In an interview with Crave Online, Jerry Lawler spoke about the crazy storylines in Memphis and why he insulted ECW on commentary so much. Here are highlights:
On the crazy storylines in Memphis: “That was one of the reasons, why in the early 90s when ECW came along and sort of invaded the WWE, and I made the comment that ECW stood for Extremely Crappy Wrestling. To me, it was like these guys just came along and watched all of our old Memphis tapes and went out and did what we did and then called it extreme. We were doing extreme wrestling matches in the Memphis territory before most of these guys were even born — things like the Terry Funk empty arena match or the concession stand battle in Tupelo, Mississippi. I got ran over in the parking lot by Eddie Gilbert, but back in that day, you were under the pressure of having to put on a live event and not only a live television show every Saturday morning but had to follow it up with a live event every single Monday night in Memphis so there was a lot of pressure to try and come up with something bigger and better every single week.”
On his favorite wrestler to work with: “That’s really tough to say. The cool thing about my career is that I started in 1971 and that was at a time when I was just getting started. A lot of the huge names that went back as far as the 40s, 50s, and 60s were just kind of winding up their careers. Guys like Lou Thesz, Pat O’Connor, Dick the Bruiser, the original Sheik, BoBo Brazil…all of these guys I got to wrestle. I had a tag team match against Lou Thesz and Pat O’Connor with the world heavyweight champion ex-boxer as the special referee. I got to wrestle everybody from those names all the way up through Terry Funk, Dory Funk, Harley Race, and all of the NWA champions, Ric Flair, and then moving on up to guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, and then John Cena, Randy Orton, CM Punk, and all these guys until I had a match the night before he started in NXT, I wrestled Kevin Owens in a piledriver match up in New York in a 20 minute long match and the next day he started in NXT. I’ve ran the gamut in those 40 years in wrestling against about every big name in the business, so it’s real difficult to pick out any one. But I got to say up at the top of the list would have to be Terry Funk. He and I had some wild battles and I was such a fan of Terry Funk. I was a fan of his work in the ring and especially his promos. My gosh, I could sit and listen to Terry Funk talk bad about me all day long. He was great. For Terry Funk to call you an “egg-sucking dog” is just something you never forget.”
On his advice to new wrestlers: “That’s one of the things I’ve had over the years. A lot of people come to me and ask for advice and I always tell them man, it’s so hard for me to try and tell you what will work for you or what you should do because everybody is not only different. Everybody got into the business in a different way and all of their circumstances are so different so it’s hard to give that umbrella type advice. I always just say, and this is the main thing and I think it’s really worked for me, I don’t know if it works for everyone else but I always just say “Don’t take yourself too serious.” Don’t take anything you do in this business too serious. It’s not life or death. It’s entertainment. Have fun with it. If you do like I’ve done to do something for a living that you have fun at, you’ll feel like in the end you never had to work a day in your life.”
