Jerry "The King" Lawler

[Tetsujin]

Top 30 lock for me just by peak alone. If his post-80s stuff holds up, I can see myself putting him in my top 10, honestly. Lawler is what Hogan was but hundred times better, and he's among the best ever in a lot of categories (babyfaces, sellers, brawlers, heels, charisma, coming back...).

[elliott]

I don't think Lawler's post 80s stuff reaches the heights of Terry Funk's. But there's quite a lot of really good-great stuff. Your mileage may vary on how much you like it and how much it adds to his case, but its certainly not a negative. Lawler is one of those candidates that just obliterates the peak/longevity question and the interviews/extracurricular stuff question. At his best from say 1981-87, Lawler is as great as anyone ever. He was great before that and very good-great for basically forever after that. If you're a "WHAT ABOUT PROMOS AND SKITS?" person, Lawler belongs in your top tier for that alone too. 

[Tetsujin]

For these kind of projects I'm more of a ringwork guy, don't care about mic stuff, but obviously how you display your gimmick and charisma while wrestling are huge parts of how much I enjoy watching you wrestle, and the ellte mic guys usually do that with ease. Lawler is one of those.

[strobogo]

The real interesting thing about King to me, promo wise, is how completely different his face and heel promos were. Most of the big names when you think of top promo guys generally kept the same energy as heels or faces (thinking of the Hogans, Flairs, Savages, Pipers, Austins, Rocks), but Lawler's heel and face promos are so far apart in both energy and tone that it might as well be two different guys. The only others I can think of that can really flip the switch so drastically are Foley and Terry Funk, who depending on if they were heel or face could be either a shrieking insane person or kindly friendly grandpa type who wouldn't hurt a fly. 

 

King's heel promos were ultimate cheap heat corny as hell almost whiny shitbag, but his face promos were just normal guy casually talking like a regular human.

[KB8]

Lawler was my number 4 in 2016 and he'll be around the top 5 again in 2026. "A minimalist's dream," the history books would write. I get where people are coming from when they say they want more STUFF, and I honestly don't say that be snide or sarcastic or whatever. He IS a minimalist and some people prefer the maximalist. He's maybe the best puncher ever (I say maybe because I've watched a bunch of Sangre Chicana lately) and I'm completely fine with that being his primary offensive move, but I know some people would prefer a bit more wrestling. I actually think he's a perfectly fine mat wrestler and it's not like he didn't do actual wrestling moves, but...it is what it is. I love what he does and how he does it and he has a boatload of fucking awesome matches doing it (I could easily have rattled off 50 down below), so that'll get you pretty high on my list. One of the all-time great babyfaces with some of the most immaculate timing you could want, a sneak under-the-radar great - and sometimes huge - bumper, stuuuupid longevity, etc. He's great in singles and great in tags, in the cage, in a barbed wire ring, pulling horse shit or working straight. I actually do, however, buy into the point about him maybe lacking that real proper streak of savage bastardry as a heel. I'm not saying it's a huge thing to me, because I could count on one hand the amount of wrestlers I want to see working as shifty conniving heel more than Lawler, but his peers like Funk and Hansen have those performances where they're rabid insane animals you'd buy trying to stab someone or strangle them with a bull rope. When their backs are against the wall, Bockwinkel, Rose and Flair all have that real vicious streak. With Lawler, I don't really remember seeing it very often (the hair match vs Dundee from '77 is a good example, though). Still, his run as a babyface is so good that it more or less offsets it, to the point where I'm not entirely sure I'll have any Americans above him (only one I had over him last time was Hansen). He might also be The King, if you will, of the match-angle amalgamation. 

 

JERRY LAWLER YOU SHOULD WATCH:

v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 8/22/77)

v Harley Race (Memphis, 12/10/77)

v Terry Funk (Memphis, 3/23/81)

v Terry Funk (Memphis, 4/6/81)

v Dutch Mantell (Memphis, 3/22/82)

v Dutch Mantell (Memphis, 3/29/82)

v Ric Flair (Memphis, 8/14/82)

v Nick Bockwinkel (Memphis, 11/8/82)

v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 6/6/83)

w/Randy Savage v King Kong Bundy & Rick Rude (Memphis, 9/17/84)

v Randy Savage (Memphis, 6/3/85)

v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 12/30/85)

w/Dutch Mantell v Bill Dundee & Buddy Landel (Memphis, 3/10/86)

v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 7/14/86)

v Bam Bam Bigelow (Memphis, 9/7/86)

w/Bam Bam Bigelow v Austin Idol & Tommy Rich (Memphis, 3/23/87) 

v Austin Idol (Memphis, 4/27/87)

w/Bill Dundee v Original Midnight Express (AWA, 10/30/87)

v Curt Hennig (Memphis, 5/9/88)

v Tommy Rich (SCW, 10/2/88)

v Eric Embry (UWSA, 9/8/89)

v The Snowman (USWA, 6/2/90)

v Bret Hart (WWF Summerslam, 8/30/93)

v Terry Funk (MLW, 8/22/03)

v The Miz (WWE Elimination Chamber, 2/20/11)

[elliott]

Is anyone better against a limited opponent? 

[Makai Club #1]

Love watching Lawler. He has no real "moves" but he can make a real compelling match doing very little. Lawler made excellent uses of his punches - a wide variety of the kind - and great selling to connect to the audience, while still keeping true to his opponents style. Within a week, he has two great matches with Terry and Dory Funk Jr who have totally different styles while doing the same thing, and I wouldn't call the matches the same at all. It's hard to be limited, for a lack of a better word, and have many different types of matches that feel different. 

[DylanZero]

As a native Memphian I'm required by law to vote him in the top 10 but the praise for his work and promos are worth it. He really was the man in the ring.

[GOTNW]

On 3/31/2016 at 11:31 PM, GOTNW said:

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.

Well, that was a lot of gibberish without a clear point.

It seems at though I ended up ranking Lawler #44, which is higher than I remembered. I decided to go back and watch some Memphis because:

a) as the quoted post testifies, it is a style I enjoyed and found easy to watch even at a time where I would spit before uttering the phrase "80s US wrestling"

b) I've become a boomer and my stylistic preferences have moved even more towards the kind of minimalistic wrestling you can see there. Also  some things just suddenly make sense. When I was 16 it was all about championships and tournaments and whatnot, hair vs hair matches just seemed like a dumb medieval relic. Now that my friends are balding I'm like "yeah forget about titles it's all about hair vs hair you're already fighting the inevitable you really don't want to get beat up in the process too". 

So, now I'm old and pretty much the target audience for this stuff. Lawler certainly has the output to be considered a greatest of all time candidate. Has he found his way into the depth of my heart and is now challenging for a top 10-15 placement?

 

That's gonna be a no. I like the matches a bit more now (and I already loved them dearly), but I find it I largely feel similar to how I did 8-9 years ago. For all the talk about offense, I think the "invisible" work is really where Lawler shines. He really knew how to sell and position himself while eating a beatdown, it's really the kind of stuff which should be shown in wrestling school. And of course he is a legendary puncher, his jabs, corner punches and big haymaker swings all look amazing. However, when it comes to throwing smaller and shorter punches, I don't think he is that great. In fact, I came away thinking Dundee and Mantell were actually better punchers than him after watching their encounters.

In fact, while I currently lack the immediate reference materials to fully flesh out a concise case for it, my gut instinct tells me I might prefer Dundee and Mantell as workers in general. It might not be the easiest case to make with how Lawler-centric Memphis is as a territory, but looking at their input, it just seems like they work with a bit more snap and manage to project themselves more, and I am pretty confident it has nothing to do with them being heels when opposing him. Luckily my main criteria is "vibes" so if the footage convinces me of it he can have 20x more greatness on his resume I won't budge.

Also, I mention this reluctantly because I don't think it's a big deal and I ignore it most of the time and just accept it as part of the style, but the "straps coming down" and the cartoony comeback I am not a big fan, especially in the context of "greatest wrestling of all time" discussion, this means I am comparing it to Antonio Inoki firing up, Lou Thesz losing his temper, Sangre Chicana comebacks with burst of energy exploding in counter straights, Misawa's extended comeback, Santo cleaning house and so on. To me it looks out of place, but different strokes for different folks.

Lawler is probably going to move up on my list, but top 20 is probably out of reach. When I think of all time great brawling, in the sense of classical prowres brawling which combines these big mesmerizing personalities and worked punching, I think of wrestlers like Sangre Chicana, Perro Aguayo, Terry Funk, Pirata Morgan and Johnny Valentine, and for me he falls a bit short in direct comparisons. I may end up ranking Lawler over at least 1 or 2 of the mentioned but when I factor in all other styles of prowres I like, there's just too much competition.