with one of the best performers in the world. But I
paid a price for those matches. One night, I went over the top rope and a match with Sting and hit the rail outside, cracking my sacrum. It wasn't anybody's fault, just a bad landing. I ended up riding around on a plane every day, going from town to town, and I couldn't sit on the plane except for takeoff and landing. The only way I could stand it was to kneel on my seat facing the person behind me. Imagine I also had a nasty staff. In fiction, I had torn my
bursa and my elbow swelled to the size of a baseball. I got myself some I got myself some needles from needles from from a veterinarian an amarilla, as you do, and drained the damn thing myself every night. I can't think of a better place to get was he fucking Patrick Swayze? Jesus Christ? I was thinking I was some kind of a doctor, but I was almost Doctor Kavorkian because I almost eliminated myself while draining the fluid out. I
was letting germs in and the result was a staff infection. I just didn't feel like I had the time to go to a real doctor about it. But Doctor Funk ended up ended up putting me out of action for a couple of weeks. He wasn't one of my better characters. When I went into shock from it, PAULI was the one who took me to the hospital. They operated on me, and it was quite a deal. But Paul was there for me when everybody else was gone, and he stayed with me.
No one else did. What heat was left after I toned down my interviews wait for the last couple of weeks, built up to a main event and match at the July pay per view, the Great American Bash eighty nine, And what I'd said must be have done the trick because the show was a sellout in Baltimore and it drew the best gate for a live show the company ever had until nineteen ninety six. Yeah, a little bit more here. Yeah, I had a lot of heat with those NWA fans almost everywhere I
went. One night in Marietta, I was on my way to the ring to Russell Flair and a woman went after me with a butcher knife. Now, why would you defend a banana nose instead of a good looking funker. Now you'll notice I did say almost anywhere. Flair and I had a match during our nineteen eighty nine campaign in Amarilla where no funk had ever been a heel. Oh God, I would have given anything to see that shit. Even if I'd wanted to be one that night, those people weren't gonna let
me. They booed the hell out of Rick Flair. He didn't He didn't get flustered because he understood it, having been through the same kind of thing in the Carolinas. To this day, no matter how big a heel is everywhere else, they still love him in the Carolinas. And that's how it
was for me when he and I wrestled in Amarilla. The truth was, when I went out to the other territories and played my heel role, that only made me a bigger baby face back home, because a big part of my routine was to talk about how great Amarilla and Texas were and how crappy every other place was. There was no way I could ever have turned heel
and Amarilla the people just wouldn't have accepted it. Indeed, in one last flurry, if you can handle it, leaving up to the Havoc match, having quickly, do you remember this one Yeah, that's so tag matching the thunder cage or whatever. Right, Yeah, the misfired Pyro and the paper catching the paper mache catches fire on the top of the cave, right, and it's just complete garbage, late shit show. But that's you know, that brawl we saw with Flair and Sting versus Muda and Funk. That's setting
that first Halloween Havoc show up. Leaving up to the Havoc match. We had a deal where I attacked Flair by putting a plastic bag over his head and suffocate you know about this, and then we did the angle after that, But that was just that that brunch. Do you know about this angle? No, this is always always like the second, if not the first, thing that comes up when people talk about Terry Funk and Rick Flair. At eeteen eighty nine an angle on TB where Flair comes with flares out there.
It's a big, you know, group brawl, gang warfare and what have you, and Terry Funk sneaks up behind Ric Flair and puts a fucking plastic bag over his head. Oh my god, go ahead, I was going to kill the son of a bitch. I wanted to eat him like a pancake. Uh, that deal could have been extremely hot if TB. That's yeah, if TBS had gone along with it. They ended up getting
so many complaints about it. They never replayed it. People were calling in and complaining about it so strongly you'd have thought I was really trying to murder Flair. Maybe the complaints from Vince McMahon because that angle did get over it. That was so tame compared to the stuff they do today. If you
did that same angle today, they'd just laugh at you. While all this was going on, in nineteen eighty nine and McMahon's were testifying in New Jersey and to get out of paying taxes to the Athletic Commission, they admitted in public that wrestling was pre determined. Right after I heard about it, I thought it was lousy. Well, in a few weeks though, I thought
it was one of the wisest things they could have done. Ultimately, what it did was make the business stronger because it opened us up to the media. The big issue of whether it was a real sport was gone, and so the media didn't have to harp on have that to harp on bullshit, Yeah, which meant they could focus on the kinds of stories that could improve
public awareness of his business. It was the smartest thing he could do, not the smartest thing that we could do, but it was the smartest thing for him because of the ridiculous commission situation and because of the change in dealing with the media. So there it is the state of play post Great American Bash. We're now building up to the Terry Funk Ric flair Ie Quick Match, the famous Clash of the Champions battle in New York. And we got to put a plastic bag on Ric Flair's head. Boss, Oh my god,
I have to do it. So let's go to disc sixteen where we are, and let's go to fifty seven fifty three. This is from the Clash of the Champions September twelfth, nineteen eighty nine, bench clearing brawl, if you will, and the moment of truth. Are you ready almost? Okay? Three two? Wait? Fifty seven? I got flairty seven fifty three. Okay it says it says Class to the Champions. Is that correct? On the bottom of the screen, that's correct? Okayre we go three
two one play. So here we see Dick Slater, who was in the j Tex Corporation working over flair fre there is look at that he's playing there to pray. Who's tying it off? Funk is deranged? Funk Funk is deranged. What's happened? Trying a ride? He's been big by Slader and Mood enough fuck me up? Past it fine and he's crying. He's tied it away. Look for his leg. He's turning to chump. Literally, don't lie found a champion. I'm plastic bad over his face. Claire cannot
praise this. Steve, Steve, he has his eyes cut up. Somebody's trying to cut in his bite. The branding fucking fasting to the ring. Come on, put your fingers through some Steve they've got standing down. Slader has that branding iron, Muda holding stings leg If big out of the ring, Steve's gonna be hipped across it. Wow, run across the foot with that branding iron. They got him right there. They painted like they they banned them, branding yarn on his leg. Fancy, that's hiss chaotic.
This is out the lab the phone. We gotta ships may tat just stratified. We got we'll get I'm trying to care to take this break. We can't take this pup. We have to we Well, you better don't go away. Look at your cameras taking don't go away. We'll be that yep, pause it up. Wow, what did you just see? That was wild? I mean he puts it. He comes up from behind, He puts the plastic bag on his on his h on his head, and Jesus
Christ just almost like a clan mask. It's a big white, yeah, plastic bag that comes to a point and he just just wraps it around Flair's head and Flair keeps it on his head. He goes through the ropes to the floor, and you know that the panic in Jim Ross's voice, it is it is an intense angle and uh it really is. It earned our friend Jim heard a meeting with Ted Turner to hear him tell it. Well, one of those ideas out of the committee was to have Terry Funk make
use of a plastic bag on Rick Flair. And supposedly that got you a face to face meeting with Ted Turner. That wasn't all that pleasant. That's right, Yeah, that's right. He called me in said, I don't know if you remember our first meeting and I said, yes, we had lunch in the Omni and you asked me to find a Bury told girl that could beat all the gods. He said, that's the first meeting we had. He I mean he did it as a joke really, but you know
it reminds you of a meeting. Sure, And he told you then, he said, I told you then what I wanted. And he said, this is the first time you've digressed from that. And it didn't take him long to call me on the carbon and say, hey, we're not doing
that. A reference there to you know, Ted Turner saying we don't want hyper violence, we don't want blood, which got Dusty Rhodes fired, of course in his right the fit he threw and yeah, this is so you're bringing Terry Funk to be Terry Funk, to pick business up and to get things to be more intense. That is definitely going to clash with that edict from Ted Turner. Eventually, Yeah, for sure. And there it was
there in the plastic bag angle that was infamous. Really the second had happened, and even more so as the years went on and people realized that behind the scenes component of it. Here's Rick Flair on what It was like being on the receiving end of Terry Funk deciding that this is what's going to go ahead and happen tonight. It was ad lib Terry Funk. I didn't even know what was coming really really, because there was a lot of heat.
There was a lot of heat behind the scenes for that wasn't there. Oh my good, we almost lost TV. Well what was said? Who said? What? Where did the heat come from? Jim Barnett? Oh my god, what have you done? I mean, it's kind of like the time Brody, not meaning to by any means, we're a TV in Atlanta, Brody was storming around and he kicked the kid's wheelchair and and the kid. The kid didn't follow the wheelchair and anybody. He just rolled into the
crowd. I mean, like then, you know, and not an attempt by any means hurt the kid. But that's just how crazy we got back in those days. We didn't we didn't we didn't think out of the box a big picture. We just were focusing on trying to draw money and entertainment. And you know, we probably could have been a little more conservative in our thought process, but we weren't. No, no, no, I
say, bring back the plastic bag. That was entertainment. Yeah, it was, yeah, considered, I couldn't almost get it off my you know, you understand what Terry. Terry doesn't work. It's a shoot. When he put that bag on me, I had it was a fight to get it off. You have no idea, not that he was trying to I don't know for sure. He may have been trying to give me the pass, trying to kill you. Please well pass out for sure. Now, uh, that would have looked good. You know, listen, it's a
fucking it's a fucking plastic bag. Flare, stick a fucking finger in the bag and open it up, you idiot. What a fucking moron. Here's the thing. If you know that this is an angle that's supposed to get it, you know, get over with people. You don't do that. You you trust it, Terry Funk's gonna do. You know what it takes to protect you. But if you want to get heat off doing it, you don't just pop it with your finger. No, I understand, Well,
it's but it looks it. That was the first thing. No, because you know what, actually it diminished the experience for me, the fact that he didn't try to take it out. That the moment that fucking that that that he left, that Funk left, the fact that he didn't get in there and just fucking poke a hole and and you know, so he could breathe through his mouth or something. I just I was out of it. Interesting. Yeah, I think it's a great angle up until that moment
when Terry Funk leaves him, it gets ruined. He was moving too much flair. He should have sold it like he had passed out. Yeah, right, right, And that's kind of what he was saying in that clip. He's not entirely sure that Terry Funk didn't go out there to make it look as good as possible and actually try to see if he could suffocate him for a second. Now, of course that's hyperbole, but again it happens again with Terry. You know, like they're gonna say that about anybody else.
You're not gonna make that little comment about anybody else where. I don't know, shit, Maybe you know, maybe it was real, he was trying to kill me, Maybe he saw red for a second. And you know, people are willing to believe that about Terry Funk. That's how good
he was. They were willing to believe. Be it the front row fan that he hops the rail to get in their face of or be it even good Flair himself that in the heat of the moment, he could very well just become somebody that could give a fuck about you and just cared about getting the angle over. How about back to Wrestle War eighty nine, we talked
about that pile driver on the table and how impack phlip was. Here's Rick Flair talking about how how little he says he really about what he was in for, and how much trust he had to put in the hands of the funker who was committed to making this, let's say impactful. Now, I was gonna ask you didn't even tell me. He said, follow me, follow me, Rick, follow me. I said, follow you where? I mean? You know, you know Terry right. I don't even think
he knew he was gonna do until we were out there. Well, it was a pile driver onto a table. Yeah, and I'm assuming the table wasn't it all gimmicked? It didn't break. In fact, you can see your head and neck bounce off. It actually added to the injury angle. But so you had no idea you were going to be pile driven on the table. Absolutely none, and would have never gone for it had I known Funk is crazy. You don't understand this. I've wrestled a lot of crazy
guys. Brody Hansoon to no where is crazier than Terry Funk. And Terry Funk was really tough too, so he didn't mind taking it. I hit Terry Funk harder than I've ever hit anybody in my life when I was chopping, as you've seen. I mean, Larry and I have had some really good exchanges. It's a different time in life, and I can't you know. I talked to Terry now probably once a week. He's finally back home.
He's been in bad help, but he's he came, he came back on it, but he got out of the facility was in that was helping him get back on his feet. He's home, and God, he's tougher than you know. He's like, he's like hard. I rased one of those guys that's too tough to die, and so I'm just thankful that I ever ever had the opportunity to wrestle with him. So there you have it. Why does he have to fucking yell all the time Flair No Mark Madden.
Yeah, that's a great question. He's fucking so yelling, yelling, yelling, yelling, shot up. I know you caly take it in small doses. Actually you can't even take it in small doses. I can't. I can take it into zero dose and last long the Flair Mat and Madden podcast. Yeah, so who came up with the plastic bag idea? Now that it's sort of like, you know, anathema, Now that it's like the third rail at Turner Broadcasting, no one you know ever laid claim.
In fact, it basically came down to, like Funk just decided to do it on the spot. That was probably the only tenable explanation, rather than you know, this person approved it. This person approved it. Like Walter Hobb's signature on the blank page, that's that's Jim Hurd by the way, Yeah, Walter Hobbs and Jim hed w C the guy who comes in and tells him to meet on Christmas Eve. That's Dead Turner. Yeah, yeah,
that that's Christmas Eve. And and uh be good having the loop but uh thanks to and I can't wait for you to hear this pitch, Hobbs finished, tremendous, but thanks to the tone of the one of a kind, tone of the one person I like, who's a wallflower during all this chaos, Who's who's watching, who's monitoring, who's listening but who's not necessarily engaging, who's absorbing but not necessarily contributing, who is making careful mental notes
of the chess pieces moving around on the board with his back to the wall at all times. We turned to the book of You You're You're in danger. Yes, motherfucker knows what's up, and miss Motherfucker proposed the angle from his book. Terry Funk was preparing for a long program with NWA World champion Brick Flair and was figuring that it might be his last big run. His brother Dorry suggested that he asked me to handle his affairs during what was sure
to be a grueling program for him. Even though I just turned down managing Vader and passed on Sid Vicious and Danny Spivey, managing Terry Funk was different. First of all, I wouldn't be developing him, just watching out for him and taking care of his business. Second of all, I had managed him on other occasions, like in Florida, Thirdly, after all Terry and I had been through together, how could I possibly say no. Anytime I could ever do anything for the Funk Boys, I did it. I've managed
them both and wrestled them both. We've always had a good relationship. But I became Terry's manager. I made things that as easy as possible for him. That way, the only thing he had to concern himself with was the match itself. Everything else I would handle his positioning on television, his interview content, angles, finishes, and things like that. Terry left all that up to me because he knew who I was and what I had accomplished,
it was comfortable with my choices. A great part of my success was the trust that I gained with the guys that I managed. Terry knew that if something needed to be done, I was ready to stand up and do it, and if there was something that needed to be changed, I was willing to fight with the office in order to fix it. And I never worried about getting fired. I just didn't care. Terry Funk's matches with Ric Flair were drawing big money, but during their run, Terry got an infection in
his arm. Overpair to three weeks his arm kept getting worse and worse. It was discolored, oozing pus and sickening looking. It also had an aroma to it, and it didn't smell healthy. Anyone who knows Terry knows he doesn't complain about being hurt every night. As I wrapped his arm up, I would nack, Terry, you've got to take time off. I'm wrestling the nature Boy on top and full buildings making money, and you are too. He would argue, that's true. I would concede, However, your
armor is really bad. It's beginning to smell. Even with this Terry Funk, Even with this Terry Funk attitude, he got to the point where he was physically unable to go out and perform every night. No amount of money's worth asking risking rather your arm over. And it was obvious to me that he needed to go to the hospital. So I told the booking committee, the people responsible for taking care of the talent, that Terry had to take time off to recuperate his arm. They just looked at me and said that
he felt fine. You know how Terry is, I argued. Finally, I told Terry, I don't care what you are. The booking committee thinks I'm taking to the hospital right now, or I'm calling your wife and telling her about your condition. Don't do that. He panicked. My girls would go crazy. I don't care your son, your son of a bit. Yes, I don't care. You could end up losing your arm. Terry
is an old war horse and will never accept defeat. It wasn't until under thread of me calling his wife that he finally agreed to go to the hospital. After getting him to the hospital, I called his wife and told her that he was okay but in the hospital. She immediately jumped on a plane and came to see him. By that time, Terry and I were friends
for twenty three years, and nobody knew him better than me. If I hadn't made him go to the hospital, he would have kept wrestling and gotten a staff infection that would have put him out of the business for good, or he would have gotten a blood clot and ended up dead. Terry Funk and I were trying to come up with a big idea for his return from
the hospital when we came up with the now infamous bag angle. There was a clash of the champions from Columbia, South Carolina and Terry and I decided to attack Rick Flair, put a bag over his head and suffocate him on national television. We were really worried that because we were doing it after his match, Rick wouldn't be able to get enough air. After having a long ruling match, which is Rick's forte, It's not uncommon for wrestlers to get
winded and becomes very hard to breathe. Therefore, if you ever see a tape of the angle, you'll notice that before I leave, I walk around the pole and look right at Book to make sure he hadn't really suffocated before I left. Wow, what a business that angle? Way to make sure that just got to make sure. That angle was way over the top for
TBS, and their phone lines lit up moments after we did it. People were incensed that Terry and I tried to suffocate someone on TV, and it was so controversial that when the clash reaired two hours later, they did not run the bag angle. I didn't know that. After the fallout, Jim Hurd wanted to know exactly whose idea it was, and I ended up taking the heat for it. Interestingly, that particular angle is still a hot button issue because when the WWE put it on their Best of Rick Flair DVD.
Recently England made them take the bag angle out before it could be sold over there. Wow, that's something. So we're building to the eye quick match, the Final Collision, the final clash between Rick Flair and Terry Funk here in nineteen eighty nine, and we've got some promos to set the table and then we're going to watch this puppy to close out the national era for the
Fucker. So let's go to I Believe it's the same Disc one, fourteen fifty six, get ourselves a bevy of promos here from the Funker having returned from the aforementioned arm injury. This is after the Halloween Have It Cage match, as disastrous as that, and we're going to go all the way through to the November fifteenth, nineteen eighty nine New York Knockout event, Rick Flair versus Terry Funk one last time in the I Quit Match. Are you ready?
Yes? Three? Two? One? Play, Oh No? The Big Class of Champions nine event live as it happens on November the fifteenth, right here on TBS the superstation New York Knockout Live from Troy, New York the main event, a non title event with I Quit Rules nature Boy Rick Flair, the final confrontation, perhaps with Terry Funk. But I understand you've got something to say to Rick Flair and you want some special stipulation to smirk
off of your face. Rods. I know that you realize what happened in the Thunderdome and you think that I led j Tex Corporation down, and so do all of you people out there. Let me tell you something. The NWA is not big enough for myself and Rick Flair. That's why I suggested an I Quit match. I hate his guts, Rick Flair hates my guts. But I'll say one thing to Rick Flair. Rick Flair, you're a tough individual and you are about as tough of an opponent as I've ever gone
up against. And it's not big enough. This area is not big enough. This country is not big enough in wrestling. And that's why I want you in an I Quit match. But after it's over with, let's make this the final match, and if you beat me, I will walk across here and I will say to you, Rick Flair, you are the better man when you shake his hand and say he's the better man if he beats you. If he beats me, I will walk across the ring and say that to him. But if I beat him, he has to do the
same to me. Special guest today on the talk show Funk Grill Flair. I can't believe this is where we get that from one but before that, simple mind people, a story. Once upon a time there existed a head, no arms, no body, no legs, just ahead, and that had prayed for a miracle. Well that miracle took place. That had turned into a tomato, a rotten tomato. To you, simple minded people,
know what the moral of this story is. The moral of this story is quit while you're ahead, and that goes for you too, Rick Flair, Quit while you're ahead and while you still exist. Do you understand me, Flair? You know, Terry Funk, I understand you all too well. I sit here and you wonder why why am I here tonight? How could I turned down the opportunity to be on the most prestigious talk show in thee of American television, Funk's Grill Me turn that down? Not a chance.
I'm here and I'll make me a star, pal hell, I will make you a star because I will make you look so foolish today and also on November the fifteenth. You see, I don't want your belt, that gold belt. I don't want your family. I don't want your money. I want something that's more valuable than that ever will be. I want your pride. I want to take fat from you and Troy New York. I want
to see those tears coming out of your eyes. I want to see you running from this old dog with those rabbit pellets or raisins falling all over the ring. That's what I want. I want you to crawl underneath that ring, and I want to throw you the microphone flare and I want you to screen al so loud. I quit, I quit, trifup. You are the better man, and I want to see your arm reach up from underneath there in shame and shake my hand out of fear. Can you understand that
Rick are not? Do you know how much I hate you? Yeah? As the matter of fact, if you're asking me and give me a chance to answer, now, I know exactly how much you hate me. And you have to remember something, Terry Funk. I'm not worried about you taking that gold belt, and I'm actually very very impressed with the fact that right here you're addressing this on as serious a note as it needs to be addressed, because I'm not talking about championship belts or not talking about women or cars.
We're talking about something that both you and I have held higher than anything else and held first and foremost in our two careers. And that's that's integrity and that's guts. You know, I'm criticized a lot these days because a lot of people say, well, professional wrestling, there's way too violent. Maybe Rick Flair's outlived this sport. Take that for what it means. But the bottom line is professional wrestling, like football, is a violent contact sport.
And in Troy, New York, a national television funk, two of the greatest combatants in the history of professional sports are going to meet head up, not for a title belt, but for one another's pride, for one another's guts, for one another's integrity. One of us is gonna say I quit, and I'm telling you it's not gonna be me bringing on baby, come on, yeah, come on, yeah, yeah, come on, I'm ready for you. Yeah. We don't need any holler in her screaming.
Let's just go out there and see who's the best. Let's in there. Hey, I got a better one than that. Why don't you bring everything that you've ever had in your wife, which is everything you have right now, and that's your reputation, pal, because don't forget the fire line. Not only are you gonna say I quit, but you're gonna crawl across that ring and in front of fifty million people, you're gonna say Rick Flair long shaking his head back and forth, Yep, yeah, never, never,
never will I do that? Tentlem at ringside here in Troy, New York with Gary Hart and Terry funkt. Here's a show later tonight. You or Rick Flair will say I quit to this whole crowd in the world. You shut up for one minute. Hey, Rick Flair and I see eye to eye on very few things. He likes to ride first class in an airplane. I ride coach. He likes to drive a Mercedes. I drive an old pickup truck. He likes a fast lane. I like the double cross rams. One thing we have in common, no, as we both
love the sport of professional wrestling. He says he's not a quitter. Well, I'm not quitting here in New York at the knockout, only one person is going to quit? Is that right or not? Because you remember you are Texan. Your daddy was great, your brother was Me and Junior were the only two brothers that ever held the world title. Don't at faris Texas here tonight? All of Texas is watching. All of Texas is watching brother. Don't let him down most pointing, go let me out. Oh,
Jerry, I am not going to let you down. But I don't want your help. I don't need anyone's help. I don't need your help either, Jim Ross, not because I am the best. Flare's a quitting and here we go. It's fifteenth Anthony nin Troy New York. Funk has the mic for them. One chance to quit right now? Wow, Flare, he might as well save his breath. The coss Flair is not gonna walk away from this or any other fight. Oh yeah, Flair didn't accept.
Yeah. Is this first time you're seeing this one? Boss? Yeah, I've never seen this one before. Sit back and enjoy Flair. Funk. I quit TBS in the end of the eighties for the Funker or no, the duck underneath Flair fires a chopping terry immediately head over heels to the floor and he's shaking the rails. Hah oh, sick at this guy. He's
such a fucking he's so great. He's leaning gut first over the edge of the rail like he's trying to lunge at the fans and throwing punches that he knows full well won't connect with anybody, but still too damn close for comfort. Back in the ring now, Funk circling Flare with the Duke's up call her an elbow and I don't want that. Flare with the chop, add
another, add another light up TBS corner to corner. Funk hits the buckling and again the other opposite corner and a big chop in Funk Wow brought to his knees to the outside, Lucy attacking Flick the photographer. Funk at the floor and immediately punched a photographer in the head. So awesome because he's just a loose you know, he's nobody's safe. I love when he I love. I'm realizing the more I watch this stuff that he acts out on innocence
when his opponent's getting the better of him. Yes, yes, you know that's when he's like, he's angry and it's their fault, right exactly. He's looking around for somebody to blame. Gordon solely on the call as well with Jr. Really got it. So you know it's something that they're in
New York too, Yeah, for sure. So Funk's in throwing the right jabs at a Flair Colornado side headlocked by the Funk or Flair pushes him off, breaks f a tackle down, goes Flair, but he picks the ankle immediately takes Flair to the can Funk to the canvas, now choking him on the mat. This is November's right, So they've been going at it for god six months pretty much. Yeah. I mean Funk had the hiatus while he wheeled the arm and so the plastic bag thing was him showing up for
the first time in months now. Flair hanging halfway off the apron over the nounce table and Terry Funk booting him in the head as the announcers head for higher ground because the action is spilling right near them left hand Funk, what's down? Flair? Like I said, Boss, as soon as we announced lapsed Funk, people will like Funk, Flare I quit yep, yep, oh yeah, Funk with big chop on Flair dropping him with the head butt on the apron and uh Flair still on that ring apron outside, Funk grinded
rygame back through. Oh that fucking club to the was landing man clubbing, blow to the black to the back by Terry Funk, chopped by Flair, left hand, down goes nahe flat backing off a single Funk right hand and a big elbow, empty arena match right nineteen Yeah, Rock imitating lawlor Funk here and here the e quit match. Weeks later it would be folly in Rock in the e quit. Yeah, that's right out to the apron now, But part of thee I was before that, It was before that.
Yeah. Yeah, maybe I had the the order mixed up. Yeah, but w W F and mc foley definitely going to the Terry Funk playbook. There at the height of the attitude. Yeah, a woman right there, Oh my gosh, oh Flare fires back. She stands right up to fence. She's so happy all this violence. Loves men fighting each other. She makes castle rolls. Oh yes, absolutely every Sunday. Look at that. Look at that someone made a sign that said New York has a Flair for
Funk and they take LJ had action figure to it. Claire, Yeah, she has like castrole every Sunday. When they watched the match, and when she saw they were coming to Troy, She's like, I am going wrestling, that's right. So Funk had the microphone in Flare's face in the aisleway while he was punching a ship out of him. Flair coming nowhere close to quitting. Now we're back in the ring and Terry Funk has Flair in the corner, mount raining down left and he's got the mic. You're talking about
taking a ring sing, we're doing it here. I hate I hate I quit matches for this. I love them for their violence. He doesn't quit, but it comes alive with an atomic drop. I cannot stand the fucking microphone aspect of an I quit mat drives me nuts well, never ready to hear it. I don't like it at all. Who has a nice neck breaking from funk Man. That was a very good one. Sad Heart,
what's heart doing? Heart's talking to Gordon solely sharing some news. Maybe I think he actually you know what, I think he passed I think he passed solely a knife. I think he said Jr Jr. Is not trustworthy. Oh, Flair comes up and grabs Funk by the throat. You don't see that from Rick often. And here come the chops. You're Tommy Young reacting to the chops, and he can feel it from there. Funk spills beautifully to the floor, brilliantly, tripping over chairs, tripping over humanity, the
chop. Oh my god, he nails. He's gonna go over god. J oh Funk swinging at Doug Dilader. He saw it at the corner of his eye. He knew he was fair game. Ye that he always is. Fucking clean him out. Funk tries to roll back in the ring. Flaire grabs him by the ankle, and he yanks him back out. This is I quit. They red clash at the champions, face first into the guardrail. Funk punch repeatedly. Oh always, Oh, Gary's got the switch blade. You're in danger. He's ready to fucking cut ai. Motherfucker.
He doesn't care if it's if it's fake a real tonight, Gary Hart pulled a handgun on it. Flare on National TV. Flair's got the mic now is the hitting them with the microphone? Flaire out after Gary Hart. I'm doing his job. Uh uh uh oh, so much for Gary Hart not helping. Uh Terry, he just saved his ass. Terry Funk absolutely blind siding Wick Flair from behind. Well he was distracted by Gary Hart. Question about accenter and swimming neck break, Garden just said, no, question about
that? Did talking about how proud Dory function you must be with Terry right now? You remember your name, don't you want to? Que I heard you, Tommy, I'm holding the mind. What cameras taking you inside the ring where you can actually hear these guys? Got a novelty around being able to hear these guys in the MinC Boss, Well, I like these having
the camera in the ring too, Like that's a fucking novelty. You won't say it, no, Claire says, no, it's got Flaire's head pinched between his legs like a pile driver and slapping in the side box and protective Claire refusing to uh, actly, yes, Boss, I mean yeah, oh yacking flare Apps going for the pile driver? What is with what is with this weird piled driver position of flips to hold the hand on the the
boat. I don't it looks so wetard, very uncomfortable. Another no from Flair despite Terry absolutely planning him on that fat neck and then a leg drop. Brother, h nah, head of the gutless pig, gutless pig is let's go Rick chance Bert that the Humilia says it Flair tossed to the floor violently. Terry Funk having to mix it up now, trying to find something that's gonna get Rick Flair to quit. Easier said than done. He's got a pile drive Flare on the floor now that micro oh here my handstand?
Has he always done that enough? I know he's been. He's done every single time we've seen it with Funk, But like I don't remember him doing that regularly. Yeah, he doesn't really take pile drivers in general anyway, I guess not. Yeah. You gotta remember this is that ultra rare setup where Flair is getting beaten up, you know, by a heel. He's not getting tossed down by a baby face. The pile driver doesn't really fit
well. Luker did a pile driver back then, So Funk has pile driven Rick Flair in the isleway and he's popping him in the head of the microphone. Yes he can, he doesn't. He can hit him in that with the microphone. Is fine, perhaps your active back and now Rick Flair certainly worse for wear Referee Tommy Young with the microphone as the Funker hovers over Flair and rains down shots bag albow floor is Flair decleats him. As a matter
of fact. Mt. Jim Rock just said, fucking Christ, this is where Mike Tyson got his last two parking tickets, or it is j Jr's first Tyson. It's very true. Out to the floor again, Funk lifts Flair and what we got lay on a table. There we go. It's so funny to hear Rick talk about the wrestle War pile driver. Is we started hardcore that night because Bubba kissing his ass in two thousand and thirty backstage, said that watching that pile drivers what made him want of these tables in
E C W or to the big time? Okay, Rick, As Funk points out in his own book, Randy Savage did the first pile driver through a table to Ricky Mortan in nineteen eighty four Memphis, and there was a well known, really, and I'm sure it happened before that somewhere. I mean he didn't even put him through a table either, just put him he pile drove him onto the table. Oh God, sick leaned a table speaking of a table that doesn't break against the apron and Flair just sent tor.
I mean you see the fucking wood. I mean it's like a it was made in a fucking wood shop underneath the arena. Absolutely, this fucking thing. It's like, it's not a table. It's not a table that you go buy. Oh Jesus, come flying out of the on of frame, jumping onto Terry's back, driving him into the rail. Wow, he's fucking slipping slide amazing. Oh, Gary Hart, you see him swipe at the fans. Yep, yep, Claire pulling Gary. He gets right up though
He's like, no, not stabbing. He will never he no, look how fast he gets up, you know, damn well, why, there is no way he will spend extended periods of time laying down with his fucking belly exposed. All right, No fucking way. That was so awesome. So they had the table kind of leaned down on the side, on its
side, and Rick ran Terry into the table and sent him flying. And like you said, Terry does the slipping slide down the table and there's a chair at the end of the table and he hits his head on that and then Flair crotches Funk on the guardrail and chops the shit out of him till he hits the floor. Tommy Young and Terry Funk's face with the mic, Yep, what intensity. You didn't see guys do what Rick Flair just did to Terry Funk in eighty nine Nationals. Not at all? Oh than the
Homer Simpson. It's over on the back center ring now, Funk ailing on the canvas, flare out of the corner, big knee drop scores. Oh, Terry scories immediately under the and wrote, knowing he's in trouble, he wants to avoid the million dollar question. Funk back in the fray. Ric Flair lording over Terry Funk taking the intensity to another level. Flair discovering a new part of this game. I thought, Wow, I'll say, I mean, there's just he's pulling. He's pulling, moved out of the hat
that I've never really seen him do before. Inverted atomic drop flare now draping Terry Funk's leg over the bottom rope. We had set that leg up for the figure four, no doubt, and I quit move if there ever was one. Yep. Claire sits down on the knee and Funk is limping. Look at that, Look at the way he look at himself, but any weight on it collapses immediately upon attempting to crawling around as Terry Funk Flair Wow, kick to the knee, chop to the chest, shop do this all
night. Yep, right hand turns Funk around or sixty degrees, chop right right hand. Ah, Jesus, knock out indeed, back to the knee. Claire's kicking ass. No they don't say, hold the microphone at the Statue of Liberty. Well, you never know any time or in New York after all, that's true. So Funk hits the floor, limping aggressively to get out of there and tear in Rick Flair absolutely tackles into the aisle and Flair lands right in his face on the floor. Clare's gonna be the shin
breaker here in the isleway. Guy's gonna lift Terry and carry him all the way. Ah, it's a ring side there's j R. Yep Criaks of Wrestling, fucking cage bosos. Thanks Jim fucking like Wall Street coked up motherfucker I Wolf of Wall Street associates outside in Flair high to lay beautiful Flare. You know that, sho. It was an honor for the Funker to go up for that. That's right. Uh, I went ahead and did the
honor for Rick Flair. I was happy to do it. Flair when ahead, and when ahead again, we'll see he hasn't gone ahead quite yet. Flair trying like I know, we gotta see some color first before we get to the end. I'm not sure to turn one of them. Oh, actually, that's a good point, right, good point. The apron flex Flair. Flair puts the block on him since Funk up and over. Oh,
on the hardest part of the ring. He lifted Funk in the soup lex and then dropped him on his ass on the apron and now Flair going up back to work on the the damaged leg of Terry Funk back in Funks swinging on a bad wheel fuck Flair Fair chopping, chopping picks the legs single leg Flare steps over your four locks. It out, they're on their feet. Tommy Young and I level with a microphone in Terry Funk's face. Terry flailing him out, tapping like a drunk man. Over up. But he
fucking wrenches that leg. Look at that, Look at Flair. Yeah, we're here rotting right, Tommy Young pulling him. He's got deep in there, he's got to deepen there, Gordon, have you ever seen it can be revers it can be reversed. It's breaking, Yes, is that it? Wow? I'm not explored. Wow, Gary Hart is living. Gary Hawks just can't believe what happened. He didn't. Very Fox said, he
is the gentleman, the widow of the man, joy very Fop. I told you, I told you I'd never say I quit, Harry, I promise the people I want to i'most like his here, Like I said, you know the hell of a man, Rick fir better than me? There? It is. Wow. Oh that's a knockdown, drag out fight. Holy shit, I mean what a a I really I really would have loved it, he said, Rick Flaara, I told you I'd never said I
quit, and I never said It's funny. As the years passed, he had this whole convoluted joke he'd do about The only reason I said I quit is because we're playing like a mind game where he said do you quit? Yes, no, yes, no, and then he said no, and I said, yes, that's the only reason you won that night. Of course, of course, un could write the Flare feud wound up with an I quit match, with the loser would submit and shake the winner's hand.
It was time for me to get my come up, and time for Flair to finally go over in a big way, and time for the feud to be over. The idea of doing an I quit match was my idea. Actually, I'm the guy who created the I Quit match in the nineteen seventies with Dusty Rhodes. We'd sold out the Bay Front Center in Saint Petersburg, Florida with the match, and I thought it would be an exciting end to
the Funk Flair feud for the fans. This is one of the times I was right, because it was broadcast in WTBS and became the most watched wrestling match in the history of cable television up to that point. So of that again, the most watched wrestling match in the history of cable television up to that point. M okay and then I quit match. Two men fight until one says those two words. I thought when I said I, I'd be quitting the match. I didn't realize Hurd's idea was that I was saying I
quit wrestling. My age was one of the reasons they wanted to push me out, but the other was that I just did not fit. I didn't belong to one side or the other in those power struggles I described earlier. I wasn't for any group of wrestlers or for Jim Hurd. I was for the promotion. I was really on the NWA side. I was never worried about being ruined by losing a big match, in part because I always believed I could get myself over with the people through my working ability in my interviews.
Maybe that was foolish of me. Maybe if I'd been a more selfish guy, I'd have gotten a lot richer. But to me, my way was a successful way. Maybe it came from the way I grew into the business as the son of a promoter, with the mindset that we had to do business to be able to keep writing checks to all the guys and making a living for ourselves. That sense of putting the company first and helping the company never left me. After that match, they asked me to do commentary.
I finished out my time there by calling matches with Chris Cruise, and then I went home. They wanted me to take a pay cut to an announcer's pay after my year's deal ran out, and I wasn't about to take a cut and salary for all the back and forth travel, I felt I
could make more money doing other things picking my shots. And what it came down to, Boss is Terry Funk felt like they shoot retired him on the air without him agreeing to this, being like you said, not I quit wrestling, but I just quit here against h Rec Flair through two tables, through two tables, that's right, through a what do you call it? A horrible slight? How did you you know? How did you wind up
there? And when you went into the NBA at that time, did you think that that every thing you know involving yourself is gonna be as successful as it was? Because it was it put you know, I mean, Basch eighty nine to this day goes down in my books. It's the best wrestling card from top to bottom that I've ever seen. You know which one was the actually you and fare on top I to this day the best wrestling card I've seen. Top about a lot of unusual things happened to me that year.
Uh broke my back pain, dinner kept on going, you know. Yeah, Uh disappointment, really disappointment. What disappointed? It disappointed me because they uh retired me without me knowing it. Really. Oh yeah, the equip match. Yeah, because they said on television that this is you know, whoever's gonna be heard. There's nothing said to me ahead of time and everything else about that, And they brought it up that night because they were going to retire my ass, right, Yeah, because I was too old
a restaurant. How well did they know? Indeed, Terry Heart recalling. Terry was then booked for an eight quit match against Ric Flair at the Clash of the Champions in Troy, New York. The finish was that Terry would quit, I would get mad at Terry, Terry would attack me, the Great Muda would come to my rescue, and then Terry in the Great Muda would start a feud. Remember the match was supposed to be an e quit match. But the booking committee switched it at the last minute to an eye
quit wrestling match and retired Terry Funk that night. After his match, the Great Muda came down to jump on Terry with me, just as we had planned, but their feud never happened. Terry and the Great Muda would have done great business in the ring, but instead the booking committee put Terry in a situation where he had an interview segment called Funk's Grill. Then they never
followed up on him and just ignored that he was there. If the booking committee were men of their word, and if Terry and the Great Mooda actually did get to have a program, Terry and I would have come up with a way for us to double cross the Great Muda and make him the baby face. Like I'm mentioned earlier, I would have had no problem doing that
when the time was right. Terry Fun had actually retired once again in nineteen eighty seven after a tag team tournament in All Japan, so his return and his debut rather in the NWA in nineteen eighty nine was also sort of his return back to active wrestling, and again perhaps Bosson acknowledgment that the Hollywood career
didn't have the legs he perhaps hoped for. I agreed, and so this feud took place, and from July twenty third till the end of October, Dave Meltzer noted in nineteen eighty nine, Terry Funk and Rick Flair wrestled almost every night. Funk was working with a broken back, and it was just a very memorable slate. As we've documented, Funk planned another retirement of Meltzer writes for his November fifteenth, nineteen eighty nine I Quit match with Flair and
Troy New York. Flare into the feud and used to figure four leg lock and Funk screamedad I quit. The match was generally considered the best I quit match in history for whatever reason. Meltzer writes, the day after that match, the call that he told me he was most proud of was from Wally Carbo, vern Gania's long time partner in the AWA, who called Terry Funk to tell him that it was the best wrestling match he had ever seen.
Flair versus Funk, bringing the feud to a conclusion on TBS and the E quit match for a four point nine rating on TBS Meltzer noted that was the second highest rated television show the WCW promotion did until Nitro Caught Fire years later, and that the Flair Funk sell out in Baltimore from the Great American Bash and nineteen eighty nine was also the biggest crowd in gait that WCW did until the mid nineties. The promotion pretty much told him. Meltzer wrote that the
e quit match would be his last match. He continued to work for the company until his contract expired as a babyfaced television announcer and also on the booking team. When the contract expired, the retirement was over, and of course the tensions between Terry Funk and Rick Flair would melt away as the years did. And here Rick Flair reflects on working with the Funker. Yeah, and in our world. In our world, it's yeah, he's Mickey Mantle.
That makes time. Yeah. I mean he was that tacular Terry Funk hardcore before there was hardcore. Yeah. And the thing that people have forgot is when that character in eighty nine was completely different, was completely different than Terry Funk. There was the world champion. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course Terry Funk the world champion is more regular tights than more of the long boots. It's like it's like he had two different careers. And uh,
that's where I learned how to shop. If I was watching Terry Funk go work one night and somebody had his arm right and he started shopping the guy his right hand with his left hand, and I said, Dad, that looks that looks pretty cool. And that's basically where I learned that from Terry. I mean, there was so much learn He could make you laugh. I know, if you're watching me today, that one day rush it's not pretty hard. He turns her out and certain he walks right back and
do another one. I look at him. He cracked me up. In the ring, you just walk over the vault room. I just loved riding with him. I bet I asked at five times a day, they can't be a world champion, they'll be a world chapin I drove him there. He said, yeah, it'll be a tag kid. There'll be a tag kid stock. It was his time. Indeed, my nineteen eighty nine, one might say, to be exact. And there he was, young Rick
Flair, haunting Terry Funk, hoping he'd be champion one day. But in nineteen eighty nine, for all that was accomplished and all that's remembered, it was time for this cowboy to pack his things, branding iron, black leather hat and a body battle worn by firing back and forth with the nature boy Rick Flair. It was time for the eighties to come to an end, Boss, and for Terry funk Well to move on down the road. Everything was rushed because it was it was a very critical time in w W.
Was it? Yeah? And I can sit here and I can say everything that I wanted to about Flair, and I can sit here and I can say, oh, Flair to this or Flair to Jah. But one thing I will say for Rick Flair, he was reason I was in w W. Was he really? Wow? He's the one that suggests to bring me down? Really the few for the feud? Yeah? Wow? So you know, wow, I see how did you? How did what came about you leaving w C W Oh gosh, Well it seems like you're unhappy no
out there in the first place. Yeah, yeah, just again, it's time, ye. Gotta know when it's time to go. Gotta know when it's time to go, Boss, Right, yeah, you do, and well go where you may ask, where can Terry Funk go? After his run in the National Spotlight was over, checks had been cashed and collected in a nest egg built in the boom period of WWF and the heady post turner acquisition days at WCW, some of his finest work done. Where can Terry
Funk go? It's time to go extreme, because in nineteen eighty nine there was someone else that nary earned a mention in all the conversation we've had here on this episode of The Lapsed Funk about Terry Funk's nineteen eighty nine that he ran into in the NBA locker room and made a distinct impression upon an indelible impression during this run, and there would be one that would lead to Terry Funk defining not only a promotion, but in many ways what pro wrestling was
in nineteen nineties. And this is the story of the CW. Harry broke his tail zone and making Georgia and I was fortunate enough to ride with him to Savannah that night, and I had heard stories about his toughness, and I had heard stories about how wrong owned he was. And he's in the car and I'm looking over and I saw tears going down his face and he wouldn't acknowledge it. I said, jeez, he's contain and he would he acknowledge it. And right before he holding the Savanni turned me, he goes,
I'm goddamn hurt. Fuck, I'm hurt. And this is three weeks before the Great American Basket Baltimore with him and fire it. And it scared me because I I I never heard Terry Funk anomos. He was hurt, and he was hurt. He broke his ass, literally broke his ass. He broke his tailbone. So I took him to the hospital the next morning and he didn't wanna go, and I said, Terry, you gotta know, I don't know. I say, I got go. I took him
to the hospital and I said I and the answering him. The doctor came in the room and he said, mister Funk, you have a broken single, you have broken your tailbone. You'll be okay. He'll be back in the ring in about nine months to a year. And he says, I have a match of pay per view in three weeks. Kind of doctor says, you if I have to admit you in this hospital. You don't have a match in three weeks, forget it. And a year made me. And when the doctor s tor room, I looked at him and he was
devastated, and I said, it's the pain. He goes no. I said, it's the fact that you can't wrestle. He said no. I said, is it because you think they're gonna screw you over? He said nope. I said, what is it? And he said, there are people who went three weeks from now are paying to see me work with Ric
Flair when they're expecting the hell of a match. And I'll be goddamned if a doctor or a broken ass, or anybody on the face of this planet short of God himself is gonna stop me from getting into that ring of Baltimore and giving the people to show that they pays to see. Man had an elbow that was puffed out to hear they drained it. His knees were swelling,
he was wearing knee braces. They were working him on the road thirty four straight days that month, double shots against sing against Gilbert, against the Steiner Brothers, every baby face and that promotion of programs against him, and they were drawing money for them. He was carrying the promotion on his back. He broke his ass, and the only thing that was going through his mind was the fact that the people paid to see him do his thing,
and he would be damned if anything would stop him. That night, I called my father on the phone, my father, who is one of the hardest working men I've ever known, I said, Dad, I met somebody who has that same work ethic. I met somebody who loves what he does. I met somebody who takes such pride in what he does, and the fact that people have believed in him, that he cares that much that he'll make this type of sacrifice for the people, people who pay to see him.
On that night in nineteen eighty nine, I pray that I would find one, let alone, a dressing room full of wrestlos who would have that same work ethic, who would take that tradition to the next level. And I looked around that dressing room at WCW. And there's no need to mention those names, because it's not their night, is his. But the fact is that there were very few guys who had dressing room that had that work ethic. There are a lot of guys that you know, I got a
call, I'm off for a week. Hey, I got Anmberland too, I need a month off. He didn't take it. They forced him not to work on TV that night. They forced him not to work for the next week. And then he put himself back in the ring eight days later and he had a match with Flair on pay per view, and to me to this day was Flair's best match with the exception of your equip match with him. Moral of the story is is that when you look around an ECW,
what you see as a tribute to Terry Funk. Because the criterion to work here is the working is to work through an injury like that. The criterion to work here is to have that work ethic. The criterion to work here is not charisma, is not size, is not marketability. The criterion to work here is the first thing I'll look for in somewhere is work ethic. And I learned that work ethic. I idolized that work ethic, and
we built a dressing room built with that work ethic. Because of the example that has been set and was set since nineteen eighty nine by t Fuk. He said that example, this dressing room and a trip to get work. We did it our way because we love it that way. We love it that way, and I have this wonderful gut feeling and I've had it all my life when it's time to go, I think it's now, it's time to go.