by Terry Funk
I think if he had it to do all over again, he’d do a lot differently. I think he would have built some stars of his own early, so he could have people who weren’t such massive problems. He should have started creating talent instead of relying on guys who were known problems like Kevin Nash and Scott Hall.
That was one thing Paul E. was always great at in ECW, until the end. No matter who the WWF or WCW took from him, he always had somebody waiting in the wings. He was always making someone who could step into a position at the top level.
Eric also had found some success with smaller wrestlers who did more highflying, the cruiserweights. The origin of the term “cruiserweight” in wrestling came from a car ride that I shared with Chris Benoit and Diamond Dallas Page, in 1993. We were heading to an independent show, which, as it turned out, would be the only time I worked with Chris. I really loved working that match with him and wish I could have worked with him more, because he was (and is) a great, great worker.
Anyway, we were in the car, and Page was asking me a million questions about what I’d do if I ran WCW. I told him that what I thought would be great would be go with a cruiserweight division and have it be totally separate. At the time, wrestling in the United States was all heavyweights (WCW had done a light-heavyweight division but never did much with it), and I thought the smaller guys could put on different styles of matches.
What I didn’t know was that apparently Bill Watts was on his way out as head of WCW, and Page’s buddy Bischoff was talking to the TBS people about replacing him.
About a year after Bischoff got in, he got the cruiserweight division going. But I have to tell you, I don’t think Bischoff thought up that name all by himself. I think his buddy Diamond Dallas Page might have suggested that one.
My idea, though, was to do “Cruiserweight TV,” with no mixing against heavyweights and all matches best of three falls. I also thought of experimenting with the idea of using a one-count as a pinfall for the cruiserweights.
I still think if WWE were to split their guys by weight, with one show nothing but cruiserweights, it would be interesting to see who got the better rating. It would certainly make for a clear distinction between the two shows they have, since Raw and Smackdown! are supposed to be different divisions. I’m not sure the heavyweight could produce the action like the cruiserweights, to sustain a better rating. Cruiserweights, in this day and age, are not just a unique attractionthey are a necessity, because of their speed and the unique action they can create. They can perform moves that you’re just not going to see a 300-pound guy do, especially off the top rope. Maybe if they raised the ropes another three feet, they might be able to do them, but that’s about the only way I can see.
It was obvious the end was near when the top guys just started vanishing, one by one. Hell, even Eric Bischoff secluded in his office in the back, somehow came down with a case of the contagious concussion!
Bischoff ended up leaving the company when Vince Russo pulled what might have been the single stupidest stunt of his career on a major pay per view in July 2000. They did a deal where Hogan went to the ring, and Jeff Jarrett laid down to let Hogan pin him for the title. This was all some pre-arranged deal, but what wasn’t pre-arranged (at least with Hogan) was that Russo did a profanity-laced tirade on Hogan after the match and declared Hogan was champion of nothing. Hogan ended up suing the company, so they at least lost money on attorney’s fees, and I bet you that thing didn’t draw one new viewer or fan to WCW.
You just don’t deal with a piece of talent that way, especially a piece of talent that has produced the box office Hogan has.
Actually, that might not be the most absurd thing those two were part of. The more I think about it, the more I think the most absurd thing they ever did was to think that they were proficient promoters and bookers in the wrestling business.
In a strange way, working for a company I knew was doomed helped me to have a good time there. I did my little part, just had a good time with the boys, and didn’t worry about the rest. Still, I will never understand why someone, before it was too late, didn’t look at the figures and say, “Hey, this thing’s going in the wrong direction.”
And what does it say about that company, or about me, that even I got that attitude, toward the end? Here I was, a guy who was supposed to act out of a love for the business, and I was reduced to just thinking of it as “just a job.” By 2000, they had taken the heart out of just about everybody.
Wrestling’s a joint venturethe promoters and boys have to work together, or it will fail. The top guys all had their own agendas, and none of them were to help the company.
In contrast to the stagnation that started WCW’s fall, Vince looked long and hard at his company in 1997, and changed a lot of things, going for more of an ECW style and doing some other things, and it was successful for him. But that was because he owned it and he had the concern for it.
Who had that kind of love and concern for WCW? No one, and somebody should have, because it was a wonderful place for guys. Looking through a wrestler’s eyes, and not an owner or promoter’s eyes, it is not healthy for one company to be the only one in the business, and that’s what we have now.
Even the WCW announcers were out of control! One night I was watching a show, and Mark Madden was calling the match. Whatever wrestler it was dug under the ring and came up with a table. Madden laughed and said, very sarcastically, “Would you believe there’s a table under the ring?”
Well, that did a hell of a job getting over how clever Mark Madden was, but it didn’t do a damn thing to make anyone want to order a pay per view, or even watch the next match. He wanted to get himself over, at the expense of the talent.
Of course, maybe I was spoiled, because I came up in the business around greats like Steve Stack, Gordon Solie and Lance Russell, but I thought WCW’s announcing sucked. Now, I don’t think Tony Schiavone or Mike Tenay suck, but I think they had gotten away from describing wrestling with simplicity, which is the cornerstone of great wrestling announcing. They had gotten into a pattern of describing moves almost in code, using all these fancy, contrived names that don’t really tell the people what the move is. You’re gaining new fans all the time, so it’s important to explain things to people in a basic way. I shouldn’t have to get out my slide rule to figure out a 360, a 450, a 720, or a 1080, or whatever. By the time I’ve finished adding and subtracting, and figured out the degree of the flip, the goddamned match is over!
Gordon Solie, probably one of the greatest announcers ever, probably used no more than 35 to 40 wrestling terms, and even those, he used over and over, to make people understand what he was talking about. He didn’t bombard people’s senses with new terms for things that really shouldn’t be that hard to comprehend.
It’s bullshit like Maddens commentary and world champion David Arquette that make me think, “Thank God Vince bought off what was left of WCW. Thank God he bought out that godawful pile of dogshit!”
Of course, I slid around in the shit for a while, took my money and went on back home to the ranch. I’d probably even roll in shit, if the money was right. I can always take a shower and get rid of the stink.
But WCW wasn’t the worst place I ever worked. Several independent promotions are tied for that honor. A lot of my independent experiences over the years have ended with me chasing the sorry, son-of-a-bitch promoter down the road to get my money! Now that is a bad workplace! In WCW I never had to worry. My paychecks came just like clockwork.
Those independent promoters were some strange individuals, and sometimes I questioned their priorities. I won’t mention names here, but I worked for an independent promotion run by two guys who were supposedly the best of friends.
Well one night we were in the dressing room, and one of them came in and announced, “It’s over! We are dissolving the partnership!” I asked, “Why are you doing that?” “Because that bastard stole my arena rat!”
Now, an arena rat was a wrestling groupie, like a
girl who hangs out at the matches, hoping to “get together” with a wrestler. Now, can you imagine that shit? And she was fat and ugly, too, just a horrible-looking broad!
CHAPTER 29
The End of the Wrestling War
In 2000, there were still one or two places I hadn’t worked yet, so I thought I’d get to them. XPW was an ECW-like group operating on the West Coast. The owner was Rob Black, who produced porn movies and is a very controversial figure, even in that industry. But I have no complaints about him, or about that group. He paid me my money, and he treated me very well while I was there. Vicki came with me, and they treated her like a million dollars, too.
The show was on June 22, eight days before my birthday, so they even brought in a cake for me. And there was no porno girl jumping out of the cake or anything like that.
It was great working with Sabu again, and great getting out to California and getting to see some old friends out there. I did think their show was a little crazy, but one thing that really impressed me was the camera work. The camera guy doing the promos was a better shooter than anyone I’d ever worked with before. I mean, this guy could shoot some incredible promos. He was in and out, had a different look to each one, and they were all fantastic.
I said to him, “My God, you do a great job of that. Where did you learn how to do that so well?”
He said, “Well, uh, I really don’t want to tell you, but I’ve been shooting pornos for eight years.”
But the guy was a great cameraman! Vince should look this guy up and hire him! He knew when to go in for a closeup and when to pull back. The guy’s timing was amazing, and those XPW promos looked unique and fantastic. I think he also wrestled that night.
In January 2001, I worked a show for All Japan, teaming with Atsushi Onita against Abdullah the Butcher and Giant Kimala II. They had called me and asked me to come in for the show.
I was expecting a sad scene since Baba had passed away two years earlier, in January 1999. But it really wasn’t. His wife, Motoko, was there. The company was still afloat and together. However, there was the definite feeling there that it was never again going to be what it once was that All Japan was on the descent, not the ascent. You didn’t have to be the sharpest knife in the drawer to see that in terms of ratings, attendance and even company discipline, All Japan was sliding. That show was kind of a last hurrah.
All Japan took a big hit when top stars Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Jun Akiyama, Akira Taue and others left in 2000 to form Pro Wrestling NOAH. Of the top stars from the 1990s, only Toshiaki Kawada stayed in All Japan. For American fans who don’t follow Japanese wrestling, that would be like if Triple H, Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit and Eddy Guerrero left WWE to form a new company, leaving only The Undertaker among the top main-eventers.
Even though Misawa had been Baba’s boy, he was perfectly within his rights to leave and strike out on his own. After all, Baba himself had split off of the Japanese Wrestling Association to start All Japan nearly 30 years earlier.
I had always tried to avoid that match, the return to All Japan after all those years, especially since that match ended up involving Abdullah. The reason for that was it had been 20 years since the angle with Abdullah stabbing my arm with a fork. Even though a lot of time had passed, that image was still impressed and enlarged in a lot of those fans’ minds, like a photographic negative. There was no way, even if Abby and I were still in our primes, that we could live up to the fans’ memories of that angle. No matter what we did, it would be secondary to the image in people’s minds of what that match was, because people still talk about it to this day. So why rattle it? Why risk destroying that memory?
I went because they asked, because it was to be my first chance to see and talk to Mrs. Baba in years, and because I wanted to give them my own “last hurrah,” of sorts. I saw it as one last chance to participate in a show for All Japan where I could help them at the box office.
We went out to eat after the matches. Gene Kiniski and Nick Bockwinkel were there, and when you have them both at the same table, your end of the conversation is going to be very limited, because they are going to do much of the talking.
Aside from that, it was very, very cordial and a lot of fun talking about all those old times.
Keiji Muto, my old partner in 1989 when he was The Great Muta, ended up buying the company, and he’s now in a very difficult situation. Wrestling in Japan has changed so much and so has the audience. There are certain things you just can’t follow, and following Baba’s footsteps has been all but impossible for them. Misawa might have actually been a genius, because he’s now running a completely different company. Muto is running All Japan, and that name will always mean “Baba’s company” to the people of Japan.
Just a few days after that All Japan match, I found out ECW was out of business. I wish I could say the news of ECWs death was a surprise, but I had been half-expecting that phone call ever since they started going national. I understand they had been under financial strain for a while. They were paying a lot of money to a lot of their TV stations, and they just weren’t taking in enough to match the costs. You don’t have to be a financial genius or a wrestling genius to know that a company that’s not going in the right direction, moneywise, is going to be gone sooner or later.
WCW going under in March of that same year wasn’t really much of a surprise, either. I was actually surprised that it lasted as long as it did. I hate to say it, but it was the boys who killed WCW. They killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. It had started with they guys making a gazillion dollars, guaranteed, not wanting to do this and griping about doing that, and after that, it was monkey-see, monkey-do. That was also the case with the contagious concussions. If you see a top star get away with a prolonged absence, the next guy’s going to try it, and the next guy.
I also wasn’t too surprised that McMahon was the one who bought the assets. It was a pretty smart move on his part, especially since part of the deal was that there would be no new wrestling show on the Turner networks for the next few years. Think about itwas he buying the assets (the tapes, some of the contracts, the “WCW” initials), or was he buying the no competition?
The end of the wrestling war was chronicled over the Internet. Starting in the early 1990s, people on the Internet had begun to discuss wrestling online, and sites had been popping up all over. The Internet and the fans who communicate on it certainly have a great influence on the business, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. It has an effect on the decisions being made by the people in power. If I watched a match right now and then pulled up a discussion of it on the Internet, I bet a lot of the people there would have the same views on what was good and what was bad that I would have. But the thing is, I’m not always right, either. I think it can be a great tool for those in the business to see what some of the fans think, but I don’t think wrestling should live and die by the Internet.
It can also be a sort of crutch, because one thing’s for sureif I’m in the WWE and Triple H, as a top guy who’s married to the boss’s daughter, has a stinkeroo of a match, it’s a heck of a lot easier for me to say, “Hey, the Internet is saying you had a stinkeroo,” than it is for me to tell him I think he had a stinkeroo.
And later in 2001, I did something I had once thought I would never do on October 8, 2001, I wrestled a match for New Japan. You might think there would be a strange feeling for me, being in a New Japan dressing room, but I had fully made the separation from Baba a decade earlier, and Junior had ended up leaving there, too.
It was a special match to commemorate 50 years of wrestling in Japan, with Junior and me against Tatsumi Fujinami and Bob Backlund. It was also going to be one of Fujinami’s last matches. He was one of the original great junior heavyweights in that company, and was one of its best workers for years. He had always wanted to wrestle me, and it was really an honor for me to get into the ring with him and to work with Backlund. Actually, Fujinami’s wife played a big role in that, I th
ink, because she had been a great Terry Funk fan growing up in Japan.
The whole time I was there for that show, I never talked to Inoki. However, a couple of years later, Inoki and I did an appearance together on a talk show that was going to air in Japan. I sat down and listened to him. Of course we never could have met like that years ago, because the promotional rivalry was so intense.
If you think about it, Inoki has been very much a visionary of wrestling, and someone who has been able to change with the times. Our discussion was very cordial, if a bit strained at first. We had been adversaries for so long, and to get to hear the history of the wrestling war in Japan from his perspective was a great experience for me.
CHAPTER 30
These Days
I was a special guest at the WWE show in Amarillo on April 30, 2004, just a couple of months before I started working on this book.
I had fun, and it really made West Texas State, or West Texas A&M, as it’s now known, a good amount of money, which was the thing most important to me. Still, it was good to see a lot of the boys again, and good to be in front of the hometown crowd one more time.
For the record, I thought the university’s name change was a successful deal. At the time they changed the name, I wanted them to leave it alone, but as time has passed by, even I’ve started calling it West Texas A&M. It has turned out that the best thing that ever happened to the university, for state funding and for the buildings, was for it to become an affiliate of Texas A&M.
The show was also a good deal for WWE, because they had a nice crowd, and I had gotten them a good rate on the building. WWE made more money than they could have otherwise, and West Texas made more money than they ever could have by trying to run an independent show as a fundraiser.
I saw a lot that night, and I actually took a minute to reflect on more than 50 years that I had been either in or around the wrestling business. The thing that surprised me most was, the matches I was watching were still different from the matches of 30 years ago but were a lot closer than they were to the matches of six months ago.