Ask 411 Wrestling: Did Terry Funk or Trish Stratus Come Out of Retirement More?

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Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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MNMNB is funking statusfied:

Out of curiosity, who has unretired more – Terry Funk or Trish Stratus?

Well, I can’t say I ever expected to see these two compared to one another in any capacity.

There is a big difference between the two in my opinion, because even though both of them have returned to the ring many times after their initial retirement, Funk has had multiple matches that were specifically billed as being “retirement matches” after which he went back on the stip, whereas Trish had just one match that was hyped as the end of her career. None of her comebacks have been built around the notion that her career is ending again.

That said, by my count Funk had six distinct retirement matches that he ultimately came back from, those being: 1) Dory & Terry Funk vs. Stan Hansen & Terry Gordy on August 31, 1983 in All Japan Pro Wrestling; 2) Terry Funk vs. Bret Hart on September 11, 1997 at Terry Funk’s Wrestlefest; 3) Terry Funk vs. Sabu at AWF One Last Dance, an indy show in Mississauga, Ontario on June 6, 1999; 4) Dory & Terry Funk vs. America’s Most Wanted on January 29, 2005 at WrestleReunion in Tampa, Florida; 5) Terry Funk vs. Tommy Dreamer on October 15, 2011 at AWE Night of Legends in Fishersville, Virginia; and 6) Terry Funk vs. Jerry Lawler on October 24, 2015 for USA Championship Wrestling in Jackson, Tennessee.

I will also say that some lists out there on the internet include Terry Funk and Ric Flair’s famous “I Quit” match as being a retirement match, and I’ve not listed it here because my understanding is that this was not intended to be a retirement match by Funk and this was a last minute decision by the promotion’s creative team. However, if you disagree with my assessment, you could get Funk’s list up to seven.

Again, Stratus had only one billed retirement. However, the list of matches that she came back after consists of: 1) her billed retirement on September 17, 2006 in Toronto at WWE’s Unforgiven pay per view; 2) a one-off match on the December 22, 2008 Monday Night Raw in Toronto, 3) another one-off in Toronto on the September 14, 2009 Raw, 4) a run of several matches in March and April 2011 surrounding Wrestlemania XXVII, 5) a surprise appearance in the women’s Royal Rumble match in 2018, 6) matches on the first women’s Evolution pay per view and the immediately following Raw in 2018, and 7) two matches in August 2019 including that year’s Summerslam, and 8) a run consisting of several matches between April and August 2023.

Based on my count, Trish comes out two ahead of the Funker, though it’s just one if you add Funk/Flair. I suppose you could also reduce Stratus’s number by one if you consider her 2018 Royal Rumble and Evolution matches as one run, but I consider them separate because of the distance between the two of them on the calendar.

Brandon has challenged me to a Viagra on a poll match:

When was Billy Kidman’s last televised match? Was it in WWE or TNA?

Billy Kidman’s last televised match was actually not for WWE or TNA.

His last televised match was for a promotion called Action Wrestling Entertainment which aired seven episodes of a television series titled “Overload” on The Fight Network in Canada in 2006. The series taped all its episodes at the Investors Group Athletic Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and Kidman’s bout aired as part of episode six. He defeated a Canadian indy wrestler named Ryan Wood in a bout taped on October 8, 2005.

If you want to know about Kidman’s last televised match for a more prominent company, that took place in WWE. Specifically, it was a loss to Booker T on June 23, 2005 in a match taped for WWE Velocity in Tuscon, Arizona.

I do think it is interesting that Brandon included TNA in his question, because to my knowledge Kidman never once wrestled for TNA in his career.

Tyler from Winnipeg asks about his fellow Winnipegger:

Is Chris Jericho top 30 of all time?

Well, let me see if I can name 30 people who I would put on a list of the greatest of all time ahead of Chris Jericho, and that will answer the question.

These names are not in any particular order. They are just guys who I think would rank higher than Y2J on an all time greats list, and I’m numbering them to help me count to 30 (if we can get that far).

Here goes:

1) Lou Thesz; 2) Bruno Sammartino; 3) Jim Londos; 4) Hulk Hogan; 5) Steve Austin; 6) The Rock; 7) Antonio Inoki; 8) Giant Baba; 9) Rikidozan; 10) El Santo; 11) Ric Flair; 12) Dusty Rhodes; 13) Terry Funk; 14) Dory Funk Jr.; 15) Jack Brisco; 16) Harley Race; 17) Triple H; 18) The Undertaker; 19) John Cena; 20) Andre the Giant; 21) Shawn Michaels; 22) Verne Gagne; 23) Blue Demon . . . and I think the list actually peters out after that.

There are certainly others who you could argue as being better than Jericho, such as Bret Hart and Kurt Angle. However, I think at this point you’re so close to a matter of personal preference as opposed to anything objective that you may as well just say that there’s a really good case for putting Y2J in your Top 30.

Bryan is one false move away from calling PETA:

Did you ever think it was weird that Jake Roberts carried a snake to the ring while wearing snakeskin boots? Isn’t that basically telling Damian “I’m using you mother as footwear”? Even as a kid I thought that was problematic. Did you? Or am I overthinking?

Have you ever watched a western? Did you think it was problematic for most of the cowboys to be wearing leather?

You’re overthinking this, and also possibly high.

Live from New York, it’s HBK’s Smile:

When Mick Foley won his first WWE Title, it was on that infamous taped episode of RAW. My question is why was it on a taped RAW where the match wasn’t even advertised, as it hadn’t been signed until that night? Was the WWE counting on some degree of leakage/spoilers to bolster ratings?

The WWF was actively promoting that the title change took place on their own website before it aired on TV, so it wasn’t really a “leak” or a “spoiler.” They were definitely trying to use the taped nature of the show to drive ratings, though that wasn’t the only reason the show was taped. It was still common practice at that time for Raw to be 50% live and 50% pre-recorded.

Stu from Liverpool is driving over the median:

You may hate me after this question:

Combining all previous holders, what is the average weight and height (and where they’re from, if a method can be worked out) of the main champion of each major promotion, and which wrestler is the nearest to these “Average Champions”? I know the lineage of these championships are sometimes convoluted, so go with whatever method you’d prefer. Also realize it may have to just be male wrestlers given women don’t generally have billed weights.

This question took some time to answer, but it wasn’t nearly as maddening as some of the other, stats-based queries I’ve had over the years.

For purposes of this question, I limited myself this time around to WWE, NWA, AEW, WCW, TNA, and the AWA as “major promotions” based in the United States. Should there be interest, I’d be glad to look into Japanese or Mexican promotions in the future.

Also, in terms of methodology, I used wrestlers’ billed heights and weights as listed on Wikipedia, or on Pro Wrestling Wiki in a couple of rare instances where nothing was on Wikipedia proper. Though billed heights and weights are inflated more often than not, they’re easier to find than legitimate stats, and my thought is that if everybody has the same opportunity to inflate their numbers, we’re still largely comparing apples to apples. Finally, there were two instances where wrestlers’ listed weights were ranges, indicating that they had been billed at different levels throughout their career. When that happened, I used the midpoint of the range.

I was at first a bit flummoxed by Stu’s suggestion that I find an “average” hometown for wrestlers. I wasn’t quite sure how I could do it. However, I eventually found Geofan.org, which contains a variety of geography-related tools, including one that allows you to calculate a midpoint between two or more locations. I’m not sure how many total locations you can input, but when it came to running stats for WWE, I was able to put in 69 different locations without breaking their system. So, I inputted every city that a wrestler who held a championship was from and let the tool calculate the midpoint between them. In doing this, I used the wrestlers’ birthplaces as opposed to their billed hometowns or other cities they are closely associated with to try to establish some sort of uniformity.

With that said, let’s take a look at the numbers.

Nineteen different men held the AWA World Heavyweight Championship over its history. The average champion was 6’1” tall and weighted 265 pounds. It appears that Dick the Bruiser is closest to the average on those metrics, standing 6’1” and weighing 261 pounds. As far as locations are concerned, the midpoint of all hometowns listed in the AWA Title history falls near Sirko, Manitoba, Canada, which is not even a town but a “populated locality” with a very small number of residents. It’s about 1 hour, 44 minutes southeast of Winnipeg and sits right on Manitoba’s border with Minnesota. The wrestler who hails from closest to this midpoint is AWA founder Verne Gagne himself, who is from Corcoran, MN, a town just a bit north of Minneapolis.

There were 22 WCW World Heavyweight Champions, including the period of time during which the WWF controlled the championship. Their average champion was a couple of inches taller than the AWA’s, coming in at 6’3”, and he is also slightly heavier at 271 pounds. I’m actually surprised the average wasn’t higher with guys like the Giant and Kevin Nash holding the belt. In any event, Booker T is closest to this average, at 6’3” and 256 pounds. The “average” birthplace falls in Heyworth, Illinois, which is near the twin cities of Bloomington-Normal and Illinois State University. The aforementioned Kevin Nash, from Detroit, Michigan, is closest to that midpoint.

Moving to something a bit more contemporary, there have only been nine AEW World Champions. They have the smallest average size we’ve seen to this point, tying the AWA’s height at 6’1” but only weighing in at 232 pounds. “Hangman” Adam Page is your most average champion at 6’1” and 229 pounds, though Swerve Strickland is also close, being 6’1” and 240 pounds. The midpoint between all the AEW Champs’ birthplaces falls in Lake Fremont Township, Minnesota, close to but just outside of a small town called Dunnell that has a population of 127. It is in the southern part of the state, more or less on the Iowa border. Chicago’s CM Punk is going to be the champion born closest to that locale.

For TNA, I counted only the true TNA Heavyweight Championship and put the TNA-era holders of the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship in the NWA category. (I acknowledge that his could have been done either way.) If that’s how you count it, you’ve got 39 separate champions. In a funny coincidence, their average size is exactly the same as that of the AEW champions, 6’1” tall and 232 pounds. However, I suppose that’s not entirely surprising given the two promotions exist in more or less the same era and have booked similar styles of wrestler. Bobby Roode is your closest wrestler to average here, at 6’1” and 235. Geography-wise, our “average” falls in Genoa Charter Township, Livingston County, Michigan. This is about an hour northwest of Detroit. That probably gives you a good guess as to which champion is closest. It’s Chris Sabin from Pinckney, Michigan, which is actually in Livingston County and about 11 miles away from the more-or-less centrally located county seat, Howell.

As to the NWA, though I admit this is debatable, I counted every champion from every era in one group, with Orville Brown in the beginning all the way to Silas Mason as we sit here in 2026. Across that vast history, the average size works out to 6’1.5” and 247 pounds, so slightly taller and slightly heavier than the AEW and TNA Champions. Terry Funk is the closest to average, hitting 6’1” and exactly 247 pounds. The average champion is, once more, located in Minnesota, though this time it’s in an uninhabited part of the state in the north called the Myrtle Lake Peatland Significant Natural Area, which I now really want a wrestler to use as their billed hometown. The former champion born closest to this geographic location appears to be Steve Corino, hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba. This may be a record for the number of references to Winnipeg in a single installment of this column.

Finally, let’s go to WWE. I counted all permutations of the various WWE world championships together, from the original belt to the Universal Title to the Big Gold Belt to the current World Heavyweight Championship. A total of 69 unique men held those belts, and they average out to 6’3” tall and 269 pounds, which is the same height as WCW but two pounds lighter. The closest thing to an “average” champion here is Sheamus, with his height at 6’3” and his weight at 267. The average birthplace is further east then any we’ve encountered before, perhaps owing to the promotion’s founding as a territory in the northeastern United States. The location we’re referring to is in Georgian Bluffs, Ontario, Canada, a township in the southeast part of the province, sitting at the base of the Bruce Peninsula that juts out into Lake Huron. Edge from Orangeville, Ontario appears to be the closest.

And that does that. I’m not entirely sure what compelled Stu to write in with this question, but perhaps somebody out there finds the information as interesting as he did. If nothing else, we all now know about the Myrtle Lake Peatland Significant Natural Area.

Night Wolf the Wise is standing at the door:

If you had to make a list of the 10 greatest Gatekeepers in wrestling, who would you put on that list and why?

For those who may not be familiar with the term, I believe that by “gatekeepers” what NWW is referring to are wrestlers who are sort of a measuring stick for upcoming talent, often used as a test to see what they can do before they get pushed into higher levels of the card.

Tito Santana is a classic example. Once he was done in the WWF tag team division, he was often the guy who new heels faced on the way to the top.

I would consider Nattie Neidhart to be the gatekeeper of the current WWE women’s division. Though women who have experience elsewhere may bypass her, virtually every woman who has started as as rookie on the WWE main roster in the last fifteen years has gone through Nattie.

Kane had a version of this role for a while. I’m reminded of a Kane/Albert feud that was the end of Albert’s singles push for a while when it didn’t light the world on fire.

Brad Armstrong and Bobby Eaton on the WCW side of things throughout the 1990s. If you couldn’t have a good match with them, you basically couldn’t have a good match.

Though he was given his IWGP Title reign last year as a bit of a “lifetime achievement award,” I would call Hirooki Goto an excellent New Japan gatekeeper in many respects for the years prior to that.

Yuji Nagata filled this role for a time in New Japan as well, after he finished his stint as the company’s top star, marred as it was by Inokism.

Heading to the other top puroresu promotion, Stan Hansen in his latter days in All Japan menacing many an up-and-coming native star.

Bob Holly probably deserves some credit for having a role of this nature in the 1990s and 2000s in the WWF, particularly at the low end of the card with inexperienced wrestlers, though he did rough some kids up in the process.

On the joshi side of things, you’ve got Devil Masami, who after wrestling from the late 1970s to the late 1980s came back from retirement in 1995 and wrestled for another 13 years, often in a heel gatekeeper capacity.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.