by Terry Funk
Throughout my career, there were places I could always go for a short, but successful, run. Memphis was one of those.
Florida was another. I could always go back to Florida and work with Dusty Rhodes. It was a feud that never lost steam. ltd had steam since the day we started. Some of the angles we did were silly, but our feud always had believability to it, because I would make fun of his family, his weight. Everything I said was strongly derogatory. People bought it because they thought no one would allow anybody to say that kind of crap about them.
I hate to admit it, but I really don’t think Dusty is a slob. It’s hard for me to do. It hurts me to write this, but I really like him. And that’s a horrible thing to admit. I sure wouldn’t want to be married to him, though, the fat asshole.
Seriously, it worked because I borderlined on him, and he borderlined me right back. He’d rip on my family, my athletic background, everything. Borderlining is cutting a promo and just coming as hard as you can at the other guy.
When I cut a promo on Dusty, I would say things that were true, to make people look at him and think, “God, that’s got to bother him!”
And the same thing with the things he said about me. That was a key to being successful in our business. It’s a combination of believing, and the suspension of disbelief, for fans. And we have to say things that they can suspend their disbelief on. You have to say things that are cutting, and you have to be clever about it, too. That way you get not only the fans who are going to buy into what you’re saying and believe it, but the ones who view it differently, who can think, “You know, that’s some sharp shit they’re doing there.”
And talk about a creative promo man, Dusty Rhodes was sharp! He was one of the truly great talkershe could, as they say, talk those fans right into those seats.
And when I cut him up verbally, he knew that it meant we were going to do some big box office. And believe me, he hit hard on me, too. Our promos and knocking each other bordered on being shoots, from time to time, and I think that’s why ours was such a successful feud.
For most of my career, we had an assortment of people watching wrestling, from true believers to people watching for an entertaining show, and we wanted to open up that whole audience and grab up what we could. That was what I tried to do with the cleverness of my promos, but it had to be with a grain of truth. Building up to my August 28 match with Lawler, I took our famous 1981 empty-arena match, where he took a wooden chair to my eye for the finish, added in a real-life tragedy at home and made what I think was a very solid promo.
Week 2…
“This is my horse’s tail. I loved that horse. You talk about omens, no more than two weeks ago, my horse was in this pasture. Lightning came down and struck old Copus. He was 25 years old, Copus was, and when the lightning hit him, it went ahead and caused him to start turning in circles. It also paralyzed his lips. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, but when you think about it, a horse has to eat, and Copus couldn’t hold the grass, or the grain in his mouth, so I had to do what a man has to do. I had to get a gun, and I had to put Copus down.
“Do you realize how I got that horse? My wife got me that horse after Jerry Lawler injured my eye, to give me solace! And now that horse is in the ground, and now, I am going back to Memphis, Tennessee, to find Jerry Lawler. That horse lay there, and I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I took that gun, and I thought about putting it to Jerry Lawler’s head at that moment, and pulling the trigger! But I know that I can’t do that to Jerry Lawler. So, Jerry Lawler, what I’m going to do, is I’m gonna bring you back something that you gave to me over two decades ago! And I’ve got it right here, in my back pocket!”
(I pull out a sharp piece of wood)
“Here it is, Jerry Lawler! The stick that you stuck in my eyeI have kept it for 25 years! If you look at it, it’s worn. You’ve heard of a worrying stoneit’s supposed to make you not worry. Well, this here, I rub it and I worry about you. It brings more worry to meif I am going to have finality with you, Jerry Lawler, before I even die!
“I want you back in the ring, and I am going to bring you this stick! And, oh yes, I’m going to give it to you, Jerry Lawler, but it’s going to be like an Indian giver! I’m going to give it to you in your right eye, and then I’m gonna take it back! Then I’m going to give it to you in your left eye, and I’m gonna take it back! And then your right eye, and take it back! Left eye! Right eye! Whichever eye! Lawler, we’re gonna have some finality to this, and it’s going to be on the 28th in the Mid-South Coliseum!”
Florida was where I learned about promos, from Boris Malenko. He was the father of Joe and Dean Malenko, but back then, he was the best damn promo man I ever heard. I would watch him constantly, because he did such a wonderful job with long promos that had such intensity. I also saw the amount of time he put into his promos. He would head off to the side, way before he ever went on TV. He would have his notes there, and he would be thinking out exactly what he was going to say. His philosophy was that if he had a 30-second promo, that meant he had 30 seconds to improve the attendance of the show, which meant it was time he needed to put a lot of effort into. Those 30 seconds could be the difference between a fan coming and not coming.
Two of the other greatest heel promo men were Curtis Iaukea and Mike DiBiase. They were both such great heels. Curtis made me understand the value of each word. You have an audience out there, and even one word can make a difference whether someone in that audience buys a ticket, or not.
Hell, King Curtis was so good that Mark Lewin made an entire career out of going from territory to territory and booking himself against Curtis! He was smart, and that’s how effective Curtis was.
Some guys just seemed to be naturals for one role or the other. Take Nick Bockwinkelhe spent years as a journeyman babyface. He was better than average, but in terms of drawing money he just didn’t have it as a babyface. After turning heel, he was AWA world champion for years, and he was money in the bank. He found his niche, as a condescending heel.
One guy whose name hardly ever comes up in discussions about great promo men is Jose Lothario, but he was an amazing talker. He would cut these very serious promos, half in English and half in Spanish. Between listening to him talk and working with him in the ring, I probably learned as much from Jose in 1966 and 1967 as I did from anyone.
People remember good promos. On his radio show Rush Limbaugh mentions Terry Funk on occasion. Why? Hell, he doesn’t ever talk about wrestling. But he listened to me in the past and remembered me cutting a promo where I was out with a gun, looking for Jose Lothario at the city dump. I ended up shooting at what I said was a rat, and claimed I’d gotten him! That brought up the question, was I saying Jose was a rat, or did I think all Mexicans were rats?
Things like that are vital to being a good heel, because the heel has to create the controversy, and the babyface has to feed on that controversy. And there must always be a reason for the heel to be doing what he’s doing. With me and Dusty, it went all the way back to college, when he was “jealous” because he was playing second team behind me and “couldn’t stand it.” He quit football because of me! As a heel, I always had to relate it to something like that.
Junior and I also had a long feud with the Brisco brothers that played off of the same type of thing. It went back to our familieswe claimed they were trying to dominate wrestling, and that we were the one, truly great family in the profession.
The same thing holds true todayas you’ll read, when I wrestled Lawler in August 2004,1 called him a baby banger on TV, because of his legal problems in that area (he was cleared of all charges, by the way). What would create more believability than that? Who didn’t know at least something about that story? Lawler knows the truth, and he knows the truth doesn’t have anything to do with what I’d be saying. The people fed on what I was saying and knew Lawler would truly hate that.
Good promos are half-shoots, all the time. In order to do a good promo, you have t
o be ready to damn near shoot. There’s an artistry to ityou have to live, breathe and believe what you’re saying and doing. Some people might think that this concept of a “shoot promo” is a new development over the last few years, but it’s not. That idea has been around forever.
And heel promos take a great deal of thought, because you want to get people hot, but you also want to be somewhat clever in doing so. Of course, you had to be able to follow that up by being clever in the ring.
And a good heel has to know the difference between true heat and cheap heat. Cheap heat is pulling a gimmick out of your tights and hitting the other guy with it. True heat is working hard for it, building up to a spot that’s going to infuriate the people. Cheap heat is doing a promo where you say, “All you people have no teeth.” True heat is doing something clever, something that gets people mad without having to directly insult each and every one of them.
Even today you see guys come out and just rip on the fans every week, or on the local sports teams, because they know it will get a pop, but that’s just cheap heat.
I’m not saying don’t ever use a cheap pop, but it is an easy way to get a reaction. It becomes a bad thing when you see a guy come out and use the microphone, and he does a cheap heat job. Then, here comes the next guy, and he goes for the cheap heat. Then, the next guy does the same thing. Well, that’s horrible, and it’s stupid on their part, because that first guy might get a pop, but each one after him doing the same thing is going to get less and less of a pop. If nobody had ever said that the local baseball team sucks, then that would be the greatest thing in the world to say, but it’s been overused.
I guess the best way of explaining it is that cheap heat is when you say something and it’s obvious to everyone that you’re only saying it to get a heated reaction. I always thought it was better to be derogatory toward my opponent and toward the people who favored him, instead of just making a blanket insult to all fans. With Bob Armstrong, I might jump on his family because he has sons who wrestle, and fans know that family.
Of course, we can talk about good heat and cheap heat all day, but here’s the bottom linegood heat is the kind of heat that leads to a sellout crowd. Bad heat is the kind of heat that leads up to a show with lousy attendance. It’s really just that simple. I can keep being profound with all this bullshit about what cheap heat is, but it boils down to what draws money. And if it draws, it’s good heat.
Another way of saying it is that good heat is when I’m saying some stupid thing on TV, and cheap heat is when somebody else says something stupid on TV.
I put my real life into those interviews, and I think people picked up on the emotion in those promos. Those promos, and some similarly great ones by Lawler, led to us drawing those 5,000 people to the Mid-South Coliseum.
And no team of writers could have come up with any of those promos, because Jerry Lawler and I tapped into what made ourselves, and each other, tick. I don’t care how creative a writing team is, that team can only draw from the same pool of creativity, over and over, whereas, if you left the promos to the individual wrestlers, they would be able to bring the variety of their personalities to it.
When I cut promos, I wanted not only to borderline on the opponent, but on the paying customers. At the same time, there’s a right and wrong way to do it, so you don’t just offend the paying customers.
Here’s another example, again using the Briscos. I would talk about playing ball at West Texas, and how we would have kicked the shit out of Oklahoma State, where they went to school. Well, a fan can see how petty that is, because West Texas is not at that level anymore. Also, it gives an opening for Jack to come out and confront me, at which time I take it all back, only to turn around and say, “We would only beat you by two points.”
You not only want to stimulate the people buying tickets when doing a promo, you alsowant to stimulate the person you’re working with and talking about. A lot of people don’t realize that. When you’re cutting a promo, you’re feeding that other guy openings, for lines he can get in on you.
In the 1980s, Roddy Piper gave some great promos. He really talked people into those buildings. He had a fiery personality and was not a dummy when it came to knowing what to say. Ric Flair was no dummy, either. He doesn’t just get on the microphone and start screaming bloody murder. He is headed somewhere constantly.
The good ones are the ones who observed the ones who came before. I always tell young wrestlers, “Watch the best, copy and steal. It’s all done in a sense of admiration, anyway, and it’s the way you’re going to learn to put asses every 18 inches. You should also watch the worst to learn what not to do.”
Week 3…
“HEY, JERRY! I hate your ever-loving guts! I hate you with a passion! Jerry Lawler, I hate you!
“I can’t believe that a wrestling fan came up to me, right in the middle of Texas, Amarillo, Texas, and he said to me, ‘Do you know who my five favorite wrestling legends are, Terry Funk?’
“And I said, ‘No, who are they?’
“And he said, ‘Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Mick Foley, Dusty Rhodes…’
“And I said, ‘Don’t go any further! And me, Terry Funk!’
“And he said, ‘Why, no, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler!’
“JERRY ‘THE KING’ LAWLER? I DREW BACK AND I KNOCKED HIS LIGHTS OUT!
“Hulk Hogan? I can understand him, even though he’s an egomaniac! I can understand Ric Flair being in there, too, even though he’s a banana nose! I can understand Dusty Rhodes, even though he’s an egg-suckin’ dog! I can understand Mick Foley, even though he’s a satchel-ass! But I can’t understand why he would put Jerry Lawler in there! Does he know who he’s talking about? Does he know the Bob Barker look? Does he know about the hair transplants? Does he know that Jerry Lawler is a baby banger?! A BABY BANGER! A BABY BANGER!
“And do you know that his partner, Jimmy Hart, is nothing but a cheap thief? He was my manager in New York, and we shared rooms. So I would share a room with him, and in the middle of the night, he’d sneak into my pockets and steal my change! Later on, he was Hulk Hogan’s manager, and Hulk Hogan said he insisted on staying with him. And in the middle of the night, he’d sneak into his pockets, and steal his change! And now he’s back with you, Jerry Lawler, and I’ll tell you one thing for certain that I know, and that you know, too! Jimmy Hart is sneaking up on you, putting his hands in your pockets, in your front pockets. But he’s not looking for change! And what’s worse than that, you know what he’s looking for.
“Lawler, I’ve hated you all of my life! And I’m going to continue to hate you, until we have finality! That’s why I am bringing this…”
(I hold the stick up again)
“It’s yours, and I am giving it back to you, at the Memphis Coliseum! That’s right, I’m giving it to you on the 28th! And Corey Mac, help is on the way! HELP IS ON THE WAY! … I think I’ve heard that before, [referencing John Kerry’s 2004 democratic convention slogan]”
These days, WWE has writing teams who script all the promos for the guys to say. The problem is, we are not actors. I like to think of myself as a capable actor, but you can’t take a bunch of wrestlers and hand them pages and pages of dialogue 15 minutes before the wrestling match and then expect them to be thinking about their match and be able to do their lines at the same time.
And if you do, and you hold it against the ones who can’t memorize dialogue on short notice, you might just be eliminating some of the better people who can create for themselves, the guys who might have better ideas themselves, just because they don’t have photographic memories.
Also, when you script promos, you’re taking away from those creative boys in the business, and taking away from their persona, not adding to it. I’m not saying there is nothing but creative guys who can do that, but there are several who I think could convey their points and get their personalities across. It’s hard for a group of writers to write a guy’s personality for him. Is this guy going to be able to do thi
s promo by delivering 120 words a minute, or will he be better able to get his point across by talking at his own, natural, 30 words a minute?
And for the guys who aren’t there yet, they need to be able to do their own promos, so they can learn about what’s a good promo and what’s not. If you take that guy and allow him some time to work on it, he might become able to deliver a better promo than what you or your writers could come with for him. But if he never has that opportunity, he’s lost. A guy also learns to think about his hiring character and how to develop it when he has to come up with his own promos.
And it’s easy to say, “Well, then, we’ll just find enough of them who can do it the way we want it done.”
Well, yeah, you might find enough memorizers out there to fill your arenas halfway, but you might have someone sitting on the sidelines who’s so creative he could be a great draw consistently, and you don’t even know what you’ve got in that guy. Only by letting the guys do their own promos do you find out who is creative and who isn’t.
That’s what the business is missing right now, in 2005that breakout star. And if you’re keeping some creative talent on the sidelines because he’s not good at memorizing scripts, then you’re keeping him from making money for you, and that’s your fault, not that guy’s fault.
The result of all this scriptwriting and memorization is that the promos, for the most part, are godawful. As hard as the guys try, there’s nothing fresh in the interviews. All the interviews are in the same realm, because they all come from the same group of writers.
I promise, no one wrote scripts for Wayne Coleman, who wrestled as the bleach-blonde, tanned and toned “Superstar” Billy Graham. He was a great talker. The Superstar, with his unbelievable physique and eloquence, was probably as influential a figure as anyone I can think of in the wrestling business. He certainly captured Jesse Ventura’s imagination, not to mention another guy who made a pretty good living as a bleach blonde wrestling musclemanHulk Hogan.