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Jerry Lawler


goodhelmet

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Yea with all the hype lately this is going to be a must buy for me. I think i'm holding off on anything else right now because i want to dive into that as soon as i get it. If it's going to be a while still i might get another one to hold me over.

You can safely buy another set. MX will be out before this one. Look for this in late spring, early summer.

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OK, I am only going to rate matches I have seen and can clearly remember. I still need to watch some stuff from the AWA set and the yearbooks. When I make the final set, I may go mad and review the entire thing just because I can watch 100 hours of Lawler and never go wrong.

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (Loser Leaves Town) (6/6/83)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (Loser Leaves Town) (12/30/85)

 

Jerry Lawler & Dutch Mantel vs. Bill Dundee & Buddy Landel (3/10/86)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantel (3/22/82)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantel (3/29/82)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (3/23/81)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (Loser Leaves Town) (7/24/86)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Tommy Rich (5/25/87)

 

Jerry Lawler & Jeff Jarrett vs. The Moondogs (1/25/92)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Randy Savage (Loser Leaves Town (6/3/85)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich (12/13/88)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Nick Bockwinkel (11/8/82)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Austin Idol (4/27/87)

 

Jerry Lawler & Randy Savage vs. King Kong Bundy & Rick Rude (9/17/84)

 

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Tommy Rich (10/2/88)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Eric Embry (Cage Match) (9/8/89)

 

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich (Cage Match) (11/25/88)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Bam Bam Bigelow (Texas Death Match) (9/8/86) Jerry Lawler & Randy Savage vs. King Kong Bundy & Rick Rude (9/10/84)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Kerry Von Erich (9/17/88)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Curt Hennig (5/9/88)

 

Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantel (3/27/82)

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How many angles/interviews do you expect the Lawler set to have? Obviously you can't include buildup for every match, but for some of the bigger one like the LLT matches with Dundee, it seems like there needs to be at least SOME buildup included.

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I think that Loss made the point on the Podcast that a guy like Flair made you care about Flair. Lawler made you care about the feud, his opponent and what he was going to do to his opponent. You wanted to see the payoff and usually there was a payoff to a feud. In some rare cases, there may not be a payoff in the traditional sense but the end of one feud occurred when Lawler started another feud.

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They ran the same building every Monday night. I don't care how much you care about a wrestler, you can't draw a crowd week after week that way unless people care about the feud. I think it was the hardest gig in wrestling.

 

Granted, you wonder how much the lack of pro sports teams helped.

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I think it helped that there were no major sports teams but I don't think it is the only reason. When Dallas was hot, they had 3 major sports teams. MSG sold out month after month in the 70s and early 80s and they were the sports capital of the world. I think the overall strong booking and Lawler's love affair with Memphis helped sustain it.

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I think it is a feather in Lawler's cap when we discussed this on the podcast. Besides Buddy Rose in Portland, who has been more important to a territory than Lawler? I know Loss said Flair was just as important to Mid Atlantic but I think of those NWA cities as a cluster (Greensboro, Charlotte, Richmond, etc.) and Dylan listed other guys he thought were just as well received in the promotion based on conversations he had.

 

For touring champ, what it does show is how awesome Flair could be all over the country/world. I think it would be harder physically to be touring champ but I think it is harder as a promoter to have to sell tickets to the same building week after week.

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I know Loss said Flair was just as important to Mid Atlantic

I never said that.

 

I conceded the category to Lawler, but said it should also be noted how important Flair was to Mid Atlantic, and used that as an opportunity to have Dylan talk about the territory switching from a focus on tag teams to singles stars, with Flair being one of the key guys, and the biggest star of them all over time.

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Jerry Lawler is a guy I definitely never appreciated as a fan, having been first introduced to him via the WWF at age 13 in 1993. I'm trying to re-educate myself about him via this board's suggestions and what I can find online. Here's my start (done more or less at random)

 

 

Jerry Lawler & Bill Dundee vs. Wayne Ferris & Phil Latham 6-15-79

 

 

We start joined way in progress with a bloodied Dundee just getting clobbered by Latham. I assume this is in the Tupelo sports arena, and Lord does the ring look small and the picture quality poor but that's no fault of the match. Lawler attacks to keep the fans hopeful. There's a nice little touch where Dundee tries to fight back but he is so completely bloodied and exhausted that his fists have NOTHING to them and Latham doesn't sell them very much at all. Double clothesline gets 2 but then Dundee gets fired up and makes his own comeback, hammering both blond bombers until Lawler comes in to help out. Dundee hits a something (sort of a cross between a cross bodyblock and flying headlock takedown to pin Ferris but the ref is distracted by Lawler hammering Latham outside the ring as I say to heck with PBP and just give general impressions. Finish to the match is Latham elbowing Dundee off a Ferris sunset flip for the bombers to steal the pin and at this point I'm wondering why I'm watching this. But THEN the post match brawl begins. Interesting bit where the blonds keep clobbering Lawler but a fired up Dundee ain't selling nothing for nobody. Finally the faces clear the ring and Lance wishes us a goodnight but then the footage restarts (hard to see here).

 

The brawl is a crazy bloody mess but the picture quality makes it hard to tell what's being used (I swear at one point Lawler ducks an empy popcorn tub being thrown at him) The faces beat the heels down and leave with the belt. SO the heels take their frustrations out on Jerry Jarrett (I've got to assume wrestlers attacking promoters was unknown here) and then the faces return I can see why this was influential but it wasn't actually all that great and Dundee definitely had a lot more to do than Lawler here. Not the most promising start.

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I know Loss said Flair was just as important to Mid Atlantic

I never said that.

 

I conceded the category to Lawler, but said it should also be noted how important Flair was to Mid Atlantic, and used that as an opportunity to have Dylan talk about the territory switching from a focus on tag teams to singles stars, with Flair being one of the key guys, and the biggest star of them all over time.

 

Fair enough!

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I think it is a feather in Lawler's cap when we discussed this on the podcast. Besides Buddy Rose in Portland, who has been more important to a territory than Lawler? I know Loss said Flair was just as important to Mid Atlantic but I think of those NWA cities as a cluster (Greensboro, Charlotte, Richmond, etc.) and Dylan listed other guys he thought were just as well received in the promotion based on conversations he had.

 

For touring champ, what it does show is how awesome Flair could be all over the country/world. I think it would be harder physically to be touring champ but I think it is harder as a promoter to have to sell tickets to the same building week after week.

I think it's harder to sell tickets in the same place week-to-week up to a point. But being presented as the literal king of a territory has it's obvious benefits. That's not to say what Lawler did was easy - far, far, far, far from it. But in a sense I think Buddy had it harder (he had no Dundee or Lance Russell) and I do think Flair had a lot of value to MACW, in large part because he was able to step in when Johnny Valentine's career ended.

 

The real guy I want to know more about from MACW is Jardine.

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