The Wendy's Ad You Probably Forgot Terry Funk Was In
Terry Funk, the original hardcore legend and the man who taught Mick Foley nearly everything he knows, was still lacing up his boots at 62. Over the course of a career that spanned nearly half a century, he survived explosions, barbed wire, broken glass, thumbtacks, and just about everything else you could have thrown at you inside the confines of a squared circle. While Funk may be gone now (he died at the age of 79), he'll live on wherever wrestling videos are shared.
Even though Funk didn't have quite such an illustrious career as a pitchman as fellow Hall of Famer Randy Savage (who will forever be synonymous with snapping into a Slim Jim), he did at one point star in an ad for Wendy's. Wendy's is no stranger to using athletes in its commercials –- NFL star Reggie Bush has appeared in several of these in recent years, but Wendy's has also partnered with wrestlers including Seth Freakin' Rollins and Triple H. Back in the mid-'80s, though, at a time when Funk was still in his prime (as we witnessed in his WWF stint culminating with a tag team championship win at WrestleMania 2), he, too, starred in a Wendy's commercial that may have slipped your mind (particularly if you were very young or not yet born at the time). Interestingly enough, Funk isn't exactly singing the praises of the burger. Instead, it's more what you might call an "anti-ad," but it still gets the point across.
Funk's Wendy's ad is still pretty funny today
In Funk's Wendy's commercial, the wrestler, in full ring gear, confronts a man in a gray business suit who offers him a choice between Hamburger A and Hamburger B. The Wendy's burger is the "A" one, of course, and is described by Suit Man as being freshly made. Hamburger B, he says, has been sitting around for a while. Funk opts for the second burger, which baffles the Wendy's pitchman, but the legend explains himself in true hardcore style. He says the B burger would be "hard like my deltoids." He goes on to say that chewing a hard burger would no doubt cause him some pain, which is something he enjoys. "That burger put some serious hurt in me," he growls, adding, "I love it."
As the commercial predates the internet era, we don't have a record of how it was received at the time, but one user of the Wrestling Classics forum still remembers it as pretty hilarious. Reddit's r/SquaredCircle concurs, although one Funk fan dropped a bit of a shocker. They said they encountered Funk at a Wendy's in 1995 and not only was he not making short work of a rock-hard burger, but he'd actually opted for a chicken sandwich instead.