More Than Just Hardcore (45 page)

I’m still able to get around, which means I’ve been pretty lucky, but I’ve also had cracked vertebrae and more concussions than I could count, all because I like to work physical.

Besides the physical aspect of it, I’m getting too damned old.

Every now and then, a wrinkled, old man will shuffle up to me, tap me with his cane and say, “Terry Funk! I used to watch you wrestle when I was a kid!”

I know that one day soon, I really will retire, from the entire business, once and for all. I wouldn’t mind going around the country and having a retirement match in every town, but whatever it entails, I’m pretty near the end of my wrestling days, and pretty glad to be there. I can promise you one thing—if I do accept an independent booking, and you go to the show, don’t be expecting to see any goddamned moonsaults out of me! I don’t have any left in me.

We all have windows of time in this wrestling business. They open and they shut. I’ve been lucky enough to have a window that’s been broken, on the open side. I’ve seen a lot of talented guys whose windows were just jammed shut, for whatever reason, but mine’s been open for a great number of years, and I’ve been very fortunate. A few times it’s slammed shut on me, but I’ve always figured out a way to get it open again. Nowadays I’m looking at closing it, once and for all.

I have a friend who just passed away from liver cancer in May 2004. He spent more than $100,000 on special treatment he could only get in Philadelphia. He got the treatment, but he still died.

I don’t mean this specifically about him, but maybe the way we’ll know who wins and who doesn’t in this life is by seeing who lives. For all the guys who lived fast and died young, maybe I win when I live one more day than they do. That’s how simple it is.

You can have all the money in the world, like Bill Gates, but what would you pay to have that one extra day of living, especially if you’re home, where you want to be?

Right here on the Double Cross Ranch is where I want to be.