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Ocala-bound Lawler chats about wrestling, Andy Kaufman and Dory Funk Jr.

Posted: Sep 8th 2011 By: CMBurnham

The wrestlers used to show up on Monday afternoons for their radio interviews with a young disc jockey out of Memphis named Jerry Lawler.

It was the late '60s, an era when music was the thing that mattered, but these burly men with wild eyes were something else. They'd drive up in their big Cadillacs, two or three pretty girls on their arms, do their two-minute promos and go laughing out the door.

?Man, that's a pretty cool lifestyle right there,? Lawler thought.

So, he joined it.

Now 61, Lawler is known as ?The King,? and he is one of the most famous professional wrestlers of all time. He is a WWE superstar who also ran for mayor of Memphis. But The King owes much of his celebrity to his infamous relationship with comedian Andy Kaufman.

And Lawler's still wrestling, including an Ocala bout Saturday dubbed Wrestle Growl at the Dory Funk Arena. It will be a six-man match, including another wrestling legend, arena namesake and Ocala resident Dory Funk Jr.

?It's kind of a testing thing,? Lawler says of the match. ?The guys I'm competing against, it will give them an opportunity to see if they're ready. It's like a minor-league baseball player getting called up to the big leagues for a day. It's always fun going to do things like that. It's a little bit dangerous, too, because you're dealing with totally unknown guys that you are not familiar with, and anything can happen.?

Lawler says he is most excited to be on the same team with Funk.

?I can't even remember the last time I wrestled against Dory Funk,? he says. ?I know I've never been his partner, so I'm looking forward to being his partner in this match. There will be well over 100 years of experience in that ring on our side.?

The fact that Lawler is still wrestling roughly 40 years after his first match is something of a miracle, especially in a sport that is so physically punishing.

?It's a very physical business,? he says. ?It hurts. We've had guys with broken necks and every kind of injury you can imagine. People don't really hear about that, because they go home and recuperate, and they're off TV, and another person takes their place.?

It is even more impressive considering the fact that Lawler has never had a single wrestling lesson.

?When I actually did get my first opportunity to go into an actual pro match, I really never had any training,? he says. ?I just went in there and tried to do the stuff that I had seen the guys do before.?

Lawler rose to regional fame in the '70s, making his name around the South as a bona fide star. But, he didn't shoot to national stardom until he met Andy Kaufman. The comic actor at that point was at the height of his career, beloved both for his role in the hit TV show ?Taxi? and for his fearless, mold-breaking comedy.

?Andy was a big wrestling fan from a kid,? Lawler says. ?Andy said, ?I was always really fascinated that a guy could go on television, and be a big star and intentionally make everyone try to despise him.' Once he became a celebrity, he decided he wanted to live out the fantasy he had as a kid of being a bad-guy wrestler.?

Kaufman wasn't a big man, and he wanted to make the audience hate him, so he decided to wrestle women. The only problem was getting someone to let him do it on a professional wrestling stage.

Enter Jerry Lawler.

?I said, ?Yeah, we'd love to have you come down and do that.'? Lawler says. ?So, he came to Memphis, he lived out his fantasy, he incited the whole city. Everyone wanted to just hang him up by his neck.?

Seeing how popular Kaufman's matches were, Lawler decided he needed to get in on the action.

?I went to Andy and said, ?You need to have a match against a man, and it needs to be against me.' He finally agreed, and that's how we got started into our match.?

Thus began one of the most infamous feuds in entertainment history, including a profanity-drenched appearance on David Letterman's ?Late Show? in which Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair.

For years, no one knew where the joke ended and reality began. In recent years, Lawler has opened up about the Letterman event, about his close friendship with Kaufman and about the fact that both men were in on the whole thing. But, perhaps it was better when no one knew if it was real or fake.

For a wrestler, there could be no better ending.

?It just became like a folklore legend,? Lawler says. ?It's amazing.?