More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  “I want you to come back, Terry,” he said.

  “Dad,” I told him, “I’m making a lot of money here.”

  “Well, figure out how much you’re making a week, and I’ll see if we can’t come up with something better for you.”

  I called him back after my wife and I figured it out and said, “OK, Dad, I’m averaging $278 a week here.”

  “Aw, I can beat that,” he said. “Come on back.”

  So I did, after I gave my notice. I wasn’t leaving a huge hole for them to fill. I was a middle-of-the-road guy. I worked some with Wahoo McDaniel (a former NFL player and tough guy who had become a hell of a star) and those guys, but I was never a main eventer.

  Now the Florida territory almost always made a lot of money, but the boys didn’t see a great deal of it. One time, early in my career, my wife and I were on a 15-foot boat, enjoying a day on the water. We were near the base of the Causeway bridge that connected Tampa to Saint Petersburg. We were fishing when all of the sudden hete came this gorgeous, 55-foot boat roaring by, horns blasting. Eddie Graham waved at us as his boat went by us and I thought, “Maybe I’m in the wrong end of this business.”

  I got to learn from some of the greatest promoters ever in the wrestling business, from exposure at an early age to not only my father, but also the likes of

  Eddie Graham and Verne Gagne. I also got exposed to Jack Pfefer, who brought a new attraction into Amarillo in the 1960s. He had been a promoter in the Midwest using journeyman wrestlers and giving them names that were knock-offs of big attractions. When “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers was the hottest wrestler in the country, he called a guy Bummy Rogers. He would use “Whipper” O’Connor since Pat O’Connor and “Whipper” Billy Watson were two of the biggest names of the 1950s. He had Hobo Brazil, instead of Bobo Brazil. I guess he thought people would come to his shows thinking they were going to see the real stars. I don’t think that worked out too well for him.

  By the 1960s he was bringing black women wrestlers from territory to territory He had Babs Wingo and Princess Lamumba, “straight out of Africa.” And Amarillo ended up being one of those territories.

  Lamumba was actually this gal from Brooklyn, and he put a tin pot on her head and some chicken bones around her neck, and she became a princess. He’d bring her out on TV and explain that Princess Lamumba had a few words for the people. Our announcer would put the microphone in front of her, and she’d say, “MUMMA DA BABBA DOO DOO MA LOOBA BABBA LA POO POO!”

  And it drew! People came to see the African princess!

  That right there should show you how much times have changed. Let Vince try to pull some shit like that now! He’d have people picketing him at the arenas!

  Pfefer had some strange habits. He believed in only using toilet water to comb down his hair. I don’t know why, but it’s the only thing he would use. He was always digging in his nose, too, and he’d wipe those boogers off into his hait! Why? Who knows? And he never spent a nickel on his clothes. He looked like the damned ragman of wrestling.

  Amarillo had some really good wrestlers at that time. Bull Ramos was a hell of a performer. He was Apache Gringo’s partner. When my father came up with that name, Bull wasn’t sold.

  Bull said, “What the hell does Apache Gringo’ mean?”

  My father said, “That’s exactly what those fans are gonna say, and it’ll create some mystery.”

  Well, Apache Gringo never did catch on, so I guess Bull was right about that

  one.

  My father also gave Gary Hart a new nickname. Gary had been “Playboy” Gary Hart, wrestling around the country, but when he got here, my father decided to rename him “Gay” Gary Hart. I guess my father just thought Gary was a happy individual.

  Gary and I were actually the ones in charge of driving Princess Lamumba and Pfefer around. For whatever reason, whistling drove Pfefer nuts. Once Gary found this out, he would spend the whole trip just whistling random notes until Pfefer couldn’t take it.

  He’d yell at Gary, in his heavy Polish accent, “Goddammit, Geddy, you qvit thet goddamned vistling! It hurts my ears, Geddy!”

  Gary would stop for a while, but sooner or later, he’d “forget” and start whistling again. He drove poor Pfefer nuts!

  My father was a great teacher to me, but I was also fortunate to be around some of the guys we had in Amarillo. One I learned a lot from was Ricky Romero. I made a lot of trips with him, and he was as good a Mexican wrestler as there was in the United States in the 1960s.

  Cyclone Negro was another very talented individual and one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. He always kept his body in great shape and had one of the greatest, most expressive faces I’ve ever seen. I mean, he had the greatest face in the business. It made him a perfect heel. He wasn’t hideously ugly; he just looked like one mean son of a bitch!

  And we brought Stan Hansen back in after he came back from a season with the Detroit Wheels, a Continental Football League team. He ended up hurting his knee and decided wrestling full time would be a safer way to go, so he came back down. We told him we were putting together a great highlight film to plug his return. We set it up on a monitor as if this was what was going out on TV, but it was only for his benefit as a rib.

  It was a package of every moment where Stan had gotten the shit kicked out of him. He got punched. He got slammed. We had some goofy music set to it, and every few seconds this big, booming voice would come over the music and say …

  “Stan Hansen … former Detroit Wheel!”

  Then, it would have him just getting the hell pounded out of him some more.

  “Stan Hansen … former Detroit Wheel!”

  Boy, was he pissed off.

  “You’re not going to show that, are you?”

  He took a while to calm down, even after we assured him it was a rib.

  Stan actually came pretty damn close to having his wrestling career ended not long after that. We were in El Paso, just goofing around at the hotel pool, and he was trying to throw me in. I got lucky and threw him in, which got him really pissed off.

  He got out and came running after me with his clothes soaking wet. I was on the other side of the hotel door, and he was so ticked he kicked through the glass door. When he pulled out his foot, it caught the glass and cut his Achilles tendon right in half.

  Stan was a tough guy, and he thought he could come right back in five weeks, after having it sewn back up. Well, all that did was tear it up again, and he ended up out for about three months.

  He never did blame it on me, though, and I was always mighty glad about

  that.

  One of the toughest guys was Amarillo’s Mr. Wrestling. Tim Woods, an accomplished amateur wrestler, was Mr. Wrestling in much of the country, but in Amarillo the mask was worn by Gordon Nelson. Gordon was a hell of an amateur wrestler. He taught a lot of guys the sugar hold, a type of chokehold that could incapacitate a man. I knew the sugar hold before I knew Gordon, but I didn’t want him putting it on me, that’s for sure.

  As Mr. Wrestling, Gordon would take on all comers with the deal being a cash prize for anyone who could last 10 minutes with him. I always admired anybody who did those open challenges, because you don’t just get marks out of the crowd—you get some tough guys. You never know who you’re in there with.

  Another guy who did that was someone I got to know much better in San Antonio years later, named Keith Franke. Keith gained more fame using a name I gave him, Adrian Adonis. Adrian was not a classically trained amateur wrestler, but he was incredibly tough in his own way. His deal was a $10,000 challenge, and he handled it well. Adrian would con the challengers. He’d push them into the ropes and then let them push him into the ropes. He’d smile at them, and as soon as their guard went down a little, he’d deck them, and down they’d go.

  Les Thornton was the guy who brought the European style to Amarillo, and he was a hell of a guy.

  I know it might sound like I’m saying “hell of a guy” too much
, but it’s really the truth. These were good people. They were all friends. Hell, they were part of the family.

  My dad also had an actual part of the family helping out behind the scenes. Jack Thornton (the uncle who had slipped into that football game for the Boys’ Ranch, had originally come to Amarillo to help my dad out there. Soon after, he started refereeing and integrated himself into the wrestling business.

  He and my Aunt Eleanor ended up splitting up, and Jack married a woman named Barbara, who had been married to a man named Braum. When they married, Jack adopted her son, Billy. Billy Braum changed his name to Billy Thornton.

  Even after his divorce with Eleanor, he worked for Dory Senior and helped with booking, or paperwork, or whatever needed to be done. Later he went to work for The Sheik in Detroit as a booker. Believe it or not, Detroit was the premiere territory in the country at that time. Detroit was doing $100,000 houses before anyone else had heard of a $100,000 house. They were drawing even more money than New York for a while.

  The Billy Thornton I knew was a strange kid. When he was 12 he stole a car! He was driving around town, and when he got caught, they thought the Boys’ Ranch would be a good place for him. They took him out there, and that was where he stayed until he was 18.

  After that he went to one of the Amarillo TV stations and became a cameraman. And he was still a goofy bastard! He would switch around the numbers on the weather map so the weatherman would be there saying, “Well, in Amarillo today it was 94 degrees,” when it was actually 49 degrees.

  I went years without hearing from him, until I went out to California in the 1980s looking for acting work. There was a big casting agent out there who called me in to read for a part in some TV movie. After I read, she said, “By the way, Billy Bob, the fellow who wrote this, says he’s your nephew.”

  I said, “Billy Bob? I don’t know any goddamned Billy Bob!”

  She said, “Billy Bob Thornton.”

  I thought and thought and finally said, “Yes! Yes, I know who that goofball is! He stole that car! Yes, I remember!”

  Well, Billy Bob was apparently directing, too, so that was the last I heard of that project.

  Later I played a small role in another movie he was working on, Friday Night Lights, and we were on the set together. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both acted like we didn’t know each other.

  Amarillo was also where I encountered a really good tag team—Kurt and Karl Von Brauner. Karl was a very smart guy and became a spray pilot after retiring. Kurt was a very dedicated professional. He was working for us when he got word one night that his mother had passed away in Germany. He went ahead and worked right on through it, fulfilling all his shots before going back there. It wasn’t easy on him.

  Kurt Von Brauner was the man who taught my brother how to use the forearm. Kurt could throw a forearm check better than anyone back then.

  The Von Brauners proved to be more than teachers, though. They were also barbers, at least in one angle we did where they cut my hair off to build up a feud with them against Junior and me.

  Back then it took five weeks for the tapes of the shows to make it to all the towns in the territory, in what we called “bicycling the tape” around. This meant I had to cut all my hair off for five weeks, so the people who saw the tape of the haircut show last would get to see a bald Terry the next time I wrestled there. Of course, the people in the first towns where the show aired got to wondering, “Damn, isn’t his hair ever going to grow back?”

  I also remember Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson coming in and just doing fantastic. Pat wrestled in Amarillo as “Lord” Patrick Patterson, and I had some great matches with him. Ray Stevens was one of the greatest characters I ever met in wrestling. Ray and I did rodeo together for a while in the early 1980s. One night we were driving back from a rodeo show, and we would always shoot the shit.

  This night I guess we ran out of bullshit, and we got quiet in the car. I thought for a minute and then said, “Ray, what would you do if you had a million dollars?”

  He said, as honest and truthful as he could be, “I’d play a whole lot harder.” And he meant that.

  I don’t know how many times I was in a bar with Ray Stevens, and he’d ask me to borrow $50 or $100. Once I gave it to him, he’d set it on the table and buy drinks for everyone sitting at the table. He didn’t care if it was his best friend or Joe Blow. He’d buy drinks until that $50 or $100 was gone, and he always paid me back.

  Ray was an unbelievable worker. He could do anything.

  One of our top heel teams was the combination of Black Gordman and Goliath. They came to us for a few periods after making their names on the West Coast. They were probably the ones who spearheaded the movement of Mexican wrestlers coming into the United States and being successful. When they were here, they were introduced as being from Mexico, but when they were in Los Angeles, they made the ring announcer say they were from “not Mexico, but New Mexico,” and all those Hispanic fans would go nuts.

  There’s something I think a lot of guys don’t realize about that generation of wrestlers—they could really wrestle. We have better athletes in wrestling than we’ve ever had, but we had more wrestlers back then. Heck, when I first got in the business, having amateur skills was almost a prerequisite. At least 50 percent of the guys then had some kind of background in amateur wrestling.

  It was also an era when guys designed their own personas, and most of the time they could pull it off. I think that has its plusses. A guy knows who he wants to be and what he can play better than anybody else.

  While I learned a lot about wrestling from the pros I worked with, I was also about to have a whole new learning experience on my hands. In 1967, Vicki gave birth to our daughter, Stacy. I took one look at this little thing and knew my life was never going to be the same again. Four years later, my life changed again, when my daughter Brandee was born.

  One thing that didn’t happen too often (except in Amarillo) but was always a thrill for me was when all three wrestling Funks—Senior, Junior and me— would wrestle together. Dad still wrestled periodically, and when he did, it was automatic box office. It was tough working with my father, because you always knew who was in charge. Still, it was a real pleasure, not just because he was my father, but because I got to be in there with someone who had such a great sense of the people in the audience. He had great ring psychology. I can’t remember him ever having the same match twice, and my brother and I both learned from him. As many times as Junior and Jack Brisco wrestled for the world title, I don’t think they ever had the same match twice, and I have never had the same match twice.

  I think that’s a creativity that’s lost in the business. I can’t ever recall sitting down and talking to Pak Song, Hiro Matsuda, or one of those guys about even one high spot before a match. You did it in the ring. You would have a finish, and that was it. The rest of it, you did by feel. You’ve got to dance, and today dancing is all but gone.

  I was learning from my father and from people like Mike DiBiase to fully believe in what I was doing in a match, or while cutting a promo (an interview of a wrestler, aimed at hyping an upcoming match). When I was a babyface, I truly loved the fans and would go to the extent with fans that you’d see few people go to, because I realized what they did for me. Yet—and this is where the foggy part comes in—when I am a heel I truly hate the people. My brother would continually get mad at me. He’d say, “Hell, you don’t come back down for 10 minutes.”

  And I didn’t. As a heel, I didn’t just walk into the arena. I was the heel before I even got there, and don’t even ask me when that transformation took place, because I don’t know, but I think that is the lure for me of the business—that I can immerse myself in what I’m doing.

  When I get hit, I am hit. When I show being hurt, I am hurt, and when I am beating somebody up, I am beating him up—and I don’t mean that I am out there throwing potatoes (legitimate, full-force punches or kicks).

  Junior and I worked togeth
er in a lot of tag-team matches over the years, though. He also learned some, I think, from Mike DiBiase, but he also picked up things from a lot of people, incorporating a lot of styles into his own work. I think he learned a lot about psychology from Johnny Valentine.

  I thought that being a second-generation wrestler helped give me a good foundation for what to expect in the business. It didn’t seem to work that way at first for Johnny’s son, who wrestled for us as Johnny Fargo in the early 1970s before becoming Greg “The Hammer” Valentine.

  Greg was 18 or 19 years old when he started for us and was never happy with his money. One day they were passing out the checks. His was about $500, and he wasn’t happy with that. Well, this was a surprise to us, because $500 for a week’s pay in the early 1970s was pretty damn good, especially for a young guy! He opened up his check and started cussing up a storm, and I looked over and watched him tearing his check up! He threw the pieces on the floor and stomped off.

  I didn’t do anything. Neither did my father, my brother, or Uncle Herman, another old police officer from Indiana like his father. Herman retired from police work and worked in the office at that time. We just sat there. About five minutes later, he walked back into the room, picked up the pieces, put them in his pocket and never said another word about it.

  But Greg was a good man deep down and a tough guy just like his dad. He had that way about him where I knew that he was always going to do all right for himself. He wasn’t what you might call a loner, but you weren’t going to get a phone call a day from Greg Valentine, to see how you’re doing.

  A lot of the guys were obviously tough, but some of the really tough ones might surprise you. What a lot of people don’t realize is that my brother is a tough man. I think that’s because he is a fairly quiet man. He certainly knew how to hook somebody. He was also a good football player and a much better athlete than I ever was. He could always run faster than me.

  We paid the TV station in Amarillo $500 to use their studio and shoot our show. Then we’d bicycle the tape around to the different towns. Our announcer was Steve Stack, who learned everything he knew about wrestling in Amarillo. He had been running a gas station. His co-announcer was Nick Roberts, the old Lubbock promoter. Nick was a former wrestler and the father of Nickla Roberts, who worked as a manager named “Baby Doll” in the 1980s.