Though WWE committed the vast majority of the final SmackDown of the month of August to the untimely passing of Bray Wyatt, who suffered a heart attack the day before, the “Eater of Worlds” wasn't the only Superstar who passed away in the days after Monday Night RAW, with the hardcore legend Terry Funk also passing away at 79 on Wednesday.

Despite having technically wrestled one member of the current WWE roster during his career, as he took on Rey Mysterio and the rest of the Filthy Animals back in WCW, the Superstar with the deepest connection to Chainsaw Charlie happened to be none other than Cody Rhodes, whose father wrestled the former NWA Champion 109 times over their respective careers, according to Cagematch.

Walking to the ring wearing a suit with a microphone in hand and a smile on his face, Rhodes did his best to eulogize a performer who, like himself, was willing to take risks and rebel against the system to do things his way.

“So Louisville, Kentucky, I know what I wanna talk about tonight. I wanna tell you about a time, 11 years old. I'm at the Denver airport, traveling with my father, and across the people mover, I hear a man yelling the most peculiar insults. I hear a man calling my father an ‘egg sucking dog' – Michael [Cole] can we say ‘egg sucking dog on Fox? Well, we said it – and choice words for my grandmother as well and I could not see the man yelling, so I was assuming at 11 years old that we were about to have some sort of domestic incident, and then I see him, it was the proprietor of the Double Cross Ranch; it was Terry Funk,” Cody Rhodes told the crowd in Louisville.

“Modern nomenclature being what it is, we get to call ourselves, those who get into these rings, we get to call ourselves the coolest thing, we get to call ourselves WWE Superstars. Now, over the years, we've called ourselves other things; we've been called wrestlers, we've been called athletes, we've been called artists, we've been called competitors, sometimes even called carnies, but then there's a fabled, fabled few who earn the right to call themselves a cowboy and both Terry Funk and Bray Wyatt were cowboys in the best of ways.

“Now I have the privilege of talking to you about Terry Funk, a second-generation star from Amerillo that held the 10 Pounds of Gold and wore it proudly. A man who went to West Texas State and of all the wrestlers who say they went to West Texas State, Terry Funk actually attended classes there. Terry Funk has been a constant in pro wrestling and sports entertainment for 50 years, and for 50 years, Terry Funk has been constantly changing. There's this little thing called ‘the rub.' When somebody with such a legacy, such equity steps into the ring with those who don't have it, reaches down their hand, and pulls them up to their level for one or two; Terry Funk did that for an entire company, an entire movement, and entire revolution.”

While the match WWE booked to eulogize Funk was hardcore in name only, as there wasn't even a foot of barbed wire between the four performers, in the end, it was nice to see a few moments committed to the ‘cowboy's' legacy on an otherwise incredibly loaded edition of SmackDown, as he certainly earned it.

Mick Foley explains to a generation of WWE  fans what made Terry Funk great.

Though Terry Funk hasn't wrestled on WWE television since all the way back in 2006 when he worked a pair of matches to help celebrate ECW, some, like the hardcore legend Mick Foley, still believe modern-day fans should appreciate what the Funker brought to the table during his impressive career, which spanned from 1965-2017

Stopping by Busted Open Radio to discuss the legacy of his former tag team partner, Cactus Jack explained why, in his opinion, Funk is a certified member of his personal Mount Rushmore.

“[Terry] wasn't going through the motions. He could have. No one would have thought less of him if he had gone through the motions, and he never went through the motions,” Mick Foley said via Wrestling Inc. “He always gave you the best match he could. And the reason I explained in the foreword I wrote for his book, why I would put him above anyone else, at the very top of my Mount Rushmore is that he made it so easy to suspend disbelief. It sounds to me, he was a little upset with me after I set him on fire in ECW, but he was working the other time[s]. He was working to try to generate interest and heat, and he suspended disbelief.”

To further drill in Funk's authenticity, Foley shared the story of the time Funker punched a referee in the face because he was between himself and his hardcore foe, which is as crazy as it is believable.

“Not everyone knew who Terry was, and I was going to be in [Jerry] Lawler's corner,” Foley noted. “He was going to be in Man Scout's Corner, but by the time he got to the ring, even if these younger fans did not know who he was, they knew he was not someone to be messed with. And I was saying to the ring announcer, I go, ‘You better get out of the ring.' He goes, ‘Why? What do you mean?' I said, ‘You better get out of the ring.' And he goes, ‘But I'm the ring announcer.' The first thing Terry does, I bail out because I don't want to get hit. Here comes that big left hand, boom! Backstage, the guy's got an ice pack on his head, and he goes, ‘I can't believe he hit me.' And I looked at him. I said, ‘What part of you better get out of the ring did you not understand?'”

While many modern-day wrestlers, from Eddie Kingston to Sami Zayn, have taken influence from Funk, it's safe to say he was a one-of-one original who will never be replicated.