For more than four years, the NWA World Heavyweight Championship traveled from city to city in Dory Funk Jr.'s hands. Funk, the technical wrestler who turned a 1969 title victory into one of the championship's longest reigns and later taught generations of stars, died in Ocala, Florida, on August 4, 2026. He was 85.

His wife, Marti Funk, confirmed his death and the date directly to the Ocala Gazette. By early 2026, the couple had been sweethearts for 46 years. Their partnership also became part of his work at the wrestling school they operated in Ocala.

Born on February 3, 1941, Funk grew up inside a wrestling family led by his father, wrestler and Amarillo promoter Dory Funk Sr. His younger brother Terry followed the same path. After playing football at West Texas State University, Dory Jr. began his professional career in 1963.

On February 11, 1969, Funk defeated Gene Kiniski in Tampa to win the NWA title. His official biography described the victory as the day that changed his life. The reign lasted more than four years, the second-longest uninterrupted reign by an NWA World Heavyweight Champion after Lou Thesz. Funk's match style depended on control, holds, counters, suplexes, and the spinning toe hold. That command of fundamentals later gave him a second vocation.

Japan became one of the enduring centers of Funk's career. He began working for All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1973 and later said he made 70 trips to Japan through 1997. He served as both wrestler and coach. His work as a trainer began when Giant Baba sent the young Olympic wrestler Jumbo Tsuruta to the Amarillo territory, an assignment Funk described as the start of the Dory Funk Method.

Dory and Terry also worked as a team. After their father died in 1973, they ran the Amarillo promotion and helped book All Japan. They later brought their contrasting styles to WWE during the 1980s, including a tag-team appearance at WrestleMania 2. WWE's profile of the brothers records that both men became NWA world champions and entered the WWE Hall of Fame together in 2009.

By the late 1990s, teaching had moved to the foreground. WWE prospects attended Funkin' Dojo camps in Stamford, where Funk worked with Tom Prichard and Pat Patterson. Edge, Kurt Angle, Jeff Hardy, Christian, and Mark Henry were among the wrestlers who passed through the program. Funk built the week around weight work, technique drills, practice matches, filmed review, and safety. WWE's account of the dojo showed a coach who adjusted the instruction to the athlete but kept the fundamentals constant.

Dory and Marti brought the program to Ocala in late 1999 as the Funking Conservatory. There he continued to train wrestlers and stage events. In 2022, he published The Last of a Great Breed: True Stories from a Career in Pro Wrestling, giving readers his own account of the people, travel, and lessons behind the matches.

Even formal retirement did not make a clean border around his time in the ring. On August 24, 2024, at 83, Funk teamed with Osamu Nishimura in Kawasaki, Japan, for his final match. Their team won after both men applied the spinning toe hold. When the Ocala Gazette asked him in January 2026 what young wrestlers should know, he answered, first softly and then with increasing force, "Never quit."

Funk's record remains in the long NWA title reign, the matches preserved from the territory era and Japan, and the 2009 Hall of Fame induction he shared with Terry. The wrestlers who passed through his dojo included future champions and Hall of Fame inductees. From the championship road to a training ring in Ocala, his professional career spanned more than six decades, carrying wrestling's craft from one generation to the next.