Terry Funk // CM Punk

[00:00:00] What's up family, welcome back to struggle session.

[00:00:03] I am Leslie Lee the third.

[00:00:05] Today we have a very special mega-sized two-part show.

[00:00:09] First up we have Brian Solomon, writer of blood and fire, the unbelievable real-life

[00:00:15] story of wrestling's original chic.

[00:00:18] He's here to talk about the late, great Terry Funk.

[00:00:21] If you all know about Terry Funk, this is a show to learn.

[00:00:25] We have a fascinating of people are. Just send me an email to strugglesession.gmail.com, we'll hook you up.

[00:01:43] That's also the place to sit in the voicemails.

[00:01:45] Let us know what you think of the show.

[00:01:47] Make sure to like, subscribe. the culture of a lot of the racist death slavery. I ain't down with that. Anyway, thank you all so much for your support, for your subscriptions, for sharing the show, for telling your friends about it. Really appreciate it. You hear Spike there, I'm missing some teeth. Yes, I've got permanent damage to my eye. But have you seen Jerry Lawler? Has anybody seen him?

[00:04:21] Does he have enough guts to come back against me again? He comes crawling on his belly, I'll kick him in the head. Believe me, Jerry Lawler is going to pay, and he's gonna pay dearly for what he did to me. Hey, I love my family and my family loves me. My brother loves me, but I have no respect

[00:05:42] for anybody like Lawler.

[00:05:44] I have a definite hatred for the man, full time into the mid 2000s and he still kind of lingered on a little bit until about 2017 when he literally couldn't do it anymore. And like I said, part of that was the commitment. I mean, he came from a time period where wrestlers really protected the business. They had their code of secrecy, which was called K-Fabe title match? I see that, you know, the referee was down at a certain point and counted you and it would have been a file count if you would have gotten pinned if the referee wasn't down, but you still, but you ended up winning the match and his response was just that the NWA World title was known for, and especially of the Florida territory where he won it, was very sports-like. And he gives you this is one of the matches to watch folks because and not to spoil it for you But at the end his eye is injured off of some Some contrivance where he had a weapon and he ends up stabbing himself in the eye with it

[00:11:00] And he just bellows and screams like a child

[00:12:03] Memphis area which is where it happened and where it was on TV. But years later through the wonder of you know VHS tape and things like that

[00:12:07] I discovered it and it is it really first of all it's so different

[00:12:12] from the mainstream kind of WWF Hulk Hogan wrestling that was big at the time

[00:12:17] it is it's really it's a completely different animal

[00:12:21] and it blew me away and really this is Memphis the best part is you got the Memphis announcer Lance Russell who is there to kind of call it and Lance Russell was like the voice of reason in this insane promotion and he almost acted like the father

[00:13:41] of all the and the wrestlers were all like the bad children

[00:13:44] he was always scolding them

[00:13:46] so he so now Terry Funk is cursing and yelling Lawler, but then the best part of his whole stick is that as soon as Lawler starts to walk away and disgust, his demeanor immediately changes. He stops being apologetic and plane crash that Rick Flair was in. He was in the plane crash in like 1975, but they made it sound like it had just happened like six months ago. And his neck was still like hurt from that. I never forget it because that was my first time seeing

[00:16:20] you know WCW wrestling on TV. My dad took me to a show and the Attitude Era, but the Flair feud in WCW was wild because he had kind of a little bit fallen off the radar. A lot of fans hadn't seen him in a while. He had had a brief run in the WWF in the mid 80s

[00:17:40] when they were really hot.

[00:17:41] And then all of a sudden, now a couple of years later,

[00:17:43] he shows up in WCW and he's like,

[00:17:46] he's just supposed tory funk and other people. That wrestling that nowadays you can barely even watch a wrestling event that doesn't have somebody going through yes multiple times but i have to stress to you and i really mean this.

[00:20:06] he was one of his earliest films was a film that no one talks about now for somewhat good reason. It's called Paradise Alley written and directed by

[00:20:10] Sylvester Stallone. It was a movie about three Italian American brothers

[00:20:15] navigating professional wrestling. So if this film had taken off

[00:20:21] like instead of Rocky it could have been a bunch of movies about professional 77 right after Rocky, I think I think Sylvester Stallone jumped into that right after Rocky and you know for the years after that into the late 70s, early 80s, mid 80s, Terry Funk was very seriously trying to become an actor. Like he really did, he kind of wanted to go the route of like what Hulk Hogan had done

[00:21:40] where the movies can almost take the kind of an acting a mega star in Hollywood, through his connections with Stallone, he was able to keep working. Like he said, he wasn't over the top. He,

[00:23:01] a lot of people may not know this, but he well with no whole chamagne, maybe we're looking at completely different WWE and I do want to admit it's a good place to talk a little bit about the economics here because one of the things that was very famous about Terry Funk's acting career is that it allowed him to get healthcare through his membership in

[00:24:22] SAG, which wrestlers do not get. own wild thing which never really fit with the corporate model of wrestling that in becoming in the late 90s. If I remember right, correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't seen that in a long time. I don't think they aired most of what he did because that show was not live and I think

[00:25:40] they cut out a lot of the most provocative stuff.

[00:25:44] It's almost like they wanted to make sure he guess it's supposed to be like the 50s, you know, which was like his dad's heyday as a wrestler, 50s and 60s. But you know, what I'm trying to say is that the benefit, like you said, of him doing that work and why a lot of wrestlers try to get at least

[00:27:00] a little bit of it in, is you get into the Screen Actors Guild

[00:27:05] and you get those benefits.

[00:27:06] And let me tell you, which at that time,

[00:28:23] you know, was limiting to his career. If ever produced in some ways. Well Brian I kept you long enough but thank you so much for joining us today on struggle session talking about the funkster folks I have to recommend

[00:29:42] you go out and I'll include some links of some of the stuff we talked about but

[00:29:45] you got to watch some at least some of the promos at least watch them chase idea of superheroes in our culture right up to the present day with all the movies and TV that we see today. And yeah, it's available now across anywhere you buy books, you can find it. And if they don't have it, ask them to order it. All right, Brian, where can people find you? Well, I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Brian R. Solomon.

[00:31:02] And my podcast, if I can mention it, is called Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian R. Solomon.