In a Raw Classic, Terry Funk Sets Mick Foley Up For His Future
In a Raw Classic, Terry Funk Sets Mick Foley Up For His Future
Chainsaw Charlie: a bad idea with a beautiful payoff.
Chainsaw Charlie was a bad idea with a beautiful payoff. In December 1997, Terry Funk returned to the WWF to rescue his rival, friend, and pupil Cactus Jack from the clutches of the New Age Outlaws, cutting his way out of a pine box with a chainsaw. It could have worked, but the Funker had powder on his face and a pair of pantyhose over his head, and while everybody kept calling him Terry Funk, he insisted that he was this other jawn, Chainsaw Charlie.
It’s fine, really. Terry Funk tried to bring some WiNG Monster Army energy to Monday Night Raw, but he was 53-years-old and being brought in to legitimize the New Age Outlaws as the new faces of the WWF’s moribund tag division. Worse, this was December 1997, a month removed from the Montreal Screwjob, where the only truly hot act was “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Their feud against the Outlaws has more build than anything else at WrestleMania XIV save for Owen Hart vs. Triple H, it has the famous angle where the Outlaws push a dumpster Cactus and Chainsaw were fighting in off of the entrance stage, but it’s not exactly compelling television: the New Age Outlaws aren’t important yet, and all of Cactus Jack and Chainsaw Charlie’s history together took place in Japan and Philadelphia, something Jim Ross could allude to but not show.
It’s a disappointing angle, one that is mostly famous for the fact that the fans paying witness to Jack and Charlie’s later ass-whooping at the hands of the Outlaws, Triple H, X-Pac, and Chyna — the reformed D-Generation X — chant for “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, who isn’t about to start feuding against the WWF European Champion and his friends. That slight, depending on how much you believe wrestlers when they tell their stories, caused Mick Foley some real heartbreak, who retired the Cactus Jack persona a week later in favor of the tie dye and sunglasses of Dude Love, who just wanted to broker peace between his friend Steve Austin and his boss Vince McMahon. On the same episode where Dude Love returns, Terry Funk tells the crowd that he doesn’t care who they chant for. He takes on 2 Cold Scorpio as his new tag team partner and gets back to work.
None of this is as clean as prose suggests — Foley’s run as Dude Love is as brief as it is eventful, something made necessary by how thin the WWF roster was at the time, a brief peak in a year where Foley saw himself regressing until the grim spectacle of his King of the Ring 1998 Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker changed his life forever. This match against Terry Funk happens right in the middle of his run against Austin, at an inflection point for Foley’s character and career which, from 1998 to 2000, was largely concerned with minting credible main event stars.
I have spent a lot of time now talking about the various pieces that go into this match. In a pre-match hype video, the WWF picks up all of those pieces, explains their importance, and sets the friendship and legacy of these two men, Mick Foley and Terry Funk, as something that is arguably more important than the WWF Championship or even Foley’s career. The centerpiece of one of those nights where Raw dedicates itself to telling a compelling story, the match positions Foley as someone in the middle of a moral dilemma. Would you destroy your idol for a shot at the WWF Title?
Oddly, both the devil and the angel in this scenario, McMahon and Austin respectively, want to see Foley do it. To McMahon, it’s a test of how much of himself Foley is willing to sacrifice at the altar of Titan Sports. Steve Austin, he just wants to see two men beat the hell out of each other. That’s all well and good for the story of Steve Austin and Vince McMahon, but we’re here to talk about Terry Funk, who says of Mick Foley before this match the following:
“I love him like a son, but if I have to beat him to death, I will.”
On split-screen with a pacing Foley, Funk is comparatively motionless, deep in thought or prayer. It’s a compelling image, a rare moment of quiet on Raw. That’s kind of the vibe of the match, too, as this is a transitional moment for Foley and an unexpected opportunity to bring a sense of closure to the most high profile iteration of the Funk/Foley story.
It is neither their best match together nor my favorite of theirs, but it’s an emotionally wrenching story and a highlight of Raw for the year. It’s a fight, plain and simple, with a fair amount of orchestrated chaos like a vendor getting suplexed and Funk hitting his wobbly moonsault off of the bleachers. Having seen a lot of WWF from this era lately, this is quietly one of the most important matches of the year. It’s in the Dude Love/Steve Austin feud that McMahon really figures out how to turn the legitimate animus towards him (and his general disposition) into a draw. He will later run this “destroy a guy who means something to you” gimmick on the Undertaker and Kane, though to lesser effect.
Of (arguably) equal importance is that, between this and the Cactus Jack/Triple H falls count anywhere match at MSG a year prior, you have the codification of WWE’s take on hardcore wrestling, which was as important at the top of the card with Foley there as it was for the midcard, which was soon to pick up the WWF Hardcore Championship. It’s easy to say that the WWF ripped off ECW (because they did), but that style of wrestling couldn’t be transposed 1:1 from one company’s television to the other, not when the WWF had more resources and space to play with. Really, their style is at a halfway point between ECW’s whole deal and WCW-style street fights and death matches, which were built around opponents brawling to a convenience stand or bathroom or some other place where wrestlers could run some odd-looking spots.
It is fortunate, for them, that it’s Funk and Foley setting the template here, as few wrestlers had vision as widescreen as theirs. It’s a simple match, a true walk-and-brawl, going under the bleachers and through the backstage area, Foley and Funk hitting each other with everything that’s not nailed down, including a lava lamp from Dude Love’s Love Shack set. Early on, Foley falls backwards into the steps and comes up bleeding, and the Funker is in his usual wildman form on the sell, so the match feels more brutal than it is.
If the match has a problem, it’s that I’m looking at a TV match between two of my favorite wrestlers, one of whom is recently deceased, from the perspective that this match is the story, when it is not. It’s about Vince McMahon. It’s about Steve Austin. And while I like Austin’s enthusiasm on color and am glad someone is there to save Funk from his best friend’s post-match assault, the faux audio difficulties and necessary cameratime given to the WWF Champion distract from the rich narrative that exists in the ring. Oddly, the impulse to focus on Austin is what started Foley’s beef in the first place.
Still, it’s a fun match, essentially Funk’s victory lap given that his underrated tag team with 2 Cold Scorpio doesn’t really go anywhere. Its guiding principle is that Terry Funk is more than a friend and mentor to Mick Foley, that, as his idol, Funk is basically his conscience. All through the night, Foley seems uncertain about the fight, but Funk is game. More than that, he knows that Foley needs this fight. He gives him one of the year’s best, is beaten, then left out of frame while Austin watches in disgust as Foley dances with Vince McMahon. That’s kind of the deal about your conscience, though. Sometimes you listen to it, sometimes you fight it, and sometimes it goes ignored. On this occasion, Terry Funk goes through all three states of being. He still gets Mick Foley where he needs to be.