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Jerry Lawler: 50 years of pinning opponents and running his mouth

Posted: Sep 26th 2020 By: John Beifuss

Jerry Lawler is living the dream.

He's living it inside the spacious East Memphis home he shares with his fiancée, Lauryn McBride; her 12-year-old son, Peyton (named for Peyton Manning); her chihuahua, Louis (named for Louis Vuitton); a “life-sized” 10-foot-tall Incredible Hulk statue; a 19-foot-long functional replica 1966 Batmobile; an original Norman Rockwell charcoal drawing; autographed photographs of Boris Karloff and W.C. Fields; wrestling costumes and championship belts; souvenirs of his beloved Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Indians; a projection-television screen that covers an entire wall in an upstairs room; more Coca-Cola logos than can be found in all 530 surviving Piggly Wiggly stores; and enough Superman memorabilia to collapse a continent on the planet Krypton.

It’s tempting to write that Lawler, Memphis’ most successful professional wrestler, pursued that dream, chased it around the ring, put it in a headlock, slammed it into the turnbuckle, subjected it to a piledriver and a suplex, and pinned it to the canvas until it cried uncle, or maybe “King.”

But such a description would make Lawler sound desperate and frantic. In fact, Jerry "The King" Lawler — to give him his self-anointed and publicly embraced due — has lived what appears to be a charmed life, although not one immune from tragedy. (In 2018, his 46-year-old son, professional wrestler Brian Christopher, was found hanged in a Hardeman County jail cell, in what authorities said was a suicide.)

Lawler, 70, worked hard to get where he is. But since high school, opportunities have opened up for him like the doors that beckon secret agent Maxwell Smart during the opening credits of one of Lawler’s cherished 1960s television sitcoms, “Get Smart.”

He stepped through each one. As a result, Jerry Lawler is or has been a professional wrestler; a comic book illustrator; a disc jockey; a recording artist; a movie actor; a barbecue restaurant and Beale Street bar owner; a sports commentator; and a nationally recognized television celebrity. Essentially, almost everything a kid of his generation dreamed of being, except cowboy or astronaut.

He has run for Memphis mayor, coming in third in a 1999 ballot-box battle royale that featured 15 competitors. But why be mayor when you're already the King?

"To me, it's just a nickname," said Lawler, who nonetheless acknowledges his royal sobriquet with a large portrait that hangs high inside the two-story entryway of his home, level with a crystal chandelier. In the portrait, a beaming Lawler holds a crown at his chest, as if it were a trophy, a favorite pet, or the head of a vanquished opponent.

"Especially in the wrestling business, everybody just says, 'Hey, King,'" Lawler said. "I just take it for granted."

Lawler is more eager to talk about his collections and pop-culture obsessions — Disney, the Beatles, the classic monsters of Universal Pictures — than his career. Among his prized possessions are two working old-school jukeboxes that play 45 rpm singles. One of them almost got him killed, when a stripper he began dating after a lunch meeting at a Taco Bell learned he had stashed $250,000 in cash inside it. She conspired with the police officer son of one of Memphis’ most popular television news anchors to murder Lawler and steal the money. It’s a long story, much-reported by local news outlets in 2004, you can look it up.

The newspaper story you are now reading, however — and yes, we're finally getting to the point — is inspired by a different bit of history. An anniversary, to be precise — a golden anniversary, to match the gleaming hues of one of the signature crowns the King for decades has ordered from a company in Houston, Texas.

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 17, 1970, Jerry Lawler made his Memphis debut as a professional wrestler.

The event took place at Downtown's old Ellis Auditorium (this was before wrestling moved to the Mid-South Coliseum), which in 1999 was razed to make way for the expansion of the convention center. Also on the card were such ring legends as Tojo Yamamoto, who relied on "judo" chops and his Japanese-style wooden shoes to bludgeon opponents, and Lawler's celebrated mentor, Jackie Fargo.

In Lawler's bout, which he won, he faced off against journeyman grappler Mack York. He also participated in what was touted as a "Nine Man Battle Royale."

Unlike some other Memphis milestones, Lawler's wrestling debut has been pretty much overlooked, probably because wrestling doesn't receive the respect of such other once disreputable pursuits as rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues. Nevertheless, the Memphis-born product of Treadwell High School and what he calls a "'Leave It to Beaver' family" might be the city's most veteran active homegrown celebrity.

Elvis is dead. Justin never really worked here. Al Green left the spotlight for God, while Penny Hardaway reached new heights of fame and fortune in Orlando before returning home.

Lawler, meanwhile, has been Memphis loud-and-proud for the past half-century — and as in your face as a pair of brass knuckles, via local TV commercials, the occasional record release (a 1974 cover of J.D. Loudermilk's "Bad News" was a regional hit), cable television national wrestling broadcasts, and his restaurants, King Jerry Lawler's Memphis BBQ Company on Germantown Parkway and King Jerry Lawler's Hall of Fame Bar & Grille on Beale Street.

"I'd be hard-pressed to figure out someone more consistently in the news and always present than Lawler, regardless of what business they're in," said wrestling historian Mark James, 53, author of numerous books on Memphis wrestling (find them at markjamesbooks.com). "He's been active for 50 years, and you still see him on commercials, you see him on TV, you see him on WWE..."

While Memphis missed the chance to recognize Lawler's hometown wrestling debut, Jackson, Tennessee, has stepped up to the plate, almost literally. On Sept. 26, the home stadium for the city's minor league baseball team, The Ballpark at Jackson, will host what is being billed as "Jerry 'The King' Lawler's 50th Anniversary Celebration." While the seating for fans will be socially distanced, the action in the ring obviously will be as intimate as a scissor lock: Eight bouts are on the bill, including a "Thunderdome Cage Match." Lawler will wrestle, meaning he'll take blows as well as a bow.

He's used to it. Lawler says he has wrestled professionally every year since 1970.

"Your body just gets used to taking that certain specific abuse," he said. "I wrestled on such a regular basis for 20 years, probably six or seven nights a week, and every night I would get picked up and body-slammed. And then maybe on your night off you'd go bowling and the next morning wake up and say, 'Oh my God, I'm so sore.'"

Although he walks with a slight limp, the 6-foot Lawler looks remarkably fit for a man almost old enough to be a 2020 presidential candidate. His current weight is 231, just under the 234 pounds of his career prime, he said.

Even so, "I never worked out a day in my life," he said. His work was his exercise. (Also, “I’ve never in my life even tasted one sip of beer, wine, whisky or any type of alcohol," he said. "Or coffee.")

Lawler was introduced to wrestling by his father, Jerome Lawler, who worked at the old Ford Motor Co. plant in Memphis. Mr. Lawler liked watching TV wrestling, and took young Jerry to the matches at Ellis Auditorium.

At that time, Jerry dreamed of being a comic-book artist. He drew cartoon-like pictures of the wrestlers in action at Ellis Auditorium. In high school, he sent some to Lance Russell, host of Memphis' phenomenally highly rated Saturday morning TV wrestling show, which at that time was on Channel 13, WHBQ-TV.

Russell shared Lawler's drawings with his audience, then called Jerry and asked him to become a sort of "courtroom artist" of Monday night wrestling matches. This attracted the attention of Jackie Fargo, the most popular wrestler in a city where wrestling was more popular than almost anything. Fargo called Lawler, and "my head exploded," Lawler said. "Jackie Fargo was like Elvis at the time, especially for a wrestling fan."

Fargo hired Lawler to create artwork for the inside of the Southern Frontier, a steakhouse on Madison he owned with country singer Eddie Bond. That job led to another, as Lawler also began working as a deejay on Bond's radio station, KWAM. Lawler promoted wrestling on his show, and was able to parlay this into his first opportunity to wrestle professionally in Memphis.

"He was the total package," James said of Lawler. "He had attitude, he had talent, he could take the big bumps, and he just had the gift of gab."

Within a couple of years, Lawler eclipsed Fargo, had crowned himself "The King," and was competing for national championships.

Lawler's fame moved beyond wrestling circles when conceptual cult comedian Andy Kaufman launched a largely Memphis-centered "career" as a wrestler, initiating a feud with Lawler that culminated in an infamous 1982 appearance on "Late Night with David Letterman." Lawler slapped Kaufman on air, a breach of talk-show etiquette in particular and civil behavior in general that Lawler recreated in the 1999 biopic "Man on the Moon," directed by two-time Oscar-winner Miloš Forman, with Jim Carrey as Kaufman.

As wrestlers, some of his contemporaries may have been more technically adept than Lawler. But Lawler understood that his most important muscles were the ones that motivated his mouth. (Lawler credits Scott Shannon, a pre-Rick Dees Memphis disc jockey on the Top 40 AM radio station, WMPS, with inspiring his gift for "spontaneous banter.")

"He could rile up the fans as much as he could make them love him," James said. "The old adage, 'The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference,' applies to Jerry. Love and hate are extreme emotions and Lawler attracted plenty of both."

Complemented by a devilish goatee that underscored his initial status as a wrestling villain or "heel," Lawler's motormouth was the engine that propelled him to what now can be described as international stardom, thanks to his long-running status as a "color commentator" on telecasts of "Monday Night Raw," the national wrestling program produced by Vince McMahon's WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). For better or worse, it was the WWE (originally known as the WWF) and the rival nationally broadcast wrestling show on TBS that eclipsed and killed the local wrestling markets, which looked like country cousins compared to their glitzy cable counterparts.

The WWE gig was another right-place, right-time opportunity for Lawler, who first went on the air as a commentator in 1994 as a last-minute replacement for AWOL Randy "Macho Man" Savage. (After a lengthy pandemic-motivated hiatus, Lawler returns to "Raw" duties this week in Orlando, where the show currently is filmed.)

Lawler (who eventually was co-owner of the company that produced local TV wrestling and the Mid-South Coliseum matches) had many opportunities to leave Memphis for more lucrative if less wrestling-centric markets, but he always remained here. Like a guitar player who stays in Memphis to tap into the city's heritage of authenticity, Lawler is a dedicated champion of the Memphis tradition of his chosen art form.

"These guys have always been, in my eyes, great athletes," Lawler said, citing such predecessors as Fargo and Sputnik Monroe. "And when I say 'athletes,' the stuff you see (wrestlers) doing, what you're seeing is really happening. Getting picked up over somebody's head, getting slammed to the ground. It's like football players when they're getting tackled."

The fact that wrestling storylines and the outcome of matches may be planned in advance doesn't negate the athleticism, he said. There's nothing dishonest about the drama. The "E" in WWE stands for "Entertainment," after all.

"For years, people would come to me and say, 'I don't watch wrestling, it's all fake,'" Lawler said. "And I'd say, 'Oh, do you watch movies?' 'Uh, yeah.' 'So when Tom Cruise gets shot, he's really dead, right?'"