BY MICHAEL GOODPASTER
(FOUR) TERRY FUNK?
I put a “?” because I’m not sure. This one is a tossup, but I’m going with age before beauty. I could have went with a lot of hardcore icons, but I have to go with Terry Funk. He was and old old man when I was a young child. Now I’m 28 and he’s still and old old man and he’s STILL occasionally wrestling. That itself is hardcore. He might not be doing hardcore wrestling anymore, but he’s still around. I think he will be forever. Back in the day he was like Sabu and Foley. He wouldn’t worry about his body and killed himself for years. He was in all those death matches, in the heyday of ECW, and he did it all and did it everywhere. Terry Funk’s blood stains can most likely be seen from space.
(THREE) FOLEY
Cactus Jack on his own was a hardcore freak, but the issue here is that Dude Love and the other aspects of the person that is Mick Foley softens him up quite a bit. He’s like a big self indulgent cuddly teddy bear. I used to be a huge fan of his, but the more he spoke the more I lost love for the dude. His mic work was amazing and he was never shy about destroying his body to get a crowd on their feet and talking the next morning. If you’ve heard him talk for more than five minutes then you know this already and are tired of hearing about it. Mick Foley is like the human version of Hulk Hogan’s “Slamming the 900 pound Andre in front of 95,000 people at Wrestlemania 3” story. Some could even say Mick Foley brought “hardcore” to the mainstream.
(TWO) SABU
I used to love his theme music from way back in the day. I don’t know the band, but the lyrics were “It’s alright. It’s alright. It’s alright… I’m just a little crazy”. That was awesome stuff. Now that I think about it, did I make that theme song thing up or dream it? Anyways, Sabu was one of my favorite wrestling personalities of all time. He had this mystique to him that made him seem really dangerous. He was the human highlight reel and the genocidal, homicidal, suicidal maniac. I’ve seen him in barbed wire matches and in all the typical brutality as everyone else from the old hardcore days, but he took it a step further. When he got cut up he’d duct tape his wounds close so he could finish matches. He’d use super glue to seal himself up. He didn’t care. I always wanted to see him wrestle my favorite WWF guys growing up. I always wanted to see a full on Shawn Michaels vs. Sabu match or even a Bret Hart vs. Sabu and so on. It wouldn’t have worked. WWF, even at it’s more adult, would NEVER have let Sabu be Sabu. It wouldn’t have been the same.
(ONE) NEW JACK
To me the most hardcore wrestler is the one that you should be most scared of. New Jack is a crazy man. He’ll pull out forks, syths(those curved blades on the end of the Grim Reaper’s staff thing), staple guns, shanks, and anything and everything. They say he killed people. Like for real. That’s folklore, but he jumps off of balconies, he cuts untrained jobber kids, he had naked pictures of old valets and former wives of wrestlers, he makes the best shoot tapes, and he’s crazy. Did I mention he’s crazy? He seems like a dude that you want to have your side because if you’re not on his good side you’re going to be another footnote in his storied list of horrors.
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