One of the most newsworthy few-week periods in pro wrestling history has seen four major deaths—including two of the most creative pro wrestlers of modern times and one of the most influential writers of his era—AEW break a paid attendance record while running two pay-per-view shows in eight days and fire one of its biggest stars, as well as a weekend where both WWE and AEW had major shows on successive days.
Terry Funk’s death on Aug. 23 was followed the next day by the death of Windham Rotunda, better known as Bray Wyatt.
While both men were entirely different as far as what they did in the ring, they also had similarities when it came to having open, creative minds about what pro wrestling is.
Funk, who was 79, came from a wrestling family where his father, older brother and himself were all Hall of Famers and giants of the industry during the territorial days. Funk was a cultural icon in Japan during the days when pro wrestling was a fixture on prime time network television in the 1970s and ’80s, known as “The Great Texan” and in many ways a real-life John Wayne who fought alongside both his brother, but also alongside the biggest Japanese stars of the era against a bevy of heels like The Sheik, Abdullah the Butcher, Bruiser Brody and Stan Hansen. He was a pioneer in what are now Japanese fixture events, from wild death matches to explosive barbed-wire matches. He and his brother were keys in establishing a now 47-year tradition of year-end tag-team tournaments.
Perhaps his best in-ring trait was his ability to work with someone either physically limited or someone with a different style, and figure out a way to have a great match with them. He also was the expert on bad nights, when for whatever reason, the crowd wasn’t responsive. He was almost always able to figure out a way to get them excited. He could do serious wrestling, bloody brawling, comedy or drama, depending on what he perceived was the right thing to get the best match out of his opponent and touch the nerves of what the audience wanted.
He battled severe injuries through most of his career, working decades on shot knees and with a bad back. He was always in great pain, yet the minute he came through a crowd, he was a man in the zone. He would transform himself from a soft-spoken, thoughtful, smiling guy to a larger-than-life performer who was among the best talkers and most convincing characters in wrestling. But he was versatile in his approach, changing with the times.
Wrestling was in his blood, as he became a fan in the late 1940s when his father went from territory to territory in a trailer, before the family settled down in Amarillo, Texas, where his father ran the local wrestling promotion.
He and his brother took over running the company when his father, Dory Funk Sr., died in 1973. But in ’77, long before any of the promoters of that era saw it, he saw the future of wrestling was going to be a few national promotions, and the territories would die off due to cable television. He would tell that to people, but most of the promoters from that era didn’t see it coming until nearly a decade later.
Rotunda was one of WWE’s biggest stars for the last several years. Like Funk, he was from a wrestling family, the grandson of Blackjack Mulligan, nephew of Barry Windham and son of Mike Rotunda, also known as IRS. Like Funk, he was a college football player before wrestling, once being a second-team junior college All-American lineman, and started as part of a brother team. Rotunda tried out a variety of ideas when learning wrestling before settling on Bray Wyatt, an eerie cult leader who picked out his own perfect music, catchphrases and mannerisms. He was an almost supernatural character as Bray Wyatt and later morphed into an actual supernatural character as The Fiend.
But he dealt with health issues in recent years. He already had heart issues when he contracted COVID-19 in March, which worsened his heart, and hadn’t wrestled since. Still, there was talk of his returning until he died of a heart attack at the age of 36, one day after Funk did.
He was engaged to Joseann Offerman, who had both wrestled and been a ring announcer in WWE, and the couple have two young children. The entire industry was shocked by his death, given how young he was, and within the company it was noted how they should have been heading to his wedding rather than talking about his funeral.
He was so popular that a number of WWE wrestlers and other people who worked with him on creative all went to get tattoos together to honor him. The SmackDown episode on Aug. 25, which honored both Funk and Rotunda, was a very classy show that drew the best TV ratings in the 18-to-49 demographic the show had done in nearly three years.
Abe Jacobs, a former amateur wrestling star in New Zealand in the early 1950s, came to North America in ’58. At the time he arrived, another New Zealander, Pat O’Connor, was one of the biggest stars in the world. Jacobs was more of a journeyman, settling in the Carolinas, where he lived after retiring from the ring in ’84. Before his death on Aug. 22, at the age of 95, he was believed to have been the second-oldest living wrestler. He was mostly an undercard wrestler who was respected for being highly skilled but didn’t have the kind of charisma that Funk and Rotunda had.
Koichi Yoshizawa is a name few modern fans know, but he was the key person to teach Japanese wrestling to American reporters and fans and teach American wrestling to Japanese fans. Yoshizawa was 74 when he died in late July, but word didn’t reach the pro wrestling world until weeks later.
Mike Tenay, a friend of his dating back to 1967, called Yoshizawa the most important newsletter correspondent during a 40-plus-year period. Yoshizawa wrote and shot photos for Japanese newsstand magazines about American wrestling. For decades, at most of the biggest shows and biggest matches, he would be ringside shooting photos with a green armband.
He wrote and shot photos for U.S. wrestling magazines and newsletters. Before the internet, he garnered pen pals in major cities around North America who he would trade information with. Later, when VCRs came into play, he would trade tapes, and he was influential enough that if he saw someone impressive, he’d recommend them to the top promotions of the era. Had it not been for his reporting and corresponding, there would be very little knowledge of Japanese wrestling in the U.S. until the internet era, and similarly little knowledge of American wrestling in Japan.
In addition to the deaths of those industry greats, the wrestling world was rocked by the news that CM Punk (real name Phil Brooks) was fired by AEW owner Tony Khan after an investigation into an incident that took place near the start of the company’s Aug. 27 show at Wembley Stadium in London.
The incident in question was an altercation involving Punk and wrestler Jack Perry, which stemmed from an argument the two had weeks earlier. The incident also involved Khan, who said that he hired outside lawyers to interview witnesses and also talk to a number of people in the company. Khan said that the unanimous recommendation from both the investigators and an internal discipline committee of other lawyers was to fire him. But Khan emphasized it was his final decision.
Before Saturday’s Collision television taping at the United Center in Chicago, Khan spoke to a crowd that largely booed him heavily and at times cheered him, just hours after the company announced Punk’s termination.
Khan had been heavily criticized because backstage problems centered on Punk dated back 18 months and never got better. It was so bad that Punk was essentially given his own show, Collision on Saturday nights, and those he had issues with worked on Dynamite on Wednesdays. But both groups worked together on the biggest shows, with the Wembley Stadium one being the third such show almost every major star was at.
“I’ve been going to wrestling shows for over 30 years as a fan, and I’ve been producing them on TNT here for almost four years now,” Khan told the crowd just before the show was going to go on the air. “And this is the first time, this incident, that I have ever feared for my safety at a wrestling show, that I have ever feared for my life. More than I’ve ever feared for the safety of the people who work backstage—the staff. I’m sorry, but they don’t come here, they don’t work here to be put in danger. There shouldn’t be 50-year-old people with artificial joints worried, Am I going to get hurt for coming to work to work on AEW every single week?
“I’m sorry. I can’t have that, and I won’t have that. That’s why it’s a very tough choice. There’s no place in the world, this is literally the last place in the world, literally the United Center, that I would want to tell you. The recommendation was from the committee, but the decision was mine. I’m sorry that anybody’s upset, but I want you to know that I know you’re all here tonight because you love professional wrestling. This company is a love letter to professional wrestling. And I know there’s wrestlers here that every single one of you care about.”
The next question regards the future of Punk. Wrestling history shows that in most cases when a top star is fired, because they are a top star, they end up getting a second chance. But some would argue this is a third chance.
The other question is whether WWE might sign him. Punk left on bad terms in 2014, when he quit, buried the company on a podcast and ended up being sued by one of the company doctors. Punk didn’t lose the lawsuit, but the legal bills he incurred in defending himself were considerable.
There is little question that Punk’s return after nearly a decade away would be huge for WWE’s live event business and television ratings at first. But a few years back, when Fox wanted WWE to bring him back, before he had signed with AEW, Vince McMahon made the decision not to bring him back. But it’s a different time and place. WWE benefited greatly from getting Cody Rhodes to rejoin the company in 2022, leaving AEW when his contract expired, where he was one of the founders and one of its biggest stars. The loss hurt AEW as well from a business and perception standpoint. But it’s far from a certainty either way regarding how WWE would look at the situation.
The London show drew an announced paid attendance of 81,305 fans, the largest for any pro wrestling event in the history of a genre that goes back nearly 150 years worldwide. The gate of $10 million was the eighth-largest in history, trailing seven WWE WrestleMania events.
But the very next weekend, both WWE and AEW followed with major events. Both had lineups that were not nearly as star-laden as the usual pay-per-view shows. WWE’s Payback on Sept. 2 in Pittsburgh didn’t have most of the company’s most well-known stars, such as Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey, The Usos, Solo Sikoa and Reigns’s right-hand man, Paul Heyman. In addition, probably the company’s most popular wrestler, Cody Rhodes, only did an interview. But the show was helped by John Cena being there as a guest host and referee, announced the day before the show.
All Out has been an AEW Labor Day tradition in Chicago since the start of the company in 2019. This year’s version saw a pay-per-view without the AEW men’s world title, the women’s world title or world tag-team titles being defended.
While the week before was the big one as far as talk went, the Chicago show finished with five great matches in a row, a show that could challenge almost any show in history as far as quality of the second half of a pay-per-view card.
Bryan Danielson, who had broken his arm in a June match against Kazuchika Okada, returned as a last-day replacement for Punk in a strap match against Ricky Starks. Danielson had done arguably the best Iron Man match in history with MJF in March and followed it up with arguably the best strap match in history. The match saw both men bleeding and whipping each other hard in the face and body with the leather strap. The other big match saw Konosuke Takeshita beat Kenny Omega in what was among the best matches of the past year.
But the biggest key to the All Out show was it coming one week after All In, with both on pay-per-view at $50 each. All Out, even airing in the afternoon in the U.S., and morning on the West Coast, ended up as the biggest pay-per-view event for AEW in more than one year. It could end up as high as second-best for a non-WWE wrestling show dating back 24 years.
In all likelihood, the number of buys for All Out won’t come near that of All In. The question is more how the show will hold up and whether the decision to do two pay-per-views in such quick succession is viable financially. WWE experimented with this idea in 1991, but after one try, the results were not a major success and the company never tried it again.
