Terry Funk is the greatest wrestler ever. That’s not my opinion. It’s a mathematical fact.

Every ten years, the Greatest Wrestler Ever (GWE) project asks wrestling fans to submit ranked ballots based largely on the wrestling they’ve actually watched. After previous editions in 2006 and 2016, Funk emerged from the 2026 project at the top of the list.

That brings us to Funkin’ Fall.

It is difficult to think of a wrestler better suited to this kind of exercise, because Terry Funk wrestled for so long and in so many different places, having, almost certainly, the most varied career of any wrestler ever.

His career stretched across more than five decades, through the territories, national expansion, Japan, ECW, the Monday Night War era and well into a wrestling world that looked almost nothing like the one he entered. Along the way, Funk managed the nearly impossible trick of becoming several different versions of himself without any of them ever feeling inauthentic.

Trying to cover all of that in one retrospective would be ridiculous. So we aren’t.

Funkin’ Fall is Violent People’s year-by-year examination of Terry Funk. Different writers have been handed different years, with the freedom to focus on the matches, moments, promotions, people and strange detours that best explain what Funk was at that particular point in time.

Some years contain world-title matches. Others contain bar fights, exploding rings, Hollywood, deathmatches, retirement matches that absolutely did not result in retirement, and hell, even an album.

The plan is “simple.” Starting Monday, October 12, a new piece covering a new chronological year in Terry Funk’s career will appear on Violent People every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until we’ve covered everything we can.

And maybe they’ll help explain why, in 2026, a bunch of nerds who spend far too much time watching wrestling decided he was the greatest to ever do it.

This is Funkin’ Fall.

This post will also serve as the Funkin’ Fall master index, with links to each individual year and article added as they’re published.