Jerry "The King" Lawler

[GOTNW]

I kind of had a last minute revelation with Lawler. I appreciated him more than I loved him which made the ranking difficult, and there were 8 matches of his I though were truly high end (3 vs Dundee, 3 vs Dutch, 2 vs Funk). I'd already finished my ballot and felt releaved, and decided to watch some Memphis because I find it an easy style to watch. And as I was going through the C+A Segunda Caida stuff and I kept watching and I kept watching and he'd start busting out lucha spots in a random studio tag match (seriously he did like a headscissors/armdrag spot what the hell) and was just super fun in everything I watched and then I watched a great match vs. Dundee from 1977 (well what was posted of it on dailymotion) and then there was a great match vs. Jerry Jarrett and then a great one vs. Jackie Fargo and his range and longevity really started sinking in and I edited my list twice to improve his ranking but at the end of the day after thinking about it hard but, not really long, I just accepted what I'd known all along, that I do strongly prefer lucha over Memphis and my rankings should reflect that. I'm not big on his heel WWF stuff, Schneider hyped the Goldust match as a lost great brawl but I didn't find it nearly as memorable as even Vader-Kane matches. I'm not sure what I'd think of his 2000s stuff if I were to further explor it and revisit it. I loved the Miz feud in real time, and he had shockingly good matches vs. Tazz, but then I remember his match vs. Steen a few years ago that got some praise that I found terrible and the Funk match from like last year where I gave up on trying to watch it like two minutes in.

[Matt D]

Lawler is going to have a tough road this time around, I think. At least that's the impression I get from listening to Steven for 5 hours.

I did see this the other day and thought it was worth watching though. There are some problematic cultural elements to it, maybe, but as a match with a 70+ year old in it, it was a really strong performance.

Lawler has had some new matches show up, including part of a new Bockwinkel one and a rare Dundee one, and he's done a lot of indy work, which tends to be a lot of smoke and mirrors. I'd say that this match is an outlier from that, actually.

[Boss Rock]

Although the 80's U.S. territory style has never been my favorite, Lawler definitely stands out. Chris Hero started a podcast recently and said rather than "less is more", the phrase should be "get more out of less". And Lawler was terrific at that. The $10,000 challenge against King Kong Bundy stands out in particular. It's such a simple match structure and yet it's super fun and captivating.

[Phil Schneider]

Why would Lawler have a tough time? Honestly the crossfitting of pro-wrestling over the last 5 years makes me appreciate Lawler more not less.

[Kadaveri]

5 minutes ago, Phil Schneider said:

Why would Lawler have a tough time? Honestly the crossfitting of pro-wrestling over the last 5 years makes me appreciate Lawler more not less.

This doesn't personally affect me much and I don't want to derail the thread so just to answer... The increasing public awareness of Lawler's "legal troubles" puts some people off enjoying his matches. It's like a smaller scale Benoit problem.

[strobogo]

I was watching the BSS with him and was pretty amazed at how lucky he's been in his career. Got booked originally because he happened to have a radio show and could promote shows, just straight up stole everything he liked from other guys STILL IN THE TERRITORY at the time and didn't get his shit stomped in, the king moniker happened once from a fan and just kind of stuck, the actual cape and crown thing was borrowed and the guy died on the plane right back so Lawler kept wearing it, Kaufman went to Memphis because Vince Sr. didn't want him doing an angle in his company, gets brought into to the WWF because of Vince bringing in Jerry Jarrett to maybe kind of sort of possibly run things, and then gets the Raw commentary spot because Savage left for WCW (although his timing is off in the story he tells of it), and so on.

 

Personally I hated his entire WWE run on commentary, in the ring, in talking segments and it wasn't until the Memphis sets got out that I was able to see oh actually King was pretty awesome. Now I'm wrapping back around to thinking "fuck this guy" and at this stage I'm unsure if it is because of his personal views, his WWE career still tainting my view of him, that he's still a creep and corny as fuck when he's on WWE programming, or what. I can't imagine there are going to be a bunch of hidden gems that weren't on the Memphis sets that are going to pop up in the next few years.

[Childs]

Why would he need hidden gems though? I could see some people refusing to vote for him because of out-of-ring stuff and some younger voters choosing not to engage, but I see no reason to reconsider his in-ring legacy. He was the best local ace ever.

[strobogo]

I meant I don't think there's anything out there that I haven't seen that might change my opinion either direction

[Matt D]

15 minutes ago, Childs said:

Why would he need hidden gems though? I could see some people refusing to vote for him because of out-of-ring stuff and some younger voters choosing not to engage, but I see no reason to reconsider his in-ring legacy. He was the best local ace ever.

Watch that match I posted. I want a second opinion on his 71 year old performance.

[Grimmas]

As discussed on the podcast, Lawler will be my biggest dropper from 2016 and it has nothing to do with his in ring work.

[Phil Schneider]

I thought the entire point of this was ringwork

[Grimmas]

2 minutes ago, Phil Schneider said:

I thought the entire point of this was ringwork

Yes...

However it's hard to separate the art from being a shitty person. I am not voting Benoit, for example. Probably not the thread for it, but separating the art from the person is a topic and I have a hard struggle with it.

[Phil Schneider]

I think it would be hard to make a list of 100 wrestlers who aren’t shitty people. It’s wrestling. A list of wrestling’s greatest pals would be pretty uninteresting and pointless

[Microstatistics]

I think if people find it difficult to separate the art from the person, that's perfectly ok but I implore them to be consistent with it. In 2016 people seemed to selectively apply personal criticisms against wrestlers they did not like (e.g., Bruiser Brody or 90s Shawn Michaels) while conveniently disregarding personal faults of workers they enjoyed (e.g., Jerry Lawler himself) 

[Jmare007]

I agree that the "personal history" playing a part (or not) in how people rank wrestlers should be a entire different thread because I have no doubt there's gonna be a good number of participants like Grimmas that feel that way about a number of wrestlers.

I'm not on that group at all, I tend to side with Phil on this one. To be honest, this business has been too fucked up for far too long to the point that I kinda expect almost everyone that works to have some "problematic" history in some form of fashion. But I understand that not everyone feels that way and that separating the art from the artist is not something everyone can do.

 

In regards to Lawler, I think he might fall on my list because I'm not sure I'll be able to revisit him and "recency" bias might knocl him down a peg. Same might happen with a lot of territory dudes tbh.

[Shrike02]

For a project like this judging wrestlers ... yes, I'm with Phil. There are always exceptions, but try to be consistent. Growing up my favourite workers were Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, etc. I can for obvious reasons significantly lower my ranking of the latter - maybe he'll fall off my top 100 - but if I'm being consistent should I also lower my ranking of Hart because I read his biography and discovered he was a serial adulterer? Where does one draw the line?

[Matt D]

8 hours ago, Microstatistics said:

(e.g., Bruiser Brody or 90s Shawn Michaels)

Sort of a specifically weird call out here as the slight against them is that their personality issues affected their ring work/matches, which isn't the issue with Lawler, unless you want to hold some late 90s Memphis stuff with Stacy against him (and no one does). Now, if you want to look at the flip side, Brody's probably ok, but the Rockers use of roofies is probably just as disqualifying as anything Lawler's done. It's sort of a race to the bottom.

That said, I do understand if someone has a hard time placing ANY candidate because they're not comfortable watching their matches for any reason. That's a slightly different issue and could potentially be a very difficult one. I think it's less so with a candidate that ranked extremely highly on someone's list like in the case of having Lawler at #4, because if you're going to rank him that high in the first place, you probably understand him well enough you don't need to revisit much.

 

[cubbymark]

I kind of agree with Phil as it pertains to Lawler. It’s because the Benoit stuff happened that caused me to appreciate Lawler’s style of doing more with less.

Perfect example would be the match Matt D posted. There’s tons of stalling, but even in his 70s, Lawler’s punches look great and the heel bumped big for each and every one.

[strobogo]

One draws the line where they draw the line. Some dudes you can easily overlook maybe fairly major negatives, while others can have lesser offensives that you just can't ignore. I don't know how you can turn that into an objective thing. 

[WingedEagle]

Someone who never clicked with me the way he did with others.  I like some of the high points from Memphis but never found any of them an all-timer.  Will struggle to make my list again.

[strobogo]

5 hours ago, Cien Caras said:

Just accept that they’re all scum, yes even your favorites too even if you don’t know about it yet.

Hopefully with that out of the way the discussion can focus on the wrestling.

Lawler is a number one contender for me, it’s between him and a few luchadors for the top spot.

I think circles like this/DVDVR/etc have leaned on that or even weirdly kind of taken pride in oh well they're all scum bags who cares for too long. Maybe we shouldn't overlook people being complete garbage humans because we like their play fights, idk.

[Microstatistics]

A minimalist's wet dream and the ultimate "less is more" wrestler. Great punches and fire and a dependable ace. One of the best American wrestlers of the 80s, with performances vs. Funk and Dundee being the standouts.

I don't find him to be particularly versatile and his approach is sort of limited so the number of truly great Lawler matches is scant, IMO. Still, the ability to pull off decent matches in multiple settings for nearly 50 years is no easy feat.

A lock but probably for the bottom half.

[elliott]

I ranked Lawler #6 in 2016 and I feel great about that. I could see him challenging for my #2. He's the best US based wrestler ever. 

[MichaelZ]

Lawler's matches simultaneously contain touches that reveal forethought but still always feel natural and spontaneous. They are almost always pretty good and fun to watch at worst, and he has classics against a wide range of opponents, many of whom end up performing way over their heads. The fact that he's putting on passable matches even now is icing on the cake; a top-flight candidate and number 1 contender for sure.

[Jmare007]

I had Lawler #6, mainly for his 80's and whatever 70's there was out there. I did watch some 90's work but I wasn't able to do a real deep dive. I wonder if that's gonna add to his case for me or take him down a peg this time around.