Terry Funk Quotes

Every night you go out there, you get hurt. It's really the easiest way to say it. People can describe wrestling however they want to, but your body is flesh and bone, and it's not meant to be slammed on wood and steel.

You can only punish your body so long before you're stuck with a horrendous inability to do things you'd previously been able to do.

Many people don't realize just how dangerous professional wrestling actually is. People can get seriously injured and even paralyzed.

Sixteen games, to me, is a long enough schedule for anybody. We're already concerning ourselves with head injuries and bodily harm to all of the professional athletes. Add to extra games to it, (and) you are just increasing those risks.

Young kids should probably not play tackle football. I know this intellectually, but emotionally, I'm conflicted. I love this sport. I grew up playing and adoring football. I love the brotherhood, teamwork, athletic grace that borders on superhuman, grit, pressure and, yes, contact. I love the contact.

I honestly think that we're getting away from the basic structure of wrestling and it causes wrestlers' careers to come up short because of injuries.

I really have to accept the fact that I'm not a young man anymore, that I've probably taken one lifetime's worth of punishment already, and I really do need to be careful. Certainly I don't want other WWE superstars taking the shots I did. That makes me feel very uncomfortable when I see somebody get hit with an unprotected chair shot.

You do get injuries in this sport. More than in other sports.

In the '70s and the '80s, what wrestlers were doing back then, yes, they're taking bumps, and they're busting up their bodies and things like that, but now, we got these cages: they're falling off.

I had suffered a multitude of injuries, as most guys in the business do. Most of them came at the end of my career.

We all understand what we signed up for, but then again, you don't want this to be a game that puts people in wheelchairs at age 40.

McMahon has made a lot of guys very rich, but he may also be taking years off their lives.

I was champion, off and on, for quite a few years, and I never missed one title match from an injury. I got hurt lots of times, but the reality is you've got so much pinned on you and so much tied onto you, the company and your peers can't afford for you to get hurt.

I don't want to wrestle past 35. There's just too much physical strain with 250-pound men slamming into each other.

It's part of the sport, getting hit.

I've boxed on with cuts, broken jaws, everything.

As long as we're having contact and as long as there are collisions, there's going to be head injuries. What the long-term consequences are of that, we're beginning to learn, and that definitely will have an impact on the game as we know it.

I don't think there is anybody, including Jeff Hardy, who puts their body through as much abuse as A. J. Styles.

You can't do WWE forever; like, your body will just not hold up.

Stan Hansen was a different ballgame. I broke my neck wrestling him in Madison Square Garden. I spent a month in the hospital and for a while it was touch and go because the doctors told me I came within a millimeter of being paralyzed from the neck down.

Getting hit is not cool.

I can't take 200 hacks in the cage before the game. Not because I'll get tired, but because I'll hurt myself! I can't do that. I might get injured.

The wrestling is real, all the injuries are real, so much so that in no other sports, whether soccer or cricket or hockey, players get so many injuries as in WWE.

It is a grind lifestyle and it never ends until you get hurt and then you sit home rehabbing for three months or whatever it is until you get back straight on that train grinding again, which is how you make your money in the pro wrestling world.

It is pretty daunting - the Cell has been responsible for some amazing matches, but it can also lead to some pretty real injuries, so that plays into your mind.