When Paul Heyman sat down on The Bump as a special guest to talk all things The Bloodline, Matt Camp, Megan Morant, and company asked the former ECW Booker-turned-current “Wise Man” to the “Tribal Chief” about that passing of Terry Funk, one of the all-time great hardcore wrestlers who called Philadelphia home alongside “Paul E. Dangerous” from 1993-1997.
Despite being one of the best talkers in the game, Heyman didn't believe he's the only person who should be tasked with eulogizing Funker, as he believes Cody Rhodes did a pretty incredible job of celebrating the long-time wrestler's memory on SmackDown ahead of the promotion's tribute match between The Street Profits and The Brawling Brutes in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I don't know if there's anything that I can say that will match the brilliance of what Cody said,” Paul Heyman said via Wrestling Headlines. “What Cody said the other night moved me. It was profound and just so eloquent in that you could be going through an airport and egg-sucking dog and ‘What am I listening to? Who's screaming?' Here's Terry Funk coming. It's so Terry Funk for him to do, and at the same time, he was the grandfather of a revolution, an evolution in the industry, a movement, an extreme movement.”
Though Rhodes didn't come up in Texas and wrestled in a very different style from Funk, the duo had a lot in common, from their desire to push the boundaries in professional wrestling to a willingness to take chances in order to push the sport forward. This Maverick nature, Heyman surmises, is a big reason why Funk remains as popular as he is to this day and why his legacy in the sport will never be forgotten.
Paul Heyman explains what truly made Terry Funk special in ECW.
After giving props to Dusty Rhodes' kid celebrating one of his father's great rivals, Paul Heyman took his turn talking up Terry Funk, especially his time in ECW.
While his time in ECW barely accounted for 10 percent of his professional wrestling career, as Funk began working in the ring in 1965 and somehow was still working matches in 2017, to call their run mutually beneficial, in Heyman's opinion, would be an understatement, as the Funker helped to make more than a few performers who went on to become massive stars because of his stamp of approval.
“I'm always hesitant to try to encapsulate a life like Terry Funk's within a soundbite or even a portion of a program. I didn't say anything publicly. I haven't yet. And one of the reasons why is because I was aware of the decline in Terry Funk's health, and I had the extraordinary opportunity and pleasure of speaking with him in the last few weeks of his life,” Paul Heyman noted.
“So I withheld my tributes because I got a chance to tell him while he was alive, I didn't have to explain my affinity for the man after his passing, I got a chance to let him know there was no pun intended acknowledgment of the greatness of the performers in ECW without them getting into the ring with Terry Funk.
“Shane Douglas was recognized as a franchise player because of his interaction with Terry Funk. The Public Enemy truly got recognized as a preeminent tag team of their time by being in the ring with Terry Funk and the Funk brothers, Terry and Dory Jr. Sabu came out of the gates at ECW making a splash, but his splash was infinitely bigger because by the end of Sabu's first weekend in ECW, he was in the ring and holding his own and sharing the spotlight with Terry Funk.”
Over his four years in ECW, Funk took part in 61 matches. He held the ECW Television title once, the ECW Heavyweight Championship twice, and worked both singles and tag team matches alongside his brother, Dory Funk Jr. Though not all 61 of those matches may not be certified classics, as, despite working some great matches with Big Stevie Cool and The Sandman at Barely Legal and his Barbed War match with Sabu at Born To Be Wired, most of Funk's true highlight matches came during his early career in ECW, his run with Cactus Jack as Chainsaw Charlie in WWE, and his incredible death matches in Japan. Still, Funk's time in ECW meant a lot to Heyman, as 30 years later, the do-it-all future WWE Hall of Famer is still singing his praises and hoping that the next generation learns his lessons. That, for a student of the game like Heyman, certainly means a lot.
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