Mick Foley Says Terry Funk Is ‘At The Top’ Of His Wrestling Mt. Rushmore

In an interview with Busted Open Radio (via Wrestling Inc), Mick Foley spoke about the passing of his friend and mentor, Terry Funk, and how important Funk was to wrestling. He also spoke about Funk’s time in ECW. Here are highlights:

On Terry Funk in ECW: “[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. 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.”

On a memorable moment of Funk’s in Northeast Championship Wrestling: “Not everyone knew who Terry was, and I was going to be in [Jerry] Lawler’s corner. 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?'”