More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  All this time, my father missed wrestling. He liked the one-on-one competition. Beating someone on the mat gave him a rush that no other sport could supply. He went to local gyms and looked for opponents. He went through all of them, so he hit the bars and offered to take on all comers.

  In the early 1940s, professional wrestling was very popular, and Chicago promoter Fred Kohler was one of the most influential in the country. Wrestling was treated as if it was pure competition, even though it was not competition, even at that time. Wrestling was even covered every week on the Chicago Tribune sports page.

  My father wanted to get into this business, but didn’t know how to go about it. Pro wrestling was a strange brotherhood, and wanting in and getting in were two different things.

  If you wanted in, you had to have certain qualifications. Toughness and the ability to keep your mouth shut were two of them. Smartasses were not tolerated. Those who wanted in usually ended up with the shit beaten out of them. It was a closed business, and Kohler didn’t want to let Dory into it initially.

  Eventually, he proved himself in some shoots (legitimate contests), and they decided to take him under their wing and break him into the business.

  Legitimate tough guys in wrestling were often called “shooters,” or policemen. They relished getting a hold of a mark (a derogatory term for a fan who believes in wrestling) or a “wannabe.” It was a feather in their caps if they made their victims scream with pain or piss their pants.

  A.B. Scott, my father’s former high school wrestling coach, decided to cash in on wrestling’s popularity by opening a half-assed promotion in Hammond. He made a deal with Kohler to use two or three of Kohler’s boys (wrestlers) on each show and fill out the rest of the card with locals.

  The coach also wanted to use my father, and his big idea was for Dory to take on all comers. Every weekend Dory would have a shoot (legitimate match) against the best and toughest in the area. He even beat Walter Palmer, one of Kohler’s top hands and a known shooter.

  My father’s pay was a grand sum of $10 per match. After several weeks, the mob caught wind of this and sent the toughest son of a bitch they could find to “beat this Funk kid.” There was some betting involved, but these guys were mainly there to make the point that this mob muscle was tougher than any wrestler. I don’t know if the guy was a collector, or what he did, but all he collected that night from Dory Funk Sr. was an ass-kicking!

  Lou Thesz happened to be one of the main-eventers sent by Kohler into Hammond the night the mob’s tough guy made his challenge. Years later he told me about it.

  “One whole section was completely Mafia,” he said. “Your father was on the first match against their tough guy. The bell rang, and in no time, your old man had him down. He top bodyscissored him and then ripped him across the face several times with his forearm. This broke the guy’s nose. Blood was everywhere, and he quit. After the match, every one of those Mafia guys walked out, not saying a word. Their boy had lost. They could have cared less about the rest of the matches.”

  He laughed and added, “Including mine.”

  A reporter from the Hammond Times covered the match as if it were a major sporting event. The coverage made Dory something of a hometown celebrity. Fred Kohler, being the prototypical wrestling promoter, smelled a few bucks to be made. He brought my father into Chicago, where Dory worked occasionally in manipulated matches. The money wasn’t great, but it was something my father loved to do. He still had to maintain his Pullman job, but he was hooked on the wrestling business. Soon enough he would be out of both.

  In summer 1943, my father enlisted in the navy. He knew he’d be drafted sooner or later and always said, “I figured the food would be better on a ship than in some goddamned foxhole!”

  I think he made the right choice.

  He went to basic training in Chicago, on Lake Michigan, where he was allowed to see Mom on the weekends. Then he was assigned to a Land Shore Medium craft, more commonly known as an L.S.M. It was No. 182 and assigned to the Philippine Islands. The ship was only a few hundred feet long and about 34 feet wide, carrying 50 sailors and four officers, plus whatever troops the boat took to the beach for landings.

  It was a small fish in a big pond compared to the destroyers, tankers and aircraft carriers in the fleet. My father used to say, “What goddamned Jap in his right mind would want to waste his life and plane on our little boat?”

  Now, I want to make something clear—I don’t condone the use of the term “Jap.” I would grow to love the Japanese people, and so would my father, but he was at war with them at that point, and he had hard feelings toward them that took a long time to heal.

  Even though my father’s ship wasn’t much of a target, whenever a squadron of Zeroes flew over, the ship’s crew would man the 20-millimeter cannons along with the rest of the fleet, and they would claim any enemy aircraft that went down in the heat of battle. They didn’t give a damn if 10 other ships were also firing on the plane when it went down—they would paint a small picture of a plane to represent each one they had “downed.”

  From the looks of their reconnaissance tower, you’d think that ship single-handedly wiped out the Japanese Air Force.

  At the end of June 1944, my father’s ship was hit by a typhoon, which tossed around that little boat like a matchbox in a washing machine. They ended up near the coast of China! But what he didn’t know was that my mother was also in a dangerous situation at the same time. She was giving birth to a breach baby and started hemorrhaging. The only person in the area with the same blood type was her doctor, so he gave her his own blood.

  And that was how I came into this world.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Little Funker

  I was named after one of my mother’s favorite characters from the funnies, Terry from Terry and the Pirates. Dory Junior, or “Dunk,” as we used to call him (think about it), always said the first time he saw me, he thought I looked like a gangly little chicken. Later on, as we grew up, he would threaten to beat the hell out of me for one of the many reasons I gave him to do so. I ran like a chicken, but I never thought I looked like a chicken.

  My mother spent the first three months of my life in the hospital, with peritonitis caused by a small piece of placenta remaining in the womb. My brother and I stayed with her family.

  My father island-hopped until the war was over, and then came back to Chicago and to his family. He tried to get his job back with Pullman Standard, but they weren’t hiring—there were no more tanks to be built.

  He knew he needed money to feed his family, so he decided to try wrestling full time. By now a new local promoter was running Hammond for Kohler, a man named Balk Estes. Balk was also a wrestler. In fact, he and his brothers (Toots and Kick) were all in the business, and were all full-blooded Indians out of Elk City, Oklahoma. That little state put out some of the toughest amateurs in the country, and it still does!

  Balk was one of those tough amateurs, and when he first met my father, he said, “So, you’re the guy who’s supposed to be so tough.”

  My father made no bones about it—he wasn’t afraid of anyone, and certainly not Balk Estes, so Dory took Balk up on his offer to go to the gym the next day to see who was toughest.

  That was the way things were done in the profession at that time. Two tough guys would go to the gym, more than likely alone, with no onlookers. Who won and what happened was the wrestlers’ business, and sometimes never mentioned again.

  Shortly before his death in July 2004, I tracked down Balk, by then 87, at his home in Oklahoma. I asked him what happened that day.

  He said, “Dory took me down and hooked me in a top body scissors and facelock, but after several minutes, I got away. We wrestled about 10 more minutes with neither one getting the advantage, and then we both called it quits.”

  In my heart, I believed my father hooked Estes and crossed his face. I don’t think Balk ever escaped, because with what I know about wrestling, I know that he would have had
to have superhuman strength and the ability to withstand a hell of a lot of pain to get out of that hold.

  Of course, I also thought if I were Balk Estes and Dory Funk were dead, I might tell a similar story, instead of one where I got my ass hooked.

  As Ray Stevens, a legendary wrestler and a longtime friend, once told me, “If it’s worth tellin’, it’s worth colorin’ up a bit!”

  And that, in a nutshell, is the wrestling business.

  Whatever happened doesn’t matter, because that day at the gym was the start of a lifelong friendship for Balk and Dory.

  Balk decided it would be best for Dory to go to another wrestling area to get some ring experience. He talked to Toledo promoter Cliff Moppen and told him he had a green boy named Funk who needed some experience.

  Moppen said, “Funk? Goddamn! That sounds downright nasty! How the hell can he draw a buck with a name like Funk?”

  Balk said he didn’t care what Moppen called him, and Moppen eventually agreed to use him and even let him use his name.

  They borrowed a house trailer from my Aunt Dorothy and enough money for a used Oldsmobile. The Funk family was ready for the road.

  I never really thought about us being nomads. It was just a way of life, traveling around and living in the trailer parks.

  At the time, that old trailer didn’t seem small to me. Heck, even the back window of our Oldsmobile seemed big. I remember crawling up in the space between the rear window and the back seat and riding for hours down the road. I always liked it best when we were traveling at night. Mom would make Dory Jr. a bed on the back seat with blankets and a pillow, and then fix me up a bed in that little rear-window nook.

  We would listen to the radio for hours as we drove across the country. I loved “The Life of Riley,” but “The Shadow” scared the devil out of me.

  Wrestlers in the late 1940s were like a bunch of gypsies—roving vagabonds traveling throughout the country. We stayed at a trailer park in towns that were centrally located to the towns the promoter ran, as did a lot of other wrestlers’ families, and we bonded with a lot of them. It was immediate acceptance with the other wrestlers’ families. The kids stuck together, and the families did, too. It was much more of a circus atmosphere than what you might imagine—not as far as how they earned their money, but in the way of life. It was close to what the circus or carny’s way of life was. You’d go into a territory, stay three or four months, or as long as you could, and then move on to your next territory.

  In those trailer courts, we were all part of a big, extended family. I believe a lot of it was that we had common enemies. We might fight with each other, but we could come together against the people who called wrestling “fake” or “phony.”

  On weekends they would have get-togethers with plenty of beer and all the food everyone could eat. I never knew a wrestler or a wrestler’s wife who couldn’t make one hell of a meal!

  Looking back, I guess that 30-foot trailer was a little small for a family of four, but it was home. My mother decorated the room Dory and I shared with paper stars that glowed in the dark. At night we said our prayers, and she kissed us good night. Then she turned off the lights, and the moment she did, the stars would glow. We were among the heavens, or at least we thought we were. You talk about neat!

  For years, it seemed like the Trudells were always in the same territory as us. Benny and his wife, Lil, had four children, three beautiful girls and a boy. After seeing all of them packed into their trailer, I realized ours really wasn’t so crowded.

  They were from Montreal and originally spoke only French, but the kids picked up English fast. As for their parents, well, Benny did OK, but Lil brutalized the language and could not have cared less. All that mattered to Lil was that her husband was OK and her kids, too.

  Benny was never really a great wrestler, but he was hard-nosed and pretty tough, pound for pound. He would fight for the wrestling business at the drop of a hat, but at five-foot-eight and with a pot belly, promoters would never let him be a main eventer. Like most of the wrestlers I’ve known through the years, Benny was hooked on the business. He doubled sometimes as a referee but just knew that if he had the right gimmick, he could make his fortune in wrestling.

  Wrestling in the late 1940s and 1950s was a six-night-a-week occupation. No promoter would chance working on Sunday, or it would’ve been seven, but the guys wanted that day of rest to be with their families.

  Driving to a different town every night could get monotonous, and good traveling companions were necessary. For my dad, Benny was the perfect companion, I believe, because he thought everything Dory did was grand, and thought everything Dory said was hilarious. Looking back, I guess he was living vicariously through my father.

  My father worked in the Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma and Arizona territories before returning to Ohio for a second run under promoter Al Haft. Soon after we got there, promoter Moppen announced they were bringing in the heavyweights. Anything over 205 pounds was considered a heavyweight. At 190 pounds, soaking wet, Dad was a junior heavyweight, and he saw the writing on the wall—he was out, and the big guys were in. He gave his notice, and we were off to Texas.

  By 1948, Mom and Dad were thinking about putting some roots down. Junior was in school now, but it was difficult for him. Moving from territory to territory, he had to change teachers and friends a couple of times a year, even though he usually did well and was an exceptional student. My parents wanted a home and some stability, like other families had.

  I wasn’t yet at school age, so it wasn’t as hard for me as it was for my brother. He and I were like all brothers, I guess. We loved each other to death and hated each other, too, sometimes. We would get into terrible fights, and I usually got the worst end of it. My mom would stop it by hitting us over the head with a newspaper. For some reason, we were just like dogs. When the dog pisses in the house, you hit him with a newspaper, and that’s what she did. Boy, we were scared to death of that newspaper! For some reason, hitting us with a newspaper was the worst thing she could do to us.

  Our house had a kitchen with two doors leading to it on opposite ends and an island counter in the middle. Traffic would go in one door, around the island and out. It was almost like a circle. One time, when my brother and I got into a big argument, I said something that would turn it into a fight, as I often did. But it was only going to be a fight if he could catch me!

  I took off with the idea I would try to get enough of a lead on him that I could make it to the bathroom and lock myself in before he could get to me. It was a great plan, except for one thing—I would also have to make it through the kitchen, where my mother was ready to spring into action with her newspaper, rolled and taped up.

  I tell you, all she had to do after a while was take that newspaper out, and Junior and I would calm down as soon as we saw it. She had us trained, just like dogs!

  It was always evident that my brother and I had different personalities. Junior would operate behind the scenes, while I was just goofy enough to try anything.

  One time, he said, “Hey, Terry, I have an idea.” “What’s that, Junior?”

  “I think you’d be able to run really fast if we tied a piece of plywood to your back.”

  So that’s what we did.

  Well, the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour that day. We found a large piece of plywood to put around my arms and tied me to it. I picked up a lot of speed, as I recall, but soon became the world’s first manned tumble-board.

  Junior was the quiet one, but he was the one with all the ideas. My dad was the same way. He always had stuff for me to do.

  We had a skunk named Stinky. It’d had its scent glands removed, but at some point, Stinky ran away, so we went out looking. Soon enough, my dad spotted a skunk and said, “Terry, there’s Stinky.”

  “Dad, I don’t think that’s Stinky.”

  “Goddammit, that’s Stinky! Look how tame he is! Get out there and get him!”

  So I went out there and got sprayed by
the skunk. It sure was stinky, but it wasn’t Stinky!

  We lived for a while in the trailer court with the other wrestlers’ families, but then my father got a job as superintendent at the Boys’ Ranch under Cal Farley, who was also a professional wrestler. Dory Senior ran the entire thing for all 140-plus kids out there. He dealt with all their problems. Nowadays, you have to go through a tremendous amount of litigation to get a child to a place like that. Back then, they’d get a call from the sheriff, or sometimes even from out of state, with someone saying, “Hey, I have a boy for you here. He’s a problem child, his parents aren’t around, and he needs a place to live.”

  My dad would say, “All right. Bring him out.”

  The boys were anywhere from six to 18 years old.

  Dad would work at the ranch all day and then occasionally wrestle at night.

  As a child, I thought Dad was out there fighting for his life. Even though I knew that they knew each other, I never once questioned that their matches were real. I truly believed. I would go to the arena and bawl every Thursday night, terribly upset, the way my kids would years later, when they saw me getting beaten up. And I had fight after fight at school, defending it all my young life.

  One time, a kid told me my dad was a phony, so I asked him what his dad did.

  “He’s a doctor.”

  “Well,” I said, “what does he do? Give people sugar pills? I bet your daddy gives them sugar pills. He’s not a real doctor.”

  Sometimes, that kind of response was sufficient. If it wasn’t, we’d get down to business.

  But I’m very glad it was presented to me that way. It made me respect my profession much more. It made me have a lot of admiration for the guys who were in it, and it impressed on me that it was not easy. It never has been easy, and I kept that with me. Over my career, there was just a handful who I smartened up to the business. Once you enter into the profession, you’re in the fraternity.

  When I was 14 or 15 years old, my father smartened me up. I don’t think believing in it for so long did me any psychological damage. I think his waiting so long to smarten me up helped me to appreciate what a special thing it was to be smartened up in that day and age.