[1990-03-31-USWA-Championship Sports] Interview: Jerry Lawler

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Lawler does a great storytelling promo, making a great analogy between Mike Awesome and the dinosaurs. Mind readers only charge this guy half price.

[PeteF3]

Lawler speaks to what is undoubtedly a Creationist audience and pushes a pro-evolution agenda on them. That's drawing heat! Lawler again comes close to burying his opponent again, though I'm sure he'll attempt to make up for it during the match itself. If all of these overinflated bulging muscle masses can't compare to Lawler then why should we give a fuck who he's wrestling?

[soup23]

Lawler faces another unique opponent and again takes down their flaws. It is amazing to me that Awesome was around at this time but didn’t pop up in the big two until a decade later.

[Kevin Ridge]

Lawler shoots on the dinosaurs becoming extinct. Mike Awesome is stupid, half wit and an imbecile. That 65 Million Years Ago Guy.

[Cox]

Jerry, nobody in this audience believes in dinosaurs! You can't use that analogy and hope it might work.

[garretta]

The King's great, as usual.

 

As to Pete's question, we're supposed to give a fuck about who Lawler's wrestling because we're not supposed to believe his bullshit. We're supposed to believe that he's a bigmouth who'll run scared the second Awesome flexes at him. Sure, in this day and age when we know about putting butts in seats and how to do that effectively, Lawler's promo sounds like a burial. But we're supposed to be thinking like 1990 marks, not 2014 smarts, even though we're watching in 2014. By the standards of March 31, 1990 in Dallas, Texas, this is tough talk from a no-talent Memphis chickenshit who never saw the day when he was as big and strong as Mike Awesome, and who wets and craps his pants both at the thought of facing him at the Sportatorium next Friday night.

 

It's not entirely fair to watch some of this stuff unless you're prepared to "forget" now what you didn't know then. It does the wrestlers a needless disservice.

[Loss]

I completely disagree with that, considering that Flair was cutting promos on Luger in the same time frame acknowledging him as a great wrestler but saying he was better. It's not a matter of 1990 vs 2014, it's a matter of productive heel promos versus counterproductive heel promos.

[garretta]

Are you saying that Lawler never learned how to cut your idea of a "productive" heel promo, Charles? I find that hard to believe, considering how long he was around even by then.

 

I'm having trouble framing an answer for you. Let me put it this way, and maybe we can keep the dialogue going a bit: Why should a pighead like Lawler care a damn if the ignorant, stupid, smelly fans he hates show up on Friday night to boo him out of the Sportatorium? Wouldn't it be easier for Lawler (the character, not the promoter and territory co-owner) if there were as few fans of Awesome's as possible to distract him and give Awesome the "home-field advantage"? Maybe that's where we see things differently: I'm talking exclusively in terms of the character Jerry portrays. You're thinking of the Lawler who owns part of the territory and wants to draw a good crowd, which doesn't enter my thinking at all because I don't see it on the disc I'm watching. To me as I'm watching, Max Andrews and his syndicate run the USWA and Lawler's just an employee, just like Jack Tunney runs the WWF and Vince McMahon is the nerdy announcer and nothing more.

 

Now, if you're asking me if the decision Lawler made in having his character cut a promo like that (splitting hairs, I know, but I have a point) was good or bad, I'd have to say it depends. I've never believed that Jerry put his heart and soul into Dallas; he was Memphis all the way and only worked Dallas because he had to. Maybe he legitimately didn't care if Dallas fell on its butt, especially if he was wrestling someone he barely knew. I never even knew Mike Awesome had worked Dallas before I saw this segment, and maybe Lawler really didn't want to work with him and figured the loss was worth the fun he'd have at his expense beforehand. Or, more likely, he figured that those kind of promos packed MSC every week and they'd do the same with no alterations for the Sportatorium.

 

Like I said, I'm not even sure if we're having the same conversation. Am I putting too much stock into what I'm seeing onscreen and not worrying enough about the business side of things, or are you worried too much about what goes on behind the scenes to take the stuff we see at face value? It seems like it's one of the two.

[Loss]

He may have learned, but as a 1990 heel, he never demonstrated that. I suspect there is some overthinking here. If Lawler beats someone who he has admitted is not any good, what has he really accomplished? How does that help him?

 

The purpose of a promo is to make the viewer want to see a match. A promo that does anything else is counterproductive. People generally want to see matches with doubtful outcomes and the best way to do that is to give the person no one expects to win some type of advantage heading into the match and put over their credentials.

 

It's the same reason heels didn't call Dusty fat or Hogan bald, or make fun of Austin's kneebraces. It's the reason Bill Watts would fire great workers who tried to show JYD up in the ring. The heel should divert attention from glaring weaknesses instead of putting even more focus on them. That applies to both matches and promos.

 

Wrestling is a work. It's best when we think pretty much everyone involved is great at it, with some just being greater than others.

[garretta]

Okay, now I get it.

 

Yeah, by that standard, calling guys like Mike Awesome and Kerry Von Erich stupid muscleheaded steroid freaks and Jeff Jarrett a sexual predator who uses wrestling to get girls were horrible decisions on Lawler's part. But like I said, I don't think he cared much about any towns outside the Memphis loop, where the fans would forgive him anything, even as a heel, and pack the arenas simply because he was local legend Jerry Lawler. Those fans thought he was gold no matter what, as we've seen in the segments where he "insults" them and they practically beg for more.

 

Thanks for the clarification, Charles.

[drew wardlaw]

The line between a bullying delusional heel and burial is a tough one for me to distinguish. I can see how insulting something about a person that is generally seen a positive attribute (muscles in this case) could be effective for a heel to do, since it shows him to be jealous and petty. But at the same time, attacking what might be the face's only positive attribute and calling them stupid can be counterproductive. I don't know, after seeing the Mike Awesome promo after this it really makes Awesome look bad.

[GSR]

Lawler wonders where the USWA officials, these jerks like Max Andrews, find these clowns that they keep running in here to try and take his USWA title like this Mike Awesome. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now! He wants to give us a history lesson and says that there used to be these huge, muscular, powerful creatures called dinosaurs, but for all their great size they only had a brain the size of a hen’s egg. Sure they were the strongest and biggest thing that roamed the earth, but they weren’t strong enough to keep themselves from becoming extinct. Mike Awesome might be big and powerful with muscles sticking out all over that deformed looking body, and while that may impress these idiots in Dallas, he knows him for what he really is, an idiot and a halfwit! Mind readers only charge him half price! He’s going to make an example out of Mike Awesome, and brains will win out over brawn any day of the week and twice on Sunday! He’s going to expose him for the imbecile he is and he’s a halfwit if he thinks he’s in the same category as ‘The King of Wrestling’.

[dawho5]

I am starting to agree with JvK and others on Lawler burying his opponents. It's hard to argue that he's not burying Awesome here and Awesome does little to help himself.