More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  He’d get about six feet from the guy and then he’d say, “Hey—you don’t know karate, do you?”

  The hitchhiker would just look at him.

  Kox would back up a couple of steps and say, “You do! You know karate, don’t you?”

  Pretty soon, he’d have the guy in a karate stance, like Bruce Lee, or something. Kox would say, with a terrified look on his face, “I don’t wanna mess with you if you know karate!”

  He’d run back to the car, and we’d take off. The guy would be back there doing goddamned kung-fu thrusts and everything, chopping and kicking at thin air!

  Sometimes we weren’t even trying to cause trouble, but trying to stop it. One time I was out with Chris Taylor, the 400-pounder who had wrestled in the Olympics. We were coming out of the Claridge Hotel in Saint Louis, and we saw a man and woman having a huge fight right there on the street.

  Being the gentleman I am, I went to break it up and got between them.

  “All right,” I said. “That’s enough of that shit. Dadgummit, you guys break it up!”

  The guy went into his car and pulled out a .45-caliber revolver. I jumped right behind the biggest thing I could find, which was Chris. God bless him, he was about to shit his pants. The guy couldn’t even see me back there!

  He finally calmed down, but Chris and I were both scared shitless.

  Murdoch and I knew that when Art Nielsen and Eddie Graham were a tag team, they’d literally drink a case of beer every day. We idolized them when we were young, so we figured we’d be just like them. Well, many nights, Murdoch and I, and sometimes Dusty Rhodes, pulled up to my house at 2:30 in the morning, but we still had two six-packs left. We’d drink that up so we could say we finished our case of beer.

  One time, Dusty and I were coming back from Albuquerque, and we were getting drunk. We had Cowboy Lang, the midget wrestler, in the car with us. We drank and drank the beer, and pretty soon we couldn’t drive anymore, either one of us.

  Lang was the only sober one in the car, so Dusty took off his boot, and I stuffed two beer cans down in it, and we put that big boot on Cowboy Lang’s little leg, because that was the only way he could reach the gas pedal. That son of a bitch drove 120 miles and got us home!

  Nick Bockwinkel and I were in Abilene once. I was driving my 1965 Galaxy, and the air-conditioner wasn’t working. Well, this was the middle of summer, so it was hot as hell! We got all our beer ahead of time.

  I had my match, took my shower, put on my underwear, threw the rest of my clothes in my bag and tossed them into the trunk of the car. Nick and I had our beer, and the car was gassed up and ready to go. I was driving 90, 95 miles an hour, and here came the cops.

  He pulled us over, and I went back to talk to him, still in my underwear. I said, “Goddamn, tonight just isn’t my night. Somebody stole my bag with all my clothes in it, and now I’m getting a goddamned ticket!”

  The cop said, “Dadgum, Terry, that’s OK. I didn’t know that. You guys just go on.”

  Good thing he never looked in the trunk.

  I remember when Bobby Jaggers got a new convertible Corvette. God only knows who he talked into loaning him the money for it, because I know he didn’t pay for it! We were going through Tulia, Texas, and it had been raining, so the underpass was just full of water. Ray Stevens and I were in his pickup truck, and we made it through the underpass, but just barely. It was a raised pickup, four-wheel drive, and the damned water was still getting up to the floorboards.

  Jaggers got on his C.B. in his Corvette and said, “How is that underpass?”

  Ray got on his radio and said, “Just fine, Bobby. Come on through.”

  He did, and that convertible was just sunk. That poor son of a bitch.

  Even the referees weren’t safe from being the targets of ribs. Amarillo had a referee named Ken Farber, and at the time there was this synthetic drug called Dilaudid, only prescribed to cancer patients, that was about halfway between heroin and morphine and was popular in drug circles. I read about it in a newspaper, and so the next week, when Ken and I were riding to a show together, I

  •.lid, “Ken, would you mind going into the pharmacy for me and picking up something for me?” He said, “Sure.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Just go in there and tell the pharmacist you need to pick up an order of Dilaudid. They should have it ready by now.”

  A few minutes later, he came running out of the store. They had pitched a goddamn fit on him, and he was mad.

  “Damn, Terry! You trying to get me thrown in jail?”

  Farber used to take his pet pitbull, Buffy, to the matches. He and that dog would make the loop to El Paso, Odessa and Lubbock. Usually, one of the locker rooms would have a four-legged table, and Ken would leash his dog to one of the table legs. Every match he went out, that dog would go crazy with barking until Ken got back.

  This used to drive Al Hays (one of our top heels) nuts, and he’d ask, in his dainty English accent, “Farber, please, please don’t leave that dog here. Please do something else with him. Leave him in the car, or something. The dog drives us nuts when you’re not back here.”

  But each week Farber would bring that dog back. And every week that dog would be leashed to a table and bark its head off. And every week, Hays would ask Farber not to bring the dog anymore. Maybe he didn’t believe Al. After all, the dog stopped all its barking and crying whenever Farber came back to the room, so Farber just didn’t realize how obnoxious that dog got when it was crying for him.

  One night, Farber leashed the dog to the table in the room and went out to referee. When he came back, Al Hays was waiting for him.

  “Well, Farber, look what your dog has done,” he said, pointing to a big turd on the floor near the dog.

  Farber fussed at the dog and rubbed its nose in the crap. Then, as he looked at the pile of shit, he noticed a kernel of corn and a peanut, and he realized his dog didn’t eat corn or peanuts.

  Al Hays did, though.

  Farber never brought that dog to the matches again.

  Yes, Al Hays was a wonderful worker and every bit as good a ribber. He was also a great talker and even did some commentary for us in Amarillo. People who only heard him in the WWF would probably never believe how sharp and smart he was.

  Sometimes an idea for a rib would just pop into my head.

  For example, at one point, Gary Hart was managing a guy called the “Moon Man.” I think he also wrestled as Masabu. He had no front teeth and crazy, spiked hair going in all directions. He was working for Fritz, and was drawing pretty well, so Junior and I brought him in to work a shot in San Angelo, Texas, as an attraction. He was Mexican and couldn’t speak a word of English.

  I picked him up at the little airport in San Angelo and told him, “I TAKE YOU TO HOTEL.”

  He looked at me for a second and said, “HO-KAY!”

  No English whatsoever. We were going down the road when we came upon an old folks’ home.

  I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be funny to set him loose in an old folks’ home?”

  We pulled into the driveway and stopped. I pointed to the building and said, “HERE HOTEL.”

  He said a bunch of shit in Spanish I didn’t understand and then, “HO-KAY!”

  He got out of the car and I motioned between myself and his bag, letting him know I’d get it.

  “You go in door,” I said, pointing at the door. “Ask for room. ROOM!”

  So this crazy-looking Mexican walked into the old folks’ home shouting, “Room! ROOM!”

  A bunch of those old sons of bitches were looking around like their world was about to end, and then he realized where he was and ran out of there, back to the car. I was laughing. He wasn’t.

  One of the best ones I ever did was with Rick Martel when he was a rookie and coming down to Florida. He was riding with Dick Slater and me one day, and I said, “Hey, Rick! You know what would be really funny?”

  He answered in his thick French-Canadian accent, “What, Ter-ree?”<
br />
  “At the next stoplight we come to,” I said, “It would be a funny son of a bitch if you took off all of your clothes when we stopped, got out, ran around the car naked and jumped back in the back door!”

  He laughed and said, “Yes!”

  Now, you have to understand—in Florida, they have these gullies that are full of water, to keep the roads from flooding and help with drainage.

  He got out of the car, naked, and started running. When he got behind the door, Slater locked the door, and I took off. He was running down the road, totally naked, shouting, “Wait! WAIT!”

  He didn’t know what to do, so he jumped into the damn gully! When we went back around to get him, he looked like a damn turtle, with just his head sticking out of the water!

  Nowadays, they travel by plane, and I think one of the problems with the wrestling business today is that they don’t have the bonding to the same extent that we did. Of course, as I was living proof, it was entirely possible to have as crazy an experience in an airplane as you could in a car.

  Junior and I used to love playing tricks on the other passengers on planes. One of our favorites was the “empty luggage trick.”

  Junior, who’s been bald-headed for most of his adult life, had this awful-looking toupee, which he put on the top of his head before getting on a plane. He would always get on board before me. When I got on, I would have an empty bag with me, and I’d be struggling with the thing as if it weighed a thousand pounds. I’d carry it for about 10 feet, then set it down and make like I had to catch my breath. Junior would be in his seat while this was going on. I’d finally lift the thing up as I got to the overhead compartment over Junior, who would be acting like he didn’t know me. Everyone around would be watching as I staggered back and forth before finally getting it into the overhead rack. When I did, I would bring my hand down and knock his toupee to one side—not all the way off, but enough to be seriously lopsided. Then, I’d go to my seat, a couple of rows behind him.

  The funniest thing, to us, was that no one would ever tell him about it! He’d be sitting there with the wig on the side of his head for the whole flight! Boy, the things we did to occupy our time.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Doctor is Out (of His Mind!)

  And there’s one crazy bastard, in particular, who deserves his own chapter, if anyone does.

  One of the craziest weeks in my entire career happened a little while after Virgil Runnels came back to Amarillo, now calling himself “Dusty Rhodes” and wrestling as a heel. We decided to give Dusty a manager, Dr. Jerry Graham.

  Jerry Graham’s mother had recently passed away in a Phoenix hospital while Jerry was there. Jerry was so upset that he picked up his mother’s body, slung her over his shoulder and ran out of the hospital room. The interns tried to stop him, but he pushed through them and got onto an elevator. He took that elevator down to the first floor, where he pushed his way through another batch of interns. He made it out of the hospital and down the street to his car. When he got to the car, he was so tired and blown up, he just bodyslammed her onto the car. The police showed up and he started fighting them, until one of them cracked him on the head with a billy club, giving him 110 stitches in his head. I tell you, he looked like the goddamned Frankenstein monster!

  He made his bond to get out of jail, and somehow Dusty and I heard that he was available, so we suggested him to my father. My father said, “Well, if we bring him in, you guys are gonna have to handle him.”

  We thought that was a great idea. Jerry Graham was one of the all-time great characters in wrestling, and we were going to make a load of money by making him Dusty’s manager.

  His first night, we were in Albuquerque. He managed Dusty against me, in a best-of-three-falls match Dusty won the first fall, and I won the second. Between the second and third fall, I was sitting in one corner, and Dusty was in the other. Jerry was in his corner, and told him, “Open your mouth!”

  Dusty opened his mouth, and Jerry threw two pills inside.

  Dusty swallowed and said, “Damn, Jewwy, what wuth that?”

  Jerry shrugged and yelled, “Nobody knows! Nobody knows!”

  That night, we drove from Albuquerque to El Paso. Back then, we went to extremes for opponents not to be seen together, so I met Dusty in the alley behind the arena, and we got going. Along the way, we stopped to get some beer.

  At this time, you had to go into the bar and buy the beer in New Mexico, so Jerry said, “I’ll go!”

  We gave him the money, and he went in, with our beer money, plus his $85 payoff for that night. About 10 minutes later, he came out and explained, “Sorry, I couldn’t get no beer.”

  We stopped at the next bar we came to, and the same thing happened. The third bar, we waited almost 10 minutes again, before we got to wondering just what the hell he was doing. We went into the bar, and there he was, shooting damn shots down, one after another.

  He was still drunk as a skunk when we got to El Paso. The next morning, Jerry decided it would be a good idea to dye his gray suit black. It was his only suit, but he thought it was time for a new look, so he bought a box of Ritz dye. He filled up the motel room bathtub with water, poured the Ritz dye into the tub, and then got into the tub with his suit on.

  We came in there later, and he must have been doing somersaults around the damn room, or something, because there was dye on the curtains, dye on the walls, dye on the sheets—there was dye everywhere in the damn room!

  So now he had taken his suit off to let it dry, and this pale, 400-pound nutcase was walking to the restaurant wearing nothing but his bikini briefs and a Hamburg hat, shooting at airplanes flying overhead with his umbrella.

  Dusty and I finally talked him back into his room, and I called my dad.

  “Dad, Jerry Graham’s terribly drunk. We can’t handle him.”

  My father yelled, “You guys! You got him that way! You damn well better get him to the next town!”

  Well, Harley Race was in the territory at the time, and he happened to be staying at the same hotel. We didn’t know what to do, but we knew Harley could handle anyone, or anything, so I asked for his help.

  “Harley, please help us. Take Jerry Graham to the next town for us!”

  Harley took one look at the huge drunk now back in his dyed suit, and Harley growled, “He’s not getting in my car! You guys are gonna have to figure out some other way than that.”

  So we rented a U-Haul trailer, hitched it to Harley’s car and coaxed Jerry up into the trailer. Once he was in, we locked the door shut, and Harley drove him the rest of the way to Odessa, where he managed that night.

  A few days later, we were driving to a show in Littlefield. One of our favorite things to do on the road was to shoot at ducks, rabbits, or whatever creature happened to be roaming about. Well, Dusty figured out pretty quickly that we didn’t need Jerry Graham around a loaded firearm, so Dusty put his shotgun in the trunk. Unfortunately, that’s where Jerry found it when he went to put his bags in.

  “Guys!” he said. “Let’s shoot some ducks! Let’s shoot some ducks!”

  Dusty didn’t want to break his heart, so Dusty said, “OK, Jewwy, let’th thoot thum duckth, but I don’t want you methin’ with the gun.”

  Along the way, we came to a pond. We saw some ducks sitting on the pond, and Dusty rolled down the window, grabbed his gun and shot at them. One of the ducks fell. Jerry Graham jumped out and dove into the water on our side of the fencing! He wasn’t a very graceful diver, either.

  He submerged at the fence, and came up on the other side. God only knows how he maneuvered his bulbous body through the fence, but he did. He swam all the way to the duck, about another 30 feet. And then, instead of picking the duck up, he stuck the damn thing’s neck in his mouth, like he was a 400-pound bird-dog!

  He swam back, went under the fence again, and came out of the water back by us. He put the duck down and then proceeded to shake himself like a dog drying itself off.

  Dusty told him, “Je
wwy, look at yourthelf, now! You’re gonna have to run until you’re dry.”

  And that’s exactly what he did. He ran alongside the car.

  The following night, back in Amarillo, Jerry got thrown in jail because he had been in a go-go bar and had grabbed one of the dancers between her legs. Not only that, but he wouldn’t let go! The police had to come and force his hand off the poor girl.

  With Jerry Graham back in jail, my father decided it was time to send Jerry out. Usually promoters would give guys at least a two-week notice, but I think my father was scared Jerry Graham would have burned Amarillo to the ground by then.

  So instead of giving him a two-week notice, my father told him, “Jerry, I have a deal for you. I’m gonna give you $50 and a one-way ticket to anywhere in the United States you want to go.”

  Jerry was heartbroken, but he said, “OK.”

  Uncle Herman drove him to the airport, got him on the plane and waited until it took off. He was under strict orders from my father not to leave until he saw Jerry Graham fly out of Amarillo.

  Later that day, we got a call from Dallas. Jerry had disrupted the damn plane so much that they threw him in jail! Of course, he was now in Fritz’s territory, which officially made him Fritz’s problem. Fritz got him out, put him on a plane for New York City, and that was the last we saw of him.

  CHAPTER 7

  My Brother, the World Champ

  The y year was 1968, and my father had some big news.

  I didn’t know about it until my father came to Junior and me and said, “Gene is ready to give it up.”

  “Gene” was Gene Kiniski, the National Wrestling Alliance world’s heavyweight champion, and what he was ready to give up was the championship. Champions tended to run that route. The world champion went from territory to territory, wrestling the top stars in each, often in long, grueling matches. The grind would run through a guy physically and mentally, and they’d be ready to give it up. Some lasted longer than others. If one worked, the promoters wanted to keep him, because he was a proven draw. It was almost always the champion himself who wanted to end his reign.