RIP: Dory Funk Jr.

His brother Terry, Stan Hansen, Dusty Rhodes, Dick Murdoch, Bob Backlund, Tully Blanchard, Tito Santana and Ted DiBiase all cut their teeth in Amarillo. And it was a territory where people worked stiff, there weren’t any pulled punches.

Its still real to me dammit.

The outcomes may have been prearranged but those Ric Flair chops to the chest were frickin' real. Some of these guys beat the living s**t out of each other for our entertainment ... when Johnny Valentine and Wahoo McDaniel worked, they were hitting each other so hard the slobber was flying out of their mouths across the ring like those slo-mo shots in "Raging Bull" ... and I damn sure preferred that to people jumping off the top of cages and being acrobats.