Jerry Lawler Leaves Terry Funk with One Eye and Plenty to Scream About

"MY EYE" and other epithets.

CWA

I have watched this match dozens of times. I remember downloading it from a wrestling forum Megaupload link, I’ve torrented it, and I’ve seen it play out, over and over again, on YouTube, VHS tape decay rendering the depicted event something of a violent smear. It’s one of the most reached-for matches in terms of explaining the appeal of Terry Funk, Jerry Lawler, Memphis, and maybe territory wrestling in general, a match so original in its execution that nobody really tried to rip it off until 18 years later.

In the history of professional wrestling, too many matches have been billed as unsanctioned, lights out affairs when, really, they’re just weapons-based brawls with referees that end in pinfall or submission like every other wrestling match. The Terry Funk/Jerry Lawler Empty Arena match is something else altogether. It’s not even technically a match. Terry Funk, frustrated in the beginning stages his feud against Jerry Lawler, wants to face The King in an empty Mid-South Coliseum where presumably, without the support of the city of Memphis, he’ll be exposed as a sniveling coward. There is no referee, there is no bell, it’s just the two of them, Lance Russell, and a cameraman. Hell, for half the runtime, Lawler isn’t even there.

Every element of this quarter hour of television is meticulously laid out to squeeze as much as possible out of the concept while leaving fans wanting more from these two. It’s just the second match in their feud, their fourth time in the ring together counting two lost NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship defenses from 1976. Brought in by Jimmy Hart as one of the many hired guns he sent after Lawler, a loss in a no-disqualification match had him baying for blood. His challenge of Lawler was a personal one, a vendetta prosecuted by a man whose rage would make most men stop to consider the choices in life that’d led them to such a terrifying impasse.

It’s such an unbelievable challenge that Lance Russell is doubtful that anything will come of it, and when it does, the footage is rushed to television so quickly that they (intentionally) don’t edit out the part where Russell, alone, says that either something unprecedented in his reckoning of wrestling will happen and they’ll have the footage to prove it, or that nothing will and nobody will see the footage at all. His lighting and putting out a cigarette is one of my favorite small moments in wrestling history — he honestly does not believe that either man will show up, so why not spark one.

Lance Russell is, in my opinion, the greatest wrestling commentator of all time. It’s his voice, smooth as a fine, barrel-aged whiskey, and the way that he carries himself, part-documentarian, part-storied sports broadcaster. He is wonderful on the call and even better as an interviewer, unafraid to let his disbelief and disappointment come across in his interactions with the worst the territory had to offer, proud of his association with its heroes. 

For several minutes, it’s just him and a raving Terry Funk, whose free-flowing cusswords have Russell off-balance because if Funk and Lawler do come to blows, they won’t be able to air the footage. This does not stop Funk, but he does the best he can to keep the Texas Bronco corralled, trying to explain why Lawler is late to the arena, how he’s not hiding in any of the places Funk thinks to look, that he might be stuck in traffic, all of which gets under Funk’s skin to the extent that he starts threatening Russell. He is saved by Lawler, in full regalia — not just his all-white wrestling tights, but a cape and a crown, too.

“Look at that fool!” Funk exclaims, threatening to break the crown. “Look at that idiot! Don’t you realize that there’s nobody here? You jackass!”

Terry’s right: Jerry Lawler does look like a jackass. The King is valiant in his show of pomp, but without 11,300 people in the Mid-South Coliseum cheering him on, without the pretense of an official match taking place, he looks like a cartoon, someone ill-suited to the ass-whooping he’s about to dole out. Imagine red-and-yellow Hulk Hogan showing up to fight in an empty arena, or John Cena in any color t-shirt you like. Babyfaces need a crowd. Heroes need an audience. When thousands of people have your back, it’s easier to swallow the shake off the uneasiness or fear it’s natural to feel in a situation like this. 

But the thing about heels is that there is at least a kernel of cowardice in them, and while he’d often talk about beating men half to death for calling him yellow, he tries to take the easy way out twice, counting Lawler out before he arrives and giving him “one chance” to pick up and leave so long as he tells the world that Funk is the tougher man. Lawler is not impressed with Funk’s bravado. In general, he’s short on words. “I’m here,” he says while Funk runs him down, and then the brawl is on. 

From the outset, it’s clear that Lawler has the upperhand. Funk is an unrestrained wildman, but Lawler is calm and restrained. He’s the one who sends Funk careening into the ringside seats. He casually steps away from a hurled pair of chairs, maybe the only time Funk has looked impotent when throwing a chair at his opponent. After Lawler zips in a good punch, Funk backs away as quickly as he can, yipping like a kicked dog, at one point saying “Leave me alone!” as Lawler slowly stalks after him. Funk breaks a stanchion to use as a weapon. Lawler, for his part, goes back to the ring to wait on Funk. 

It’s a mistake, as Terry nails him with a metal sign and quickly takes him out to the floor, where he hits a piledriver. Screaming unintelligibly, he rips at Lawler’s eyes (you can almost see Mick Foley taking notes as he’s developing how own unintelligible verbalizations). He rips a piece of a 2x4 off of the ring steps, slams it against the ring post until an end breaks off and leaves him with something jagged, and resumes his attack on a seemingly defenseless Lawler, ramming his head into a table.

When Funk tries to stab Lawler in the eye with the spike, Russell goes off-mic to plead with him to stop. This has gone beyond bad blood and pride now, escalating to something criminal, something that, if Terry Funk has a right mind, he might regret when he comes down from his terrifying high. Of course, Jerry Lawler gains the upper hand and kicks Funk in the elbow, sending the spike into his eye. The film cuts, and Lawler is hovering over him, spike in hand. It’s not entirely clear whether Lawler pressed the issue, the footage of the hero stabbing his rival in the eye too gruesome for television, or if he chose not to when he saw how hurt Funk was.

Terry’s screams of “MY EYE!” are as burned into his legend as his mantra of “FOREVER!” He is a wounded animal, begging for a doctor and Lawler’s mercy one moment, cursing at Lawler the next, all the while Russell narrates the aftermath with genuine concern. When he goes to get a doctor, Terry’s desperation reaches a new level: “Lance, don’t leave me here.” Alone with the cameraman, his tune changes again: “Where is Lawler? Where is that chicken? He’s yellow. He’s yellow!” The whole range of human panic and rage in one man.

A few years prior to this match, Funk made his film debut as Frankie the Thumper in Sylvester Stallone’s Paradise Alley. He would spend a lot of time following this attached to Hollywood in some form or fashion, which was, of course, the spark that set off his feud with Ric Flair in 1989. Funk was always more theatrical than his contemporaries, to the extent that some of them didn’t think much of him as NWA Champion, but in his performance here, you can see him honing his instincts as an actor. Lawler and Russell are great here, but this is very much Terry Funk’s show, and the way he goes about his business here like Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter, tough and terrifying until he’s made to taste his own blood. 

Funk’s ability to incorporate filmic acting into his performance doesn’t come as a surprise — he was always adding to the toolbox — but he’s so far ahead of the curve in 1981 that we don’t think of what he’s doing here as such — it’s another example of how good Funk was on the sell. But watch this scene from Paradise Alley, where his hulking heel wrestler character shows a surprising amount of tenderness to his friend and then find me another wrestler with his screen presence and ability to project this degree of complexity, on film or in the ring.

I won’t claim that Funk was a pioneer in this regard — what passes for acting in WWE and AEW exists almost entirely within the context professional wrestling, the method (if you want to call it that) developed by two of its biggest hams — but he, and really everything about this production, is an open door to a kind of wrestling nobody but Terry Funk was brave or crazy enough to pursue. Much of the Funk/Lawler story, which ran from 1976 to 2017, plays out like normal wrestling. But for 15 minutes on Memphis television in 1981, you get this performance, as thrilling, as terrifying, and, yes, as liberating as watching Leatherface swing his chainsaw around under the Texas sun at the end of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Of course nobody followed him through this door — you have to have a different kind of vision to achieve what Terry Funk does here. Nobody else has that, even when Funk is working with one good eye.