Arn Anderson says the thing Dory Funk Jr. gave the wrestlers who came after him was the ability to make a match look like a fight.
Funk died on Tuesday in Ocala, Florida, at the age of 85. His wife Marti confirmed the news. No cause of death has been given.
Anderson opened the latest episode of ARN with a tribute, after his co-host read out Paul Levesque’s statement on behalf of WWE.
“That’s his thumbprint on everything he touched. Guys from my era, which is one era later than him, I would probably say, learned how to go out and have a fight, and when it was all said and done, you knew you were in an entertainment show, but you looked at Dory Funk Jr. and whoever he was working with, and you went, those guys were in a real fight. That’s what he brought to our business.”
“Much respect and our love and thoughts, prayers go out to his family and fans and pretty much everyone involved.”
Anderson debuted in 1982, more than a decade after Funk’s four-year run as NWA World Heavyweight Champion began, and the two eras overlapped in the NWA territories.
Funk held the NWA World Heavyweight Championship from February 1969 to May 1973, one of the longest reigns in the title’s history. He and his brother Terry, who died in 2023, were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame together in 2009. He spent the decades after his in-ring career training a generation at the Funking Conservatory in Ocala, among them Kurt Angle, Edge, Lita and the Hardys.
