Backlund

After I left the WWF, I dabbled around for a little while in a few different promotions. The Pro Wrestling USA promotion, which was comprised of an unstable alliance between the NWA and the AWA, had offered me steady work, but there was too much infighting between the promoters to allow it to be successful. Although some jointly promoted cards did get off the ground, the problem was that the promotion was comprised of two different competing groups (the NWA and the AWA), and neither one was going to permit its champion to be overshadowed by the other’s. There was no clear leadership in the group—and as a consequence, although the promotion showed promise, and could have been successful if an effective leadership team had been established, that never happened. I don’t think anyone realized at the time that their collective future depended on it.

I also spent some time wrestling in the AWA, but there, Verne Gagne had already invested in Rick Martel, another scientific babyface champion. I also did some independent tours of Japan, wrestled a little bit for the Savoldis in the IWCCW territory up in Maine, and even did a little bit of independent promoting of my own in the Springfield, Massachusetts, area. I know I could have continued in the business had I wanted to, by just soldiering on in any one of those promotions and helping make any one of them succeed—but my heart really wasn’t in it. I missed Vince Sr., and I missed my role as the world champion. I missed the fans, the arenas, and the routine.

Meanwhile, Vince Jr.’s national expansion was in full swing, and his gamble on Hulk Hogan, and the rock and wrestling connection, and Wrestlemania, had paid huge dividends. Vince Jr. was parlaying those victories by buying up television slots across the territories, cutting off blood supply to the NWA’s regional promotions, and eventually acquiring their top talent until the entire NWA territory system had become unstable. Even though the NWA had an existing board of directors, and a leadership team that could have and should have been able to stave off Vince Jr.’s challenge, the local promoters were more concerned about their own survival and self-interest than they were about the survival of the alliance as a whole, even though they knew, in their heart of hearts, that the survival of the alliance was the only way they would be able to survive individually. The NWA’s inability to come together was ultimately what permitted Vince to win the war for the airwaves and territorial supremacy.

So after these few forays in 1984 and 1985, I retreated from the spotlight, and returned to Glastonbury to help raise Carrie and be with my family and my community. Eventually, even though Corki was working full time as a teacher and gymnastics instructor, I needed to find something to do, so I worked construction, spent some time as a bail bondsman, ran for Congress, and coached amateur wrestling at the high school level at a couple of places in Connecticut.

I also became very depressed, and experienced some of the darkest days of my life during these days away from the business. It is hard to explain the impact on your life when the lights go out, the people go home, and you are forced, once again, to become an ordinary person with an ordinary life. That was something I struggled mightily with during the second half of the 1980s and the beginning of the ’90s until the lure of the spotlight finally called me home.

The People Let Him Do It

The territories all had their own TV stations, and some of them were quite large. But the WWF was located in the right vicinity—right in the heart of the country’s media centers. The three biggest ones were Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New York. So when the war began, those were the three territories that should have been the survivors because they were the ones that controlled the media—and the local media centers are what fueled wrestling in the territories. But it was a fruitless war—and I realized that at a very early stage in the Amarillo area because no matter what we did and what our TV did, we just couldn’t keep up.

The best way to understand what happened to the wrestling business is to compare it to something else that happened around the same time. We used to have a five and dime store in Canyon, Texas. And that five and dime store was run by a guy named Mr. Kirkley. And by golly, when you went into that store, Mr. Kirkley would call out a greeting to you by name as soon as you walked in there. And Mr. Kirkley would ask you about your children and your parents, and anything that might be going on in your life and your job, and then, once you had picked out the things you wanted or needed and paid for them at the register, Mr. Kirkley would help you carry your bags out to your car. Everyone just loved Mr. Kirkley, and going into his store and buying what you needed just made you feel good, you know?

But then along came Wal-Mart, with its bright lights and easy parking, and lower prices, and more variety and what not—and people just up and forgot about Mr. Kirkley even though they loved him. And that’s the way it was in the wrestling business. When Vince Jr. decided to go national, he just started buying up the local television rights and cutting off the oxygen to all of the territories. And the people let him do it, because even though they used to love the local product, they were the ones who lined up to buy the tickets. They were the ones who made it possible to kill Mr. Kirkley.

—Terry Funk