More Than Just Hardcore

by Terry Funk

  Now Kiniski wanted out, and he had told my father immediately before making it known to the NWA board because they were good friends. Gene also told Fritz he was done as champion.

  After he told the board, and it became official that Gene would be stepping down as champion, my father told us, “I’m going to push for Junior to be champion.”

  This meant he was going to talk about Junior becoming champion to the different NWA promoters who made up the NWA board. The board voted on who would become champion.

  My father was very smart about the business, he could count alliance members and knew who was going to vote which way. He knew how many he had to carry. With Junior, there was pretty widespread support, although it wasn’t unanimous.

  My father’s push worked, and on February 11, 1969, Junior won the world title from Kiniski in Florida.

  This isn’t a knock against Gene, who worked hard every night to make the local territories’ stars look good and did big business everywhere he went, but I don’t think a step was lost when Junior got the slot. It just got stronger.

  I’ve been asked more than once my opinion as to who was the greatest NWA world champion. You really have to put them into eras to be able to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Having said that I can’t even give you one name, but I’ll give two.

  First is Dory Funk Jr. Sure, I’m biased, but Junior was as versatile as anyone who ever held the title. For that point in history, and for what was needed to produce revenue at the box office and to “make” people in a territory, Junior was a great one.

  Also first is Harley Race, partially because he was another great, versatile champ who could make anyone look like a million bucks, and partially because if I don’t say Harley, I will be in an absolute fight the next time I see him.

  Junior winning was also the best thing that could have happened to us. Amarillo was a small but influential territory. You might think having one of our top stars out of the area defending the title might hurt business, but it helped business. When Junior came in periodically, we had someone built up for him, and it was automatic business. There was also the prestige of having the world’s champion be someone from this area.

  Sometimes my father or I would go into a territory as heels and challenge whoever was the top contender for Dory’s title, prior to the guy getting his shot at the world title. A father and brother trying to take out challengers to keep the world title in the family was a great scenario that had never been done before. My father could go anywhere and get instant heat with his promos.

  Out of my entire career, my favorite time might have been when Junior was champion and we were all traveling through the territories, here and there. I was treated very well by the different promoters, although I wasn’t getting rich. It taught me a lot, because I had to be able to help a challenger by making the fans convinced that because he beat me, he could beat the world champion. I had to be creative constantly, within the ring, to make that opponent and still keep myself strong enough to come back again. It was a bit of a tightrope walk but I loved the challenge.

  Johnny Valentine was one of the later challengers who battled me on his way to Junior. We had a short feud in February 1973 in St. Louis, over the Missouri title. We wrestled 30 minutes for TV. It was so damn good—because of Johnny, not because of me.

  At the end of the match, we had a deal where I clipped his leg with a chair. Johnny sold it so well that the people were coming unglued. I mean, the whole arena was ready to jump in the ring, and believe me, I’ve had them do it, so I was watching. It was chaotic.

  Later on, Sam Muchnick, the Saint Louis promoter, came and told us he wasn’t running it on the TV show because “it was too hot.”

  That’s one thing people fail to realize, when they talk about a fluke finish, where there is no finality. It’s what you do going into those finishes that’s so important. A screwy finish can be just me hitting you and you being laid out, if the match is popping and the people are being set for it.

  That St. Louis crowd was hot, because of the way we set it up in that long match, and because of the way Johnny Valentine sold the pain of his leg.

  I’m not trying to put myself on a level with Johnny Valentine, but I truly think he and I took the same approach. When he was selling that chair, he was really hurting. To be able to totally do that is rare, but he had that power, not to just portray it, but to deliver the truth of what he was doing to the people in those stands and have them feel that.

  Sam was a smart man, though. To this day, I think part of the heat for my issue with Valentine was Sam showing part of the angle, but not all of it. But at the same time, cutting that angle short was caused by Sam not wanting to put so much power in our hands. If he’d shown that whole thing, Johnny and I would have been locked in for a long run there, and Sam had other plans. Those plans included not letting anyone get so hot that St. Louis was too reliant on one piece of talent. Sam always kept control of his town, and wisely so.

  Johnny was never world’s champion, but he didn’t need to be world’s champion. He went to Dallas and popped it for years. He went to Charlotte, St. Louis, cities all over, and he popped every place he went. And he didn’t do it by doing goddamned moonsaults, he did it by making people believe in him.

  Hell, if he were here today, Johnny Valentine at age 35 or 40, he could walk into Vince McMahon’s company and pop the WWE. You might think he wouldn’t, but I have a feeling he’d give it hell. He understood the psychology of what he was doing, and you know, if he were there now, understanding the business and the fans like he always did, hell, he might climb up there and do a moonsault.

  Speaking of McMahon, let’s go ahead and clear something up. I am well aware that the old WWWF promoter was Vincent J. McMahon, while his son, the owner of today’s WWE and the guy who led the nationwide push starting Christmas 1983 is Vincent K. McMahon, but everyone in the business who dealt with both called them Vince Sr. and Vince Jr., so for the sake of clarity, that’s how I’ll usually refer to them throughout this book.

  Anyway, in late 1972, my brother Junior told me that, like Gene Kiniski before him, he was ready to drop the belt. He’d had enough of the grind. It was hard on him, but it was easy on me. I could go into a territory ahead of him here or there, and I’d rant and rave about whomever I was wrestling. It was really one of the best times of my career, in terms of creativity. Just laying out a five-minute promo and starting and finishing right on cue was something I loved doing.

  Junior ended up losing the title to Harley Race in Kansas City on May 24, 1973. Kansas City was Race’s hometown, but that didn’t really have much to do with that being where the match was held. It was more a matter of Bob Geigel having control of that area, and Kansas City had never had a title change to that point. A world title change was a great thing for a city, and any promoter would have loved to have had that match.

  Junior was going to lose the title to Jack Brisco but ended up having a pickup truck accident on the ranch and hurting his shoulder. Here, I have to stop again, because Jack Brisco’s book claims that he thinks there was no wreck, that the Funks were only trying to maneuver him away from the tide.

  First, there was a wreck. I saw the truck. The hood ornament was slightly twisted, and there was a little dent in the right front bumper. Junior even had to comb his hair, because it had gotten mussed!

  No, I’m just being silly, but that’s what the Briscos seemed to assume. The truth is, the truck was totally torn up, and Junior was hurt. He and our father were at a creek on the ranch. The creek had a good, steep bank, and he went off the bank and into the creek.

  That same shoulder had been bad for a long time. He’d even had surgery on it previously after hurting it in college playing football.

  Second, has anybody thought that the Briscos might have been trying to maneuver the Funks out of the picture through Eddie Graham? We had guys biting at our asses—they wanted us out. There’s no one-way street in the business, and there never was. But t
hat’s the business. Someone didn’t just decide one day to make Dory Funk or Jack Brisco world champion, and it suddenly happened. Someone had to push for them—it was a promotional thing, and there was a lot of politicking, on all sides, before votes were cast.

  If Jack had gotten it six months earlier he might have made less money, because the money for the champion only increased as the years went by, so the Funks possibly made him some money by putting him off! He would have only lasted the same amount of time, so what’s the difference when he took it? But there’s no doubt, Jack Brisco later became a great world’s champion.

  While Jack was a great worker, it was Eddie Graham who made him what he was. Eddie, Jack’s biggest supporter, was the great manipulator, and he groomed Jack to where Jack had to be a star. Eddie was the right mind to get behind Jack’s push. Eddie was capable of seeing Jack’s potential and knowing how to get the most out of him.

  So yes, there were some political struggles between Eddie and Jack and the Funks, but I don’t have a single complaint about it. Geez, that’s the stuff that makes the past worth talking about.

  CHAPTER 8

  My Japanese Debut

  The first Funk team to visit Japan on a wrestling tour was Dorys Senior and Junior, in 1969. My dad still had an aversion to the Japanese because of the war. They had an aversion to him, because they could tell how he felt about them. They pelted him with fruit, which was very unusual for the time. They hated my father, and my father certainly hated them.

  There were a lot of hard feelings left over from the war, as I would find out. A few years later, when Junior and I visited Hiroshima for the first time, we walked into a bar, only to be told, “No Americans! Get out!”

  About three years after Dory and Dory’s tour of Japan, we had two Japanese guys, Okuma and Masao Koma, come to work as a tag team in Amarillo. Koma in particular was a great guy, very tough and very sharp. He was also one of Shohei Baba’s young boys (proteges), so he had some say with Baba, who was one of Japan’s top stars. Koma also had a tremendous knowledge of the business.

  Baba made a trip to the States while they were here, and he stopped in only two places—Dallas and Amarillo. He was talking to Fritz and to us, to line up an American promotion to work with for talent. After hearing from both promotions and talking to Koma, he decided our promotion would be the better one to work with. Fritz made Baba an offer that included money that Fritz would be paid as promoter. Our offer had no upfront money paid for the promoter or booking fees. Still, we didn’t think we would be the ones picked, but we were, because Koma thought a lot of us and told Baba that he did. It also helped that Junior had done such a good job and gotten over so well over there when he had toured before.

  Japan was in turmoil the first time I was there, which was my only trip for the Japan Pro Wrestling Association.

  Junior and I worked several dates on that December 1971 tour. The biggest match we had was a tag-team win over the two biggest stars in Japan—Shohei “Giant” Baba and Antonio Inoki. Inoki didn’t want to do the job in that match but he did it anyway. I think he did it for the company, which was on its last legs. He certainly didn’t do it for Baba.

  There was tension between Inoki and Baba, and a lot of tension in the company overall. Both men ended up forming their own groups, which became huge, and becoming lifelong rivals. Their rivalry was rooted in business, but it was always personal. There was true animosity between those two, which probably made for one of the truly greatest wrestling eras in the world. There was great wrestling on both sides. It produced the talent mixtures and the variety of styles that enabled people to see so many different types of wrestling.

  My brother had a match with Inoki on this tour. A lot of the guys were worried that Inoki was going to go south on Junior, but Junior was tough and could take care of himself, so he wasn’t afraid of being crossed up. Just to make sure, I was standing at ringside, ready to punt Inoki’s head like a football if there was trouble.

  This was the beginning of our long relationship with Baba, as we joined the All Japan Wrestling group that he started. He never did anything except impress me as a very smart businessman. He was a very wise man who would only say what was necessary and nothing more. I never have met many people who would contemplate an answer and give as much thought to the consequences of that answer to the degree Baba did.

  My first tour for All Japan was the inaugural tour for All Japan as a company. It was also the only time I ever wrestled with Bruno Sammartino. He was a perennial champion for Vince McMahon Sr.’s WWWF, while I was always an NWA man in the 1970s, so our paths rarely crossed. Bruno, a burly power lifter and an incredibly strong man, was a great guy and a really underrated worker, because he knew how to get a response out of a crowd. Bruno also had a great heart and a lot of love for Baba.

  Bruno’s loyalty to Baba ended up putting him at odds with Vince Sr., who was aligned with Inoki’s New Japan Pro Wrestling. Even though he was Vince McMahon’s champion and doing so meant heat with McMahon, Bruno refused to go to Japan for Inoki. He was just loyal to his friends to the end, putting his own livelihood in jeopardy over his loyalty to his friend Baba. I really admire that.

  Bruno Sammartino was one of a rare breed in the wrestling business—a guy who was always as good as his word, with a lot of integrity. With Bruno, what you saw was what you got. And if he told you something, you could bank on it. Even on the tour I met him on, he was one of the top stars in the world and could have been making a lot more money than he was by appearing for his friend Baba, who wasn’t able to pay very well at that time. The highest compliment I can pay to a guy in the wrestling business is that he stands up for what he believes in, stands up for his friends, and is true to his word.

  One of the real characters on that tour was “Bulldog” Dick Brower. He said repeatedly, “I got to get my little girl something from Japan before I go.”

  This burly, mean-looking wrestler always talked about his little girl and what a sweet girl she was. One day he finally went to a store and got a kimono, but it was a size 24! I guess his “little girl” must have weighed 300 pounds! Or maybe he was a cross dresser. Who knows?

  One of the most memorable series of matches I ever saw in Japan was during one of my first tours there, when Don Leo Jonathan went up against Anton Geesink. Don Leo, at six foot eight, was one of the most amazing athletes I’ve ever seen, and Geesink was a famous Olympic judo champion before getting into pro wrestling. But physically, he was no match for Don Leo, and Don Leo goosed him pretty good every night. I mean, he just ate Anton’s lunch. Of course, their matches all had preplanned finishes, and they were both professional enough to stick to those plans, but Don Leo had a little fun with him every night along the way. But on the last night, they had a judo jacket match, and that match was a different story. Anton was in his element, and on that night, Don Leo met his match. That was the one night he got a little revenge on Don Leo.

  There were differences in how Baba and Inoki promoted their products to the fans. Baba was into gradually changing the business. He would stick with his formula and only develop and tweak it slightly. Inoki, on the other hand, was always trying to put out something different. He wanted to innovate in the world of wrestling. Inoki was more experimental. For example, he was the first one to really make good use of the European wrestlers and their unique, mat-based style.

  That was out of necessity, because as the NWA-backed promotion, we pretty much blocked him from using any talent from the United States, except for talent from New York.

  We were also involved in training Tomomi “Jumbo” Tsuruta, who would be one of Baba’s biggest stars for about 20 years. To be honest, Junior had a lot more to do with training him than I did.

  The first time I met Tsuruta, he was wearing a pair of size-14 sneakers, a shirt and a pair of pants that had been worn too much. It was the best stuff that he had. He was just an overgrown kid. Baba told us he had been in the Olympics and now wanted to be a pro wrestler.

>   Tsuruta took to pro wrestling like a duck to water, and it was immediately obvious he was destined for big things. He picked up a lot of Junior’s style, including the European forearm smash that my brother had seen Billy Robinson, the shooter from Great Britain, use. Tsuruta also had a lot of financial sense, too, which was very important. He kept his mouth shut and learned by listening. He ended up spending his entire career with Baba, and made good money under him.

  Unfortunately, Tsuruta died of liver failure while undergoing a transplant in 1999.1 was out of the loop with Baba at that point, so the only way I found out Tsuruta was even having health problems was through a couple of the boys who called to let me know.

  My relationship with Baba wasn’t always harmonious. When I called in 1977 to cancel a tour because I was filming Paradise Alley, Baba just said, “OK,” although he was very, very unhappy about it. And I knew how he was going to answer that before I even called. It probably came back to haunt me, though. Later they had a date for a big show, and didn’t have me on it. Well, I was over with the fans in Japan at that time. I also know Baba was presented with some ideas for me to do some commercials in Japan, but they were never followed through on, strangely enough.

  Anything I did on the side, the All Japan office wanted more than its fair share of, but that’s just the way it was. Baba was not happy with some of the licensing deals I made over there. He wanted the company to have a piece of things, like the record I made in 1983 (which contains some of the most godawful singing you’ve ever heard). Jimmy Hart wrote the songs for me because I was too cheap to pay for the rights to songs that people had already heard. All the songs on that album had one thing in common—they all sucked. One of them was called, “I Hate School”! Can you imagine? Who in the hell would think it would be a good idea to have a 35-year-old man singing “I Hate School”?

  After we finished recording, I flew back home, and that was when I found out this country isn’t as free as we might want it to be.