Crime in Sports - #285 - A Royal Mess - The Regalness of Jerry "The King" Lawler

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

This week, we check out a legend, in his sport! He's been a fixture of the wrestling business for 50 years. He's well known, and a bit infamous, as well, for things that aren't exactly right. He has never had a drink of alcohol, or coffee, but has been indicted for sodomy of an underage girl. So, he's a bit of an enigma. He also was the owner & anchor of a wrestling territory, for decades, one of the main voices of the WWE, and an enthusiastic touch football player, twice a mayoral candidate, and has a seemingly very odd relationship with his current fiancé. There's a lot here to unpack!! Become the King of your city, be accused of unspeakable things, by very young girls, and tell your fiancé to kill herself with Jerry "The King" Lawler!! Check us out, every Tuesday! !We will continue to bring you the biggest idiots in sports history!!  Hosted by James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman  Donate at... patreon.com/crimeinsports or with paypal.com using our email: [e-mail]  Get all the CIS & STM merch at crimeinsports.threadless.com  Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things CIS & STM!!  Contact us on... twitter.com/crimeinsports [e-mail] facebook.com/Crimeinsports instagram.com/smalltownmurder See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. The Queen of the Courtroom is back. How did I know that? i have crystal ball in my head new cases leave her a long so uh this is not a so this is a period classic judy it's streaming you can say anything it's an all-new season judy justice only on freebie Hello and welcome to Crime and Sports! Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed.

My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us again on another crazy edition of Crime and Sports. This is one of our most requested episodes we're going to do for you this week. We're going to start the new year off right, and we are going to do this. We're not due to a contract that we're signing very soon. We're not going to be able to take any more weeks off of Crime and Sports. We're going to have to have it every single week, and we're going to kick this off with, you know, we take a holiday off here and there.

We take about four quarterly sabbatical from Crime and Sports about every every three months or so we take an episode off just to recharge the batteries but we uh not gonna happen anymore so here we go this is we're gonna start fast on the fast track wild episode we're gonna do jerry the king waller this week all right everybody's heard of jerry the king waller wrestling great yeah and he's one of those guys he was on he's been a wwe commentator for 25 years now so he's been on tv every week everybody knows who he is he's one of those guys you've heard his voice move of his part uh being one of the first to jump into the mainstream shit with the with the uh i don't know what he called that the war war, the ongoing saga between him and Andy?

Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Andy Kaufman and him being on mainstream TV together. He was very, very lucky that Andy Kaufman was looking to do some wrestling stuff. But a lot of people told Andy Kaufman they weren't interested. That's the thing. A lot of promoters were like, we're not interested in that. But Memphis, we'll get into the whole thing. But first, before we get into that, just want to say, first of all, thank you for everything. Thank you for your reviews this week.

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piece and they're so funny and then for small town murders we are going to talk about again very very requested we are going to talk about the jean benet ramsey case do the jean benet ramsey and see what the you know because there's some really nasty stuff there we'll try to avoid but we're going to talk about what the hell and you know why have they not caught the killers here? What's the deal with the ransom letter? Yeah. You know, as mom, as weird as mom seemed, you know, the whole thing. We'll go over everything.

You know, is dad creepy? What's happening here with these people? We'll talk about it all. The little brother theory. Oh, boy. It's all going to be there. All the theories. JonBenet Ramsey this week.

So that's patreon.com slash crime and sports. Get that there. And every two weeks, you're going to get yourself a couple new episodes. Right. And you're going to get yourself a shout out when you do that as well. Jimmy will mispronounce your name at the end of the show while trying his best to say it correctly. Or you can just get the shout out on PayPal using our email address, crime and sports at gmail.com let's do it jimmy let's set a lot of show let's get right into this with jerry o'neill lawler o'neill is a middle

name o'neill is his middle name um is he irish jerry shaquille o'neill lawler here he is the king is his nickname and what everybody has known him as for about 45 years now it's been quite a long time with that king moniker uh date of birth november 29th 1949 so he might be older than you thought one of those guys where if you're a younger fan you might not and i mean younger as far as like our age and and below you might not 40 in 1989 yeah you might not know that before he was on wwe what a huge how exactly everybody knew he was a wrestling star but for how long he was a wrestling star was a long time so he um yeah he he's born in tennessee here but he ends up moving his family his dad works for the ford motor company really yeah he worked there

was a plant in memphis apparently back in the day oh he was like building them so yeah apparently he was on the assembly line or something like that or who knows what he did there but he worked at the plant so uh apparently his dad got transferred by ford when jerry was seven to lorraine ohio which that could be an assembly plant, too, because they have assembly plants there. It probably was because he still worked for Ford. He was just transferred. This explains a lot about Jerry, because inexplicably, he's always has Brown stuff on.

He loves the Cleveland Browns. And I was always like, what is your obsession with the he's Mr. Memphis, like for 50 years, all Memphis all the time. I remember he owned the memphis like yeah for 50 years all memphis all the time i remember he owned the memphis territory like it was all memphis and then he's just obsessed with the cleveland browns i'm like what is your deal and then i found out that he moved to ohio when he moved there he got really into football because i mean he moved there in the 50s when jim brown was a star and they were winning championships every year so yeah you'd get into him it's a big deal yeah you move there and the team is it's like moving to year. So, yeah, you'd get into them. It's a big deal.

Yeah, you move there and the team is, it's like moving to Chicago in 1995. You'd be a Bulls fan probably if you were a seven-year-old kid who moved there. You'd be like, this is great. We just win every year. Awesome. Fucking cool. Basketball's so much fun. Your team wins every year.

And then Michael Jordan ducks on people's heads. It's great. You would love that shit. Or a child growing up in New York fucking ever. Well, not in the 80s. You had to fight for it in the 80s when I was a kid. When I was a kid, the Mets fans made fun of us. Like it was the Mets. Let me repeat that.

The Mets fans made fun of us. That's how bad the 80s and 90s, early 90s were for the Yankees. Not good. Laughing stock time bad stuff yeah once jeter came around though it really really picked up some steam for you 95 we made the playoffs which was the first time i ever remembered that happening because i was a baby the last time it happened and then my whole childhood they never made the playoffs forever and then they were good after that. But I put my goddamn time in. We did have the Giants winning two Super Bowls when I was a kid. But they're terrible in between those always, which is the Giant way, as you know.

But, you know, listen, James. Sometimes you've got to put up with 10 years of stink when you've got a 100-year dynasty. I want to hear none of it. Well, I mean, it didn't help me babe ruth didn't do anything for me in 1986 when i wanted the yankees to win and they sucked that did nothing for me it was like shit i want to see you know something good the giants are the most frustrating team in sports to root for in any sport i might imagine because they go 3 and 11 3 and 11 4 and 12 3 and 11 9 and 7 wild card and win the super bowl 3 and 3 and fucking 13 i'm sorry 3 and 13 not 3 and 11 i meant to say fucking

5 and 11 but i know you know uh how many games are in it but you know what i'm saying like that's what they do and then like they do that for a few more then win a super bowl and then suck for five more years they're maddening, that team. You're preaching to the choir, son. Yeah, they're maddening. But Denver runs it like consecutive three solid great years, and then they are just a shit-ass team. But that's the cycle of the game. That's how it should go.

Everyone but the Patriots that does, that works with. And anyone Andy Reid is coaching. They always make the playoffs. They always make the playoffs, too, because he he does nothing but that has nothing to do with terrible dad yeah all of his kids are pieces of shit he might have some kids we don't know about who aren't but any of the ones released is an awful person into the world has done bad things so uh jerry from 7 to 15 years old he lives in amherst ohio and that is near cleveland the plant his dad worked in was the lorraine ohio assembly plant there you go so there you go if you have a

car from uh from there from that era maybe his dad built it so it's possible apparently he was introduced to wrestling by his father here. His father liked watching Memphis wrestling on TV when he was little, and he would watch it as well. He even took Jerry to some of the matches back then. We're talking in the 50s. This is when wrestling was big in the 50s. It was huge in the 50s because wrestling was really like the first sport to be huge on television. It was enormous.

Every Saturday night, the Dumont Network, that was like everyone in the country watched the wrestling matches. People didn't know it was fake yet. You know what I mean? And in the 50s, were there gimmicks and shit or was it just everybody looks the same? Well, no, no. See, that's the thing. That's what they started in the 50s. Once television came into it, they were like, huh, we got to, you know, we got to have some personality.

This is it's television. I mean, other channels, there's people there's literally like dancing girls on, you know, doing doing shows. You watch the Rockettes on something like, you know, we need some action going on. So that's when Gorgeous George came around. So that's when Gorgeous George came around. Gorgeous George was the first really giant wrestling character that got everyone in the country knew about him. They say that Gorgeous George was responsible for as many television set purchases as Milton Berle was. Literally. People wanted to see him get beat up, period. Because he would come and act effeminate people are like beat that queer up oh

my god they were so angry at the fact that he existed that they wanted to buy a television to watch him get punched that's how angry they were at any effeminate qualities back then that's hilarious and uh if you don't know gorgeous george people like james brown and mu and Muhammad Ali both say that gorgeous George was like their inspiration for how they are on stage like that's that's what they started seeing is like being a showman yeah Muhammad Ali says it for years years and years it's all I'm gorgeous George is my idol that was the guy I wanted to be that's why he started talking shit he does wrestling promos right right you know no one else figured that out but um and it's the the it's not necessarily a lack of humility or or being humble at all it's just really uh a braggadocious

uh person persona i guess just really being proud of yourself it's also knowing that if people want to see you get punched they buy tickets yeah period he figured that out that's i mean that's uh james brown ran with Brown ran with the show business. Yeah. Muhammad Ali called himself the greatest. You know what I mean? Yeah. Of all time.

It's just the to show some charisma. And that was, you know, before that, the guys were pretty standard. And then he comes along and he's very flamboyant in terms of just not in terms of his sexuality, in terms of his like just presentation. just not in terms of his sexuality, in terms of his like just presentation. And, you know, people who saw through it and knew what he was doing were impressed by it. So it makes sense. So anyway, he'd go to the matches and became, you know, kind of into wrestling a little bit there. But he wasn't like didn't want to be a wrestler from the time he was five or any of that stuff.

He was just aware of it. He really, though, got into all the cleveland sports he's very much into the indians browns and cavaliers so he's had a rough half a century or so oh shit it's been tough there for him i bet um like even later on in the day like when wwe would be in cleveland he always wears like a browns or an ind Indians Jersey out there to, uh, I don't know, whatever.

So he went to Treadwell high school in Memphis. Once they moved back there, uh, named after Bronco kicker, David Treadwell, obviously. Yeah. Nineties Broncos kicker,

David Treadwell. They knew, they knew about him. They knew he was going to be something. So Lawler was much more interested in art always than wrestling. Is that right? Lawler's a really good artist. Like he draws or paints?

Yeah, draws. And I don't know if he paints too, but he draws. And I mean, he's amazing. It's not just like, oh, that guy's a pretty good artist for a wrestler. Like, fuck, that's really good art. Like, he's just a really good artist. Draws him. Bret Hart, too, also a very good artist.

Is that right? Not as good as Lawler, but, you know, known as he would draw. I can't wait until we have brain studies and they can find out what the fuck is that. How can people do that? Because it is, that's a magic trick. That is unbelievable. It is. But you know what, too? I is that's a magic trick that is it is believable it is but you know what too i think that's anything though man people just have a proclivity for something yeah i think it is man because people can just sit down and play the piano

some people can just throw a baseball really hard some people yeah but how do you know how to write a joke something you know translate that through your fucking fingertips into a pen i don't get it well how do you in your head want to have a thought there and express it to a group full of people and have them all laugh at the same time i don't know that's a magic trick too well you know just do it there you go i think anyone who can draw it say the same thing you just it just comes out of my pen i just say words and then people laugh i can't wait till we can unlock and find out how that's done i want it i'm telling you oh i would love to know that i can't draw for shit no i can't at all so bad i'm terrible so jerry's mom hazel hazel waller she said quote when he was about three or four years old there was this program that came on in the mornings with this teacher teaching children to draw. He would get paper and lay down in front of the TV and draw. And that would be that's how he really got into art.

and got involved in what was called in the newspaper the, quote, Memphis underground hippie scene in the late 60s. I guess Memphis had hippies like everywhere else. So he smoked some weed? I guess. No. Jerry Lawler, to this day, says he's never, ever had a sip of alcohol. Okay. Or coffee.

What? But he drinks Coke like a fiend so it's not like he's not like against the caffeine but never ever had alcohol once and i will say this everybody listen to me right now listen to me i'm not saying if you were an alcoholic and you've realized booze is bad for you quit drinking good for you anyone who has never ever ever even tried a sip of alcohol i don't trust you i don't trust you period yeah i trust for something that is there's harmful to society i trust you as much as i trust people who never curse and we've heard how i feel about that if you've

listened to old shows i feel like that's the same boat no swearing alcohol both james can you imagine oh man keep your kids away from that boat i'm just gonna say that and say that but that's just weird to me like i said if i tried drinking once in high school. I didn't like it. Great. Fine. You didn't like it. Never had it touch your lips. Why? How? How? How have you done that? How have you done that?

It's just weird. Never on a toast at someone's wedding. Never. Just never said, yeah, I mean, that won't kill me if I take a sip of this. And to like. You never had. You never had a goddamn anniversary with a wife or a girlfriend and had a glass of wine with her? What the fuck?

Yeah, he tends to. Well, we'll find out. From the age of the women he likes, it's kind of irrelevant as far as that goes if they're in a public place anyway. So he said, though, he wasn't very political. He just like they were the only people who are like artsy. But he wasn't into the politics of the whole thing he's he's not into that sort of thing so he wanted to exchange paintbrushes with them yeah he wasn't like really a hippie it was just they were the only people who

would appreciate art you couldn't go show your art to the football team because they'd be like what are you fucking drawing you know they wouldn't they wouldn't be like that's really nice jerry cool yeah you know shades want to come to the keg party later oh wait like, that's really nice, Jerry. Cool. Yeah. You know? Shades. Want to come to the keg party later? Oh, wait. Never mind. That's right. In Tennessee, they would have fucking beat the shit out of him in the woods. Probably.

He's standing there going, no thanks. I don't want a cup. Here's my drawing. They would have killed him. Are you kidding me? In Tennessee in 1966? What are you fucking kidding me? Beer, no thanks.

Look what I painted. Yeah. No. Good Lord. Fuck, so he said that through friends he knew, he got a job at an underground newspaper called The Atlantis there, I guess, through friends he knew that went to Memphis State. Why is everything he loves underground?

An underground, because it's a hippie thing in the 60s so it's all like you know it's just a probably one of those shit yeah just subculture stuff there's a million all this stuff was huge then this was you know hunter thompson's wall posters when he was running for mayor he'd do these like wall poster magazines so he said i would do a little bit of everything what i I enjoyed doing was cartoons and caricatures, things I could do quickly and that fit in perfectly with what they wanted. Well, yeah, if that's what they want, they'll give you money and you can do it fast. That's what anybody wants out of their job. He said, I did a little bit of political cartooning, but I wasn't into that yet.

He said, I didn't know what I was doing. I would just draw what they wanted me to draw. He said, I remember doing some drawings of policemen with pig's faces. I asked, why draw what they wanted me to draw he said uh i remember doing some drawings of policemen with pigs faces i asked why do you guys want me to do that for he didn't know like that what the hip didn't know the hippies were like fighting with cops and stuff he's like i don't know why why is that face if you want i'll put any face yeah i don't know if i could draw it i just can't draw he the people said too he carried around like one of these like uh you know those old little joke books like the little you know thousand and one insults thousand and one funny insults and shit he carried one of those around

all the time he's one of those guys there's a lot of personality james no no no he doesn't that's the thing his personality is very much gleaned off of other she's like the moon he's just reflecting light it's all he is like i really feel like that with his whole career and his whole life it's a strange thing what the fuck happened he carries a but a lot of guys would carry that around back then really they'd want they'd want to be the quick-witted jokester guy but that's not their personality because they just don't have that you're either that guy or you're not so they would carry around a joke book there's tons of guys back then that used to carry around joke books yeah joke books so they'd be the guy with the jokes hey no here

comes bill he's coming in no bill's like bill's fucking hilarious he got any jokes for us today bill he's like actually i got a good one he's they want to be that guy that's embarrassing what p it is they want people to like them but then but what if somebody sees it oh he wasn't embarrassed by it he everyone knew he had it for him oh my god the fact that you memorized that stuff was as good as coming up with it on your own to these guys that's the problem they didn't they weren't going for originality they were going for here's a thing i heard and i remembered it pretty cool huh they're not club bookers jane no they're not going for well they are club bookers probably then because they're not going for originality they don't need you to be something that doesn't exist just be something yeah hey don't pressure the headliner too much can you

just go nice and easy so they have an easy time that That's a club booker. Be followable. Be followable. That's the way to go. So he said that he was, everybody said he was very funny, but who knows if that was part of his personality or his joke books. Because even something he gets in trouble with later. I feel so bad for him, Jay. You won't soon. Trust me. I know, but as a human being, he wants to be liked so bad.

It's obvious that he really, really wants to be liked. He really, really wants to be liked. And even later on, though, with these old jokes, he gets in trouble. There's a female wrestler named Nia Jax. She's thick. You know what I mean? She looks fucking sturdy and strong as fuck. And he said, like, if a truck hit her, it would hurt the truck or something.

I don't know what the hell he said. Something to the effect that she's a brick shithouse and whatever. So people were saying he was body shaming her. And he goes, it's just he was body shaming her and he goes, it's just an old Rodney Dangerfield joke. It's just like, well, stop using material from 1973.

That might help. And then maybe you won't get in trouble. Not that he should have been in trouble or I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that. Well, why use an old Rodney Dangerfield jokes without crediting Rodney Dangerfield? Say as Rodney Dangerfield once said there you go i'm more angry at his hackery than anything else so that's what it is

so uh oh fuck his friend said i think he was more interested in playing football than politics he like now when he says playing football he doesn't mean like professionally or like he means as a hobby. Jerry has an obsession with softball and touch football. He loves it. He plays in organized notebooks and joke books. He plays in organized leagues.

I'm talking forever. At one point, he's in a huge money feud making all this money and breaks his leg playing touch football and has to miss like eight months of wrestling because he has a broken fucking leg. Yeah, absolutely. Touch football. Touch football.

Yeah, he loves it. He plays in a league with uniforms and everything. It's crazy. He's got quotes about it later. Why do we have a uniform? We have uniforms and everything. It's really great. More major leagues sorry so uh 1968 comes along jerry is 18 19 his dad dies at that point oh no so yeah it's tough to lose your dad at that age and um he wasn't in high school sports or anything

like that so he was just doing the art thing and um now this is when he encounters wrestling when he comes across wrestling and art cross for him in a very advantageous way now there are three different stories much okay here's the problem with wrestling okay wrestling the initial story that it would always always put out would obviously be whatever serves PR the best. So that would be bullshit. So that's in the lexicon now. Everyone's thinking of that bullshit. That's the bullshit story.

So then when another story comes, it maybe mixes in with the original bullshit and forms a bullshit slurry. And then by the end, nobody knows what's true or what's false. And it's like, well, I heard this, but that was the bullshit story that came out for it. And nobody knows what the hell anybody's true background is. Right. It's really how it works. So there are three different stories. I'll tell them separately.

And I tell you which one I think is true. Number one, this is from an old newspaper that he was a wrestling fan. So this is like the bullshit kayfabe story we want to tell because the newspapers weren't in on it back in the day. So maybe they were, but they wouldn't write it like they were. So he says that he was a wrestling fan and drew cartoon type characters of some local wrestling guys in Memphis and that Jackie Fargo asked him to do some artwork for his nightclub that he owned. Jackie Fargo is like the most popular wrestler

in the history of Memphis. He's the only guy that comes close to Jerry Lawler's popularity in Memphis. Jackie Fargo was a fucking legend there. Poor bastard. I've heard of Jerry Lawler. Well, he's only in Memphis. That's why.

Jackie Fargo never went to announce for Vince McMahon for 25 years on national cable, unfortunately for him. So he probably had a job after he was done wrestling. Whereas Lawler has millions of dollars in the bank. It's a little different. So this says that at the time, Lawler took wrestling classes at Memphis State. Classes? Is there classes or is that a team? Joined the team, they mean?

I don't know what that, that's what I mean. I don't know what took wrestling classes at Memphis State means. I can't imagine. No, I'm not doing any of the prereqs or anything like just the wrestling class, please. I don't know if that's a thing. So he said that he asked Jackie Fargo for some help in getting started, but he didn't respond to him much. So Jerry says in this article, quote, I went to some rinky dink place to wrestle. It was the Avon Theater in West Memphis, Arkansas, and probably seated 40 or 50 people.

And he said that Jackie Fargo heard he was good there and then got him matches through the better promoter. The Avon Theater held 40 or 50 people. 40 or 50 people, I guess. Avon was doing great at that time. I guess not that great. Not in West Memphis, Arkansas. They didn't trust it. Restaurants hold more.

Most of them do. Most restaurants. McDonald's holds more. An Outback holds like 110 people. So that tells you what that is. It's half an Outback he went to wrestle in. So that's story number one. That sounds like a total bullshit newspaper.

You know, something that the fans would believe and sounds believable. And it's a humble beginning. Humble beginning. Number two, and I think this is the real one, okay, was that Jerry wanted to be a comic book artist. That was his dream. He liked, and when you see his drawings, too, he's really good at that sort of style. He's like a fucking 11-year-old. He drinks Coke.

He collects toys. He, you know, has a joke book. Booze is yucky. He's like Dennis the Menace. He's got like a slingshot in his back pocket. Right. He's got a slingshot and a yo-yo. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

He's like a, I don't know what the hell kind of weird. He's never grown up, which these are the, I don't know how to say this. know weird he's never grown up which these are the i don't know how to say this these are the when you see people like this exactly like this not with some form of uh fun still or you know i like a couple of because i like some weird childhood shit too but yeah all childhood interest is not good that's what i mean and it usually denotes a bit of a creepy yeah usually denotes a creepy personality under so through through all my therapy james because there was uh sexual abuse in my childhood and in my house uh i am convinced that those the people that perpetrate shit like that had something that happened to them in their childhood and therefore regressed to the childhood that they feel they were robbed of and they see themselves still as a child no they can

be 65 and just still see themselves as a child well yeah you get stalled in that that's the problem that their brain is just frozen at that age and they can't move past it and that's very possible because that's that's that's you possible. Because that's, you know, I don't want to get too much into psychology. I don't know that that's a fact. But through all my therapy, that's what I've taken from it. That's the psychological theory is a lot of that.

So I don't know if maybe that's, obviously we can't do that. We don't know what happened in 1958 to Jerry Lowe. You know, who knows? Who knows if somebody at the Ford plant had a couple too many beers and fucking got a little laundry with his fingers? I don't know. Tired of building Mustangs?

We have no clue what's going on. Tired of busting out the Corvairs and needed to do something else. Is that a Ford? Yeah, it's not a Ford. That's not a Ford. That's a Chevy. That's a sweet car. They were recalled because they exploded.

Yeah, that's the Ralph Nader car. Yeah, it's a bad car. That's the one he got to recall. So he liked drawing. I guess he would draw cartoon pictures of the wrestlers when he would go see them at Ellis Auditorium. He would do like, you know, sketches like a courtroom sketch artist, but do them of the wrestlers in action. So they were pretty cool, I guess, colorful and that sort of shit. So in high school, he sent some of these pictures to Lance Russell. Lance Russell is the longtime legendary announcer for Memphis wrestling. He's like the voice of Memphis wrestling. And people in Memphis, fucking older people, they go nuts for Lance Russell. They love him. So he's the host of the Saturday morning TV show, the announcer, all that shit. That Saturday morning TV show was the highest rated show they had in the whole city of anything.

Yeah, everybody watched it every Saturday morning. It was a courtroom artist. Essentially, would you like to make these pictures of the wrestlers while they're wrestling? You draw them up sketches, which was right up his alley. It's just what he wanted to do. Quick sketches that he liked of shit he liked so i guess at that point jackie fargo noticed the pictures and uh he called lawler up waller later set about getting a phone call from jackie fargo quote my head exploded jackie fargo was like elvis at the time especially for a wrestling fan hell yeah i would think only for a wrestling fan.

If he didn't like wrestling, he wouldn't know who the fuck he was. Who's this scraggly-looking lunatic jumping around like a maniac? And Elvis, and they're in Memphis. That's a nice little link. Yeah, that's what I mean. It's a big deal for a Memphisite to say that. Is that what it is, a Memphisonian, a Memphisite? I don't know. I don't know i don't

know memphophile memphophile let's hope not let's hope it's not a memphile memphile it doesn't sound good so uh in this story fargo hired lawler to create artwork for the inside of a steakhouse that he owned with country singer eddie. Do you know who that is? No. He's got to be old because this is 1971. Yeah, he doesn't play today. No, he's got to be dead by now, I'm sure. I'm sure he was a big deal back then.

Probably. I guess that gave, Lawler got a series of jobs doing artwork for different places. Other people saw it and said, hey, that picture's really cool. Where'd you get that? This kid drew it for me it for me well fuck that can he draw one for me so making like murals and stuff for their sure for their walls and he was doing that so somehow he got a job as a i guess eddie bond had a radio station a small radio station in memphis so he got a job as a dj on a radio station there you know young kid and then he would uh apparently i guess promoted wrestling on the show and uh eventually somehow that led to getting a shot at wrestling actually and getting trained awesome that's a genius move again he was

trained by jackie fargo but okay and that's. Back then, you couldn't just show up at the place and be like, I want to be a wrestler. They'd be like, go fuck yourself, number one. And if you really came back every day, they'd be like, okay, come on in, wrestle with that guy. And then they'd have somebody beat the living shit out of you and twist your arms behind your head for 10 minutes until you were broken. And then they'd be like, still want to be a wrestler? No, and they'd kick you out. That's what they did back then. It's like earning smoking cigarettes where they make you smoke a whole pack.

Yeah, you're going to smoke a whole carton. Thanks, now I'm addicted. Now, perfect. Now I can't stop. Thanks a lot. I don't want to smoke anymore, but I have to now. Before I just wanted to. Now I have to, and I don't't want to smoke anymore but i have to now before i just wanted to now i have to and i don't even want to thank you you've progressed my habit 25 years in a matter of a day

and a half fascinating way of teaching somebody a lesson i don't understand that that makes no sense to me you want to smoke i'm gonna make this part of your life forever yeah you want ice cream i'm gonna give you all the ice cream then you'll see how much you like ice cream okay sure do that with nothing else it's it's the craziest thing i've ever heard it's fucking wild well yeah yeah well i found a little what is this cocaine i found in here i'm gonna get you a kilo you sit in the closet we'll see how much you like cocaine then 45 minutes later there's knocking on the closet door. Hey, is there any more out there? Really like more.

I think we fucked up. Martha, I think we've made a mistake. The boy wants more. He wants more. The wait is over. So far, you're not losing. The only thing you're losing is my patience. Quickly, I see that.

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You can listen to WikiHole ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, yeah, so that's how he ended up doing it there. And apparently there was another. Here's story number three. He's working as a disc jockey, so skip all the other stuff. And that got the attention and his artistic ability of a local promoter. And then they made an agreement that Lawler would give free publicity on the radio show in exchange for being trained as a wrestler so this

is what i was saying is like back then you had to have a back door into the business you had to be like oh i played college football with a guy who's a wrestler so he would get you in because you're a big guy and he worked out together somebody from the gym or your dad was a wrestler or you know like jim cornett came around when he was eight and took pictures for fucking years for them until they ended up giving him a job as a manager eventually like that's how a lot of comedy too yeah that's exactly how comedy is wrestling and comedy are insanely similar in that in that regard it's so taking pictures and then they're like can you tell jokes eventually if there's like an open mic and if you're good you'll get

a shot you know that's the thing if you're good but and you have to be ready and be good which most people aren't same as wrestling it's got to be the second story because the third second one's good yeah being on the radio and they recognize his artistic ability the thing is uh about radio not really a visual uh medium well i guess you're from the radio then they also found out he was an artist but the original story makes them the second story makes the most sense because jackie fargo trained him so right he ended up training him so i assume jackie fargo got him into business all around and trained him that makes the most sense so 1971 he's in the wrestling business he's wrestling in

memphis wrestling on saturday morning tv that he's been watching you know besides his his little uh escapade to uh his escapade to cleveland there he's he's been watching his whole life he married gets married oh things are going well for him so he gets married yeah young but that's normal in this in 1971 in the south that's 22 is a perfectly reasonable age to get married then. So he marries a woman named Kay. So like, you know, Michael Corleone's wife, Kay. And anyway, so he's wrestling and he starts out as a heel, actually. Jerry does. He's a bad guy for a while here.

And here's some newspaper quotes from him later on. He says, wrestling fans are very fervent now this is he's still kayfabe here he's still still bullshit in the papers but he's he's talking about being a bad guy so this is actually a legitimate statement that he's making he said if they like you there's nothing they won't do for you if they don't like you there's nothing they won't do to you and he says like earlier in his career he said four straight weeks he had a windshield broken while in louisville because they used to do back then these small these southern territories back then were weekly so you were in the same town every week yikes every monday you're in memphis

every tuesday you're in louisville every fucking you know wednesday you're in knoxville that's how they would do it so can you imagine that imagine as a comedian having to do a show every single week in the same fucking town like that it would be brutal because and especially knowing that it's a lot of the same people are there it's the same crowd so you'd have to do new shit every week like that would be fucking exhausting jerry i mean and there was a there was a time in texas where that was a thing where you'd go like san antonio austin dallas houston yeah and this fucking loop yeah once a month you're in a different in a different club uh and and that that seems exhausting that little bicycle spending somewhere for a weekend yeah this was just every week same place and it's it's it was hard on and

that's why that's why people would go to different territories because you can't show people the same shit every week the it's crazy to be able to you know be popular somewhere and sell tickets somewhere when they see you every fucking week right so jerry lawler did that for over 20 years in memphis wow being the most popular draw at these places for weekly events which is stunning it's impressive that's how much they loved him down there it's it's absolutely crazy so he said uh yeah they would break windshields and that was normal back then if they found out who the heels what the heels drove slash their tires break their windshields follow them out of town. There's countless stories of heel wrestlers having to pull guns on people.

People trying to run them off the highway. Someone would have to pick them up in the back and they'd have to lay down in the back seat so no one could see them to get out of the arena alive. People were serious back then. to fuck it so no one could see them to get out of the arena alive people were serious back then you hurt you fuck man you fucking cheated dusty roads and they'd want to fucking kill you because you cheated dusty roads how crazy is that you know how many guys got stabbed back then that's amazing too because you you just watched the man fight like nobody follows mike tyson out of somewhere because he lost your fucking ass i just watched him fight i don't want a piece of that that's how crazy these people are and most

of the time the ones that do this are like the back then down here i'm talking we're like the real and these are like crazy backwoods people a lot of them too so they're like they're not used to doing things with lots of people in society. You know what I'm saying? So they have a whole other issue because that's Jim Cornette used to say that all the time. These people would come with fucking overalls and no shirts and shit on and want to fight the appeal managers. And he's like, what the fuck, dude? Kids rode a cow to this. That happened from the New Jack episode.

They fucking rode cows. He's like, there was a goddamn cow. Slapped it on the ass and went in the's like there was a goddamn cow slapped it on the ass and went in the building it was a donkey a donkey i think a donkey was a donkey or kids riding donkeys up to it that's it was go and in the early 70s it was even worse yeah i mean even in the 80s there's tons of stories of cornet that tells about having to pull guns and having people chase them with bats and all this crazy shit and uh every every single old-timey wrestler that wrestled in the 60s and 70s has that story about that one time they got stabbed it happens they all got stabbed huge guys every single one of them has seen a gun

at a wrestling room oh absolutely bobby heenan they shot at him in the fucking arena they shot at him in the arena they they shot at him in the arena they had to fucking shut the show down for gunfire that's how angry he made people it's awesome so he said Lawler said we were just to the point where people just

despised us we had to park six blocks away and take a cab people just didn't like me so that's great that means you're real successful the farther away you have to park from the arena as a heel back then the better People just didn't like me. So that's great. That means you're real successful. You're doing it. The farther away you have to park from the arena as a heel back then, the better you are. That's what that means. I'm amazing.

I parked in a town over. Oh, man. Are you kidding me? I had to take the train in. I'm the best. I had to take the train in wearing a disguise. I'm the best. That's what it was, though.

skies i'm the best that's what it was though so in 1974 uh he started a big feud with jackie fargo who this was the big this is the big every wrestling territory has this feud this is the bruno san martino larry's abisco feud it's the mentor it's the the the mentee turning on the mentor uh the beloved older mentor who's given everything and helped to bring this young person along. And now this young person wants to slash out on their own and attack their mentor. Student can beat the teacher, James. And so everyone hates the student because he's disrespectful and all this shit. So this is how they did all of this. And Lawler ended up winning the Southern Heavyweight Champion, the NWA Southern heavyweight championship from Jackie Fargo.

And, uh, this is when he took the moniker, the King. So he would say, I'm the King of wrestling started wearing the fucking crown, which to this day, he still has still wearing it,

still wearing the crown. It worked for him. I mean, can't, can't say shit. And it's the red, the red crown with like the white thing and the black speckles in the white thing, right? You know, the crown I'm talking about? It's the crown, yeah, with the four metal things.

It's the typical wrestling crown. They've had the same crown. Every wrestling king has worn the same crown since the beginning of time. It's the prom king crown. It's exactly it. It's you're the most handsome 17 year old we have we have this for you to denote that put this on put this on and stand next to the prettiest 17 year old girl we could find so uh he becomes the king

and after this he has another couple of feuds and finally becomes a babyface. Because in wrestling, you can only be a bad guy for so long if the fans hate you that passionately. Eventually, it will turn to love. It just has to. It sounds strange, but it's like a romantic comedy where if people meet and hate each other and argue, that means they're fuck by act two they have to because there's too much passion there yeah but the wrestling you really love her vince fawn that's what it is but a wrestling crowd really actually does that they actually if they hate someone to a certain point you have to turn them there's no other choice think about rowdy piper in the

80s was the people wanted to murder him and then when they turned him good guy it was like that they were waiting for the opportunity jake the snake roberts in the 80s was the same way all through wrestling they've done this with people it's a it's a thing it's very fascinating too because uh hate drives you further than love yeah Yeah, it does, as we see. People don't chase someone for miles trying to run them off the road if they love them. They might try to get an autograph. They leave, they're getting in the car, and they're like, oh, we missed him. They don't get, and they're like, get in the car!

Get your gun out! Come on! No one has that much passion if you like somebody. So it's different so uh yeah it's the same thing with if the guy is a beloved guy super you know baby face forever if he does something horrible enough the way the way they turn the way the crowd will hate them because they gave them so much love now now they hate them so much more it's's like, you know, it works. When Hulk Hogan turned bad with NWO.

Hated, hated. He fucking dropped that leg on Savage. The crowd went bad. The ring was filled with garbage. That didn't happen in the 90s yet at that point. That was crazy. People actually were like, fuck you. Are you kidding me?

How dare you make us love you i bought a hundred dollars worth of red and fucking yellow shit for my kid right before this happened are you kidding me now we're in a black bandana now you fucking jerk that's what happens so um 77 i'm not going to talk about all jerry lawler's feuds we'll touch on a couple of the big ones but the wrestling stuff it's just too much there's just too much of it to touch on so we'll touch on the big things and kind of talk more about him being a the promoter because he in 77 jerry jarrett breaks off from nick goulas this was the uh they they were co-owners of the NWA territory there in Tennessee. Jerry Jarrett breaks off and takes Memphis for himself. So Jerry Jarrett, his kid is Jeff Jarrett, who you might know from forever.

So Jerry is the promoter. And Jerry's a really smart promoter, too. Jerry's the guy when Vince McMahon was on trial for steroids in the 90s he brought jerry in as his guy to say if i go to jail you you know you'd be the conduit between this place and me in prison and fucking you know he's got the you know you know how to run a territory and shit so you you run this and you know through me basically in prison but so anyway he breaks away jerry lawler's the biggest star so the only way he can truly break away is if he takes jerry lawler with him because otherwise he just takes some of the mid guys and goes over there nobody cares so what he does is he makes jerry lawler the owner with him

so he offers him you me and you will own the territory if you come with me which has taken a big chance and uh but they do it and it becomes a huge money maker for both of them i mean jerry lawler and jerry jarrett make untold fortunes off of memphis they're famous for paying the wrestlers nothing is that right memphis is famous it It's probably the most famous for paying absolutely nothing. Memphis is everybody's first territory. Everybody from the 70s and 80s, whenever they said, where did you start? It's always, I started in Memphis because that's the place where they would start anybody. It's the weirdest thing like every

big wrestler started in memphis because that's that was the they'd give him a shot it was just one of those deals if you sent them pictures they'd give you a call yeah because that's the minimum that's the minimum wage place that's they didn't yeah they didn't pay shit so they didn't care the fast food of wrestling yeah they didn't pay anything so they didn't care they had to you know they were looking for new people because people would quit all the time or the once you got there you were looking for better paying job and they had long car trips you'd have to make too so it wasn't an easy place to work we're talking like in the 80s guys would make 25 in a night oh my and that's to drive 200 miles somewhere drive 200 miles wrestle drive miles back home, or if it's too late, stay in a hotel there, eat food, do all that shit for $25.

The privilege. That's what I mean. There'd be six guys sharing a motel room. Steve Austin, because his first territory was Memphis like everybody else. It's Steve Austin because his first territory was Memphis like everybody else. Steve Austin, people tell a story about him of walking in his apartment and he had just he was peeling potatoes like an old time army movie. He just had his kitchen full of a pile of potatoes like because and they were like, what the fuck are you doing? He's like, it's all I can afford.

And that's all he could eat was potatoes. So he was just eating mountains of potatoes because he didn't have any. No, there was nothing else. No food. Stunning. Jim Cornetto, he tells the story in the 90s when Memphis kind of teamed up with WWF. They tell Jerry Jarrett came in and told all the guys, now, listen, we're teaming up with WWF. So, you know, y'all better not be doing them steroids. Y'all better, because they might test you, so you better all make sure you're not on them steroids.

And one of the wrestlers said, Jerry, with what you're paying us, we're not even on food. What the hell are you talking about? Of course we're not on steroids. We can't afford steroids. We can't afford protein. Yes, we're not on food, Jerry. We're on potatoes, you asshole. And this territory made a lot of money.

Wow. So the money went somewhere, and that is to the Jerrys, Jared and Lawler's big, giant fucking houses that they lived in. So that's how this worked. So this is the Continental Wrestling Association, CWA. It will be that for a while so um that's and the other promotion ends up folding in 1981 and cwa ends up going on for a long time memphis is like the last territory alive by the way after wwe wipes everybody out they're the last stronghold of a place where the fans it's so ingrained there

that they just love it and they still were coming so the late 70s oh baby and i'm gonna have a couple of these recordings by the way late 70s jerry makes some recordings some music oh boy he makes some music jimmy yeah uh two. One is called Cadillac Man slash Memphis. That song exists already. Yep. And then the other one's called Bad News, which could be... Also exists already. That's a good one.

I was going to say, numerous different ways. Now, I have some ones. Well, when we get to the 80s one that pops up, I'll play a few of these songs for Jimmy and everybody else. And it's going to be a lot of fucking fun here. We're going to have a good time with this shit. So by 1978, he divorces Kay, the woman he married there in 71. They get a divorce. Jerry switches it up every seven, eight years.

That's just kind of how he rolls. That's how he rolls. Yeah. Reset. every seven eight years that's just kind of how he rolls that's how he rolls yeah yeah reset and uh i don't know i i'm not gonna i don't know obviously i'm not there but it seems like they age out of contention for him um just like well trade it in for the new model is that yeah he's a new model kind of guy yeah new model kind of guy so uh 1979 he beats uh superstar billy graham for the memphis world championship again what he would do is he'd lose the there'd be some big badass heel that would come in he'd lose the belt to this guy this guy's indestructible how could anybody possibly beat him and then there'd

be this big struggle to come back and then jerry would end up winning the title from that guy and then that guy would leave the territory so that's they'd always they just cycle in the heel for him to fight and that's kind of how every territory did it with their top guy but that's memphis did it like that forever and uh i'll see same game same game same game it's the same thing well every movie is the same is the same formula you know still buy them yeah every wrestling match you gotta see what the the rock dresses up as this time but it's the same formula you know at 20 minutes is a plot point you know it's the end act one you know there's a twist has to happen right here it's the same formula it's the same thing it's how hot is she and what will The Rock get to kiss her, James? I need to know.

That's it. Well, they say like every wrestling match is the same formula too with like a couple of things maybe switched up a bit. But it's, you know, shine, heat, comeback, finish, which is good guy shows how good he is. Bad guy cheats, shows how bad he is. Beats the shit out of the good guy. Makes you think your good guy can't come back. Good guy makes a comeback, but it's cut off off somehow and then whatever crap they have for the ending

that's the ending that's how it works a screenplay is essentially set up the same way yeah character's a good person oh no he's getting shit on oh boy what are they gonna do now yeah they figure it out oh that almost worked but it didn't how do we plunge past it to the end that's the same thing so oh that almost worked but it didn't how do we plunge past it to the end that's the same thing so jerry lawler's got good comeback guy okay that's the thing there's a few of these to be a great baby face that lasts forever you have to have a great comeback which is you've been beaten down they've put the heat on you they fucked you up and kicked your ass for 10 minutes and you were oh your arm out to the audience and oh my God. And now you don't even care how hurt you are.

The anger, the adrenaline, the pure energy of the people is flowing through you to the point where you must either hulk up or, you know, fucking do your Jerry Lawler, pull the singlet down thing that he does he would take the strap off his shoulder and that meant it's comeback time for jerry lawler and he would punch you with his beer gut that he doesn't drink beer with his coke gut that's what they did to us with the fast and the furious james every movie's the same it's just why is paul walker's car not run this time give him a new car he'll outrun somebody man paul walker if paul walker only had a faster car that's that's what it is

it's the first like three minutes of every movie oh yeah walker's car just needs to be a little faster a little faster one more boost in nitrous yeah that. That's it. And here comes some chicken Vin Diesel and they'll help. Here comes Vin Diesel with the car that he needs. And he's like, wow, if only I had that car. I got your car. I got your car. Good thing I got these steel blue eyes. Can I borrow that?

I got your car if you need it. Let's compare abs then somehow more dudes will love these movies than the chicks weird right it's fucking unbelievable oh man so uh fuck jerry lawler so uh 1980, Jerry Lawler, he's feuding with the fabulous Freebirds, and that's when he breaks his leg playing touch football and screws up this hot angle that they have that's just, they're going to be printing fucking money here. They built it all up, breaks his leg, it's over.

He's still playing touch football. Oh, he'll play through the 90s, man. He's just so into it softball too love softball many pictures in the paper of him hitting softballs and uh does a lot of charity softball events too like where him and a bunch of wrestlers will play like a local team and then all the proceeds can go to fucking whatever the hell that's he's done that a lot there is nothing funnier than an adult who comes to work in a cast with like torn meniscus because they love softball you are 48 stop it oh man my poor friend tore his leg apart on the at the feet at the where the diamondbacks play on the field i What is it called now? Chase Field?

Is it Chase still? I didn't know if they changed it since earlier in the year. Give us some time. At Chase, yeah, we were both employees. He slid into third base and absolutely obliterated his fucking leg. It went the other direction. It was fucking disgusting. It's on video.

And we're talking like all the white all the like white collar fucking diamondbacks employees are on the field oh jesus christ they run over there they're not allowed to have that game anymore that was the last one he ruined it for everybody he didn't even sue or anything he wasn't like that no he wasn't he's like i was fucking playing it's i i fucked up it's you know if we did it in a park i would have fucking broke in the park who's that's the difference if we're not playing this ever again anyway because of this horrible injury we may as well right it's a baseball team they're insured right they've got some money i think so man but breaks his leg that way so damn it he uh

later on he says that he he's still more interested in football and baseball than just about anything but art. It's still what he loves. Later on, he just loves it. He talks about his love of Cleveland sports. He also says that he doesn't do a lot to stay in shape. And you can tell by looking at him. Mid-section, it's soggy. Yeah, he just looks like somebody's stocky dad who works at the dock or something.

You know what I mean? He looks tough, but he looks like he drinks a lot of beer. Looks like a shot in a beer guy down at the Season 2 Baltimore The Wire Docks bar. He's one of the guys putting a shot down so Ziggy's fucking duck can drink it. That's what he looks like, body-wise. He's hairy uh he's about 234 pounds and he says he kind of stays the same shape doesn't work out he's not at all not really working out he said he just wrestles and plays softball and touch football doesn't really work out just uh that's it he says quote i love softball in the summer and fall and touch football in the winter.

That's one thing they know. This is later on. It's one thing they know in the WWF. They can't book me on Thursdays in the summer because I'm playing softball. And in the winter, they can't book me on Sundays because I'm playing football. This is why he broke his leg because if you trained, it wouldn't be so soft.

That's, that's the thing. Yeah. You should probably maybe train a little bit here maybe do some of those some squats and do some wall sits i don't know this leg lift something yeah he says uh he plays first base on the softball team and quarterbacks his football team he's the quarterback of course he says quote i quarterback in football only because it's my team they probably can find a better quarterback but i pay the entry fee and buy the uniforms so they have to let me play quarterback i carry this team so i'm playing

quarterback that is fucking hilarious uh 1982 comes along and he marries a woman named paula now so he's gonna do that and get married again he's he's right he's ready this is the time the andy kaufman thing starts up to 1982 yeah now um i don't know where to start i'm going to assume do we have to introduce who the fuck andy kaufman is to people if you're young we do if you're like dead for so long he's been dead and that the jim carrey movie came out in like 1999 so if you're like 21 years old you don't fucking know shit about andy kaufman probably andy kaufman was a comedian uh very quickly was a really kind of a brilliant conceptual guy he wasn't a stand up and tell you a punch a punchline joke guy he was a guy that would do some weird shit do a character some wild bit that you're like what the fuck am i watching and it was a good

example good example would be the mighty mouse thing that he would do with the record player here i come to save the day he would sing along with fucking lip sync to mighty mouse he'd bring come out and set the whole thing up he had the like the old record player with the horn thing coming off of it and put it on and he'd look all dorky, crackling and have his hair all done and look very proper and do all this and then just start lip syncing. Here I come to say that that was one of his bits. But the way he set it up for fucking three minutes and then that's what he did was just what the hell is going on right now? And that was Andy Kaufman's. Or even or even better.

He did the Letterman show and came out and told a story he looked like shit he was disheveled uh came out and told a story about how broke he is and asked for a dollar and then just started wandering the audience collecting change that's what andy kaufman would do and that was that was a thing for him like he would do there's a million different of his conceptual comedy things it's awesome every last one of them the whole point was he wanted people to go is this guy fucking kidding or what here like what's going on is he nuts which is exactly the same emotion that you that wrestlers are trying to get so right it's actually for him to be in wrestling is perfect it's couldn't be more perfect

uh he would have been a great wrestling manager if he decided to do that from the beginning. He would have been the best fucking manager there was. So he was on Taxi, by the way, which was a giant sitcom in the 70s, which made him very, very famous. Mainstream. Played a character named Latka who talked like this. He was from a made up country and all that kind of shit. and he was from a made up country and all that kind of shit. So anyway, he comes in and what he would do is the whole gimmick was Andy Kaufman is and he would say he's this I'm from Hollywood and you people are dumb hicks and Memphis,

Tennessee, and he'd make fun of them. And he'd say, I can I can beat anybody here. I can beat any woman here. And then he would fight women and like, you know, wrestle them and beat them and then be like, yeah, that's right. See, honey? And the guys would be going nuts. There'd be women like, I'll kick your fucking ass.

You can't kick it. And then the guys are like, you fucking pussy. I'll beat these women up. You should fight me. So, I mean, they just wanted to kill him. They wanted to kill him. they wanted to kill him you people are dumb hicks and i'm this and i'm that so uh one of them was he uh this was a one of the because they would make these these vignettes these pre-taped segments that they would put on tv

and one of them was him um at a big place in beverly hills you know he's this big mansion and he approaches the camera he's got like the the drink with the little umbrella in it and shit he's got one of those just looking like he's whatever he's a million dollars just rich beyond any kentucky hillbillies fantasies rich to the point of leisure right in this palatial estate where you came on, they would kick you out of here in two seconds. You couldn't even get a look over the fence. They would fucking shoo you away. So he says, quote, I'm from Hollywood. I'm smart.

I make movies and television shows. I'm not some hick like you people from Memphis, Tennessee. He would do all of that shit. That was his typical thing. Look, this is what you do when you're smart. You're in Hollywood, and you get to do great things, and I'm just smarter than you. You people are losers, and you're nothing,

and all you poor dirtbags, and you're big, fat, ugly women, and he would just go off on it, man. It was fucking wild. He would make the southern accent and all that shit he also had a guy with him who he introduces his lawyer all the time this is my lawyer and so everybody of course wanted to that's the you know the hollywood thing to do yeah um you know he'll he was he would tell like you know jerry lawler said this about me and my lawyers saying right now that he's in big trouble and we're going to sue him in court.

You know what I mean? That's exactly what he would do. Oh, you goddamn pussy. You can find women, but all you can do with Lawler's fine is sue him in court. I mean, these people are eating this shit up. So he fucking I mean, they would buy tons of tickets when he was around. So he fucking, I mean, they would buy tons of tickets when he was around. And he did another one where he fucking, he would hire these women to fight.

You know, these are women wrestlers, I assume. Actresses. Actresses. And he would say, the one he goes, okay, Lawler, you think you're so tough? He goes, I've wrestled tough. I've wrestled women who are bigger and tougher than you. Like this one here. Get in here. And there's this, you know, big woman. I wrestled women who are bigger and tougher than you like this one here. Get in here. And there's this big woman.

And she said, how tall are you? And she's like six feet. How much do you weigh? About 327. And he says, see, 327. She's bigger than you, Lawler. And I can beat her up. And then he tackles her and slams her face on the ground.

He's like, take that. See? That's what he's doing and then he declared himself the intergender intergender champion of the world so i mean they just amazing wanted to murder him that's what i'm saying if he decided to be a manager god damn it how do you not watch that and just not die laughing it's it's so funny but it's andy kaufman so even when you're at a comedy club and they introduce him here's a man doing a comedy performance andy kaufman and he comes up on the stage two minutes into it you're going is he doing what is this when is he serious now or Or is this a, is this a bit, this isn't a bit.

He can get you to do that at a comedy club. Yeah. I mean, wrestling, shit. They were like 50-50 on it in 82. If he's doing, this is real, goddammit. Mashing a woman's face into the lawn. I mean, how do you not stop? What the fuck?

He's fucking nuts. That's the point. You can't do that. And he's like, yeah. You know, he's screaming over her talking shit mocking her fucking down tagging her she's take that not drew a dick on her forehead he was fucking wild he sharpied just a big dick on her cheek ran her head over with a lawnmower take that she needed a haircut anyway so that's what he would do all right and um anyway they

would uh the whole point was jerry lawler's the hero and he's gonna come in and shut this big mouth from hollywood up you know what i'm saying now in reality you'd look at it you go this guy's twice the size of that guy that's not a heroic act to beat that man up. That's the other part of it. Andy is not a huge man. No, he's so skinny. Very average height, and he's a very meek man. Yeah, physically imposing isn't what he was going for.

what he was going for so but they hated andy kaufman so much that they wanted to see a man who's supposedly a professional fighter who's twice his size beat the shit out of him that's how much they hated him so that's wild so they have a match or they whatever it was and uh what ends up happening here is um, Andy wants a pile driver. Jerry's famous finishing move is a pile driver, which looks amazing. It's the, you know, back then it was about the most devastating looking move you could do to somebody. Nowadays they have all sorts of crazy shit. But in 1982, pile driver, like a lot of territories, banned the pile driver. So, you know, no one could do it

because it was too dangerous and guys would break their necks and all this shit and if you fuck it up you can't really hurt somebody bad you have to know how to do it ask steve austin who fucking uh you know had a broken neck from owen hearts so uh and the guy that was the uh wrestling uh tag team guy with uh with new jack put a guy in the wheelchair is that was his partner was that his partner no i think you're talking about you mean draws you're talking about draws later on the guy who was on the broncos and then there's a wrestler because we talked about i thought that was because we talked about that at one point i remember you were and you seem yeah yes that's the guy that got pile driven right see i speak i speak fluent jimmy yeah dilo brown hurt him i

believe dilo brown that's the guy. Was he New Jack's partner? No, he was with him for a minute at one point, actually, but he ended up not being there. I think that was in Smoky Mountain. They were together for a second. He was part of it. They were like, well, you're all black.

You should be on the same thing. But he pile drove that dude and put him in a wheelchair for fucking ever oh it happens i mean unless you do it with you know and then there's guys they do it every night for 30 years i never heard a person ever if they do it right but one time you fuck up that's really dang and that's a lot of wrestling moves are like that one fuck up and you're paralyzed that's just the way it goes so andy wanted to do it um you know so j Jerry gives him two pile drivers, one, and then really, I'm going to kill the guy. Let's do it again. That one's for me, and then that one's for that Tabitha lady that you beat up.

That's for her. She really told me, you hit her face pretty hard on the lawn. She's not happy about it. So they had the ambulance come and all that sort of shit you know and get him you know the whole spiel and they get to the hospital there and you know wheel him in and it's all on camera and everything that you know they're taking him in and once it's off camera he says to the uh doctor he says do i need a neck brace and the doctor says no you're fine like you're not even hurt you're totally fine and he says well can i have one anyway and the doctor's like it wouldn't you don't need a neck you're fine like no no you

don't need a neck brace and he says that's okay give me the biggest one you got i want a big ridiculous neck brace so i need a lampshade a vet would use to neuter a dog i need the whole thing that and that's what he does he has a giant fucking neck brace on and from then on and cherry did this and everybody's laughing at him and i mean he knew he knew exactly how to yeah now they now he's gonna get laughed at so this july 29th 1982 they go on the david letterman show yep and this is the famous thing it's the best one and you know they knew what they were going to do, obviously, beforehand. They had it all planned out, Lawler and Kaufman.

This is not like people for years thought that was real, thought like the whole rest of it was bullshit. But that night, that was actually real. It's like, really? Come on. It's our one chance at national exposure here on network television. And we're going to just not abandon everything we're doing and fuck around. We just gonna play it by ear tonight i don't think so so uh anyway i guess he told him to fucking you know he said that you know we'll go back and forth and kaufman told him fucking whale me give me a good slap fucking knock nail me one make it look good you know make

people think it's fucking real so lawler if you saw lawler popped him good with that slap he really he john stossel him like that was like the dr d shot with stossel he hit him goddamn good after uh and then uh you know he threw coffee at lawler and that was the big melee and that's how that taylor swift is soaring high her every move captured in the news cycle and devoured by her devoted fans. She's broken billboard records and made Grammys history, not to mention becoming a billionaire in the process. But along the way, Taylor has had to wage war, first by taking on a very powerful, very famous manager, Scooter Braun, and then by going up against the biggest live events company, Ticketmaster. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wondery's show, Business Wars.

We go deep into some of the biggest corporate rivalries of all time. And in our latest season, Taylor Swift will shake up not only the music business, but Hollywood and the NFL. Follow Business Wars wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the amazon music or wondery app that went so anyway um that's pretty much the lawler the lawler kaufman feud and andy's was getting sick after that toward the end of that he was getting sick and then he ended up dying like a year and a half later i think so yeah horribly yeah that poor bastard he was only 35 i know such a fucking horrible man yeah and there's all the rumors of him uh macaveli-ing his death and yeah of course because he's a because he's andy kaufman because he's

andy kaufman that's the thing man if he's a guy a guy who had a mind like him i would really love to see where that would have gone comedically in 20 years like especially the way cable was exploding at that point like imagine that guy with a cable show or he could do anything he wanted like an early 90s like an hbo show like a larry sanders type of thing something like that where they were like just do something weird and some could have been amazing you could just do whatever he wants yeah it could have been amazing man there's a lot of a lot more outlets for him where he didn't have to just be Latke. He absolutely got robbed. Yeah, so that kind of sucks. Anyway, Jerry Lawler is doing great.

Huge house. He has a feud, because we kind of have to touch on this one. He has a feud with Randy Savage, which starts out when they're not even in the same promotion. And I'll explain. Randy Savage's dad, Angelo Poffo, is a wrestler for years and years and years and years and years. By the way, Angelo Poffo at one time had the Guinness World Record for sit-ups in a consecutive sit-ups from like the 40s. Camera was like thousands and thousands and thousands. Really?

An absolutely insane amount. It's more sit-ups than you could do in a month. He did it in like a day. He did it in like a day. He did it in like six hours. I'm not even shitting. He did it in one sit-upping. Yeah, one sit-upping. So, yeah.

Anyway, they started their own. They had gotten a fight with the promoters, with the NWA. They were feuding with them. So they started their own outlaw promotion in this area. Now, an outlaw, quote unquote, promotion was just one who's not affiliated with the NWA or one of the big WWF at the time, whatever. So what they did is, it's called ICW, the Poffo Savage promotion. So he would promote his sons, Randy Savage and uh the macho man and his brother leaping lanny poffo there before he was leaping he was just lanny so but lanny can suck his own

dick so he does have that going for him good for him he used to get hired places because promoters would be like i gotta see that that's incredible just bring him in yeah we'll bring him in for a run i gotta say this fella could suck his own dick. That could be good for morale in the locker room. That's literally what they'd say. That could be pretty funny at 2 in the morning. For some reason, they thought if everyone shit-faced at 2 in the morning, this guy hopping up on the bar and sucking his own dick is really going to be a crowd pleaser.

I don't know why they thought that would be something they could run and see. It's at least one person pleaser pleasing somebody you know he's willing to have a dick in his mouth i guess that's a so i wonder i do wonder can you go all the way to done or are you hung up on the back that's a dick that's not good i want to know so bad but i don't want to know bad enough to be able to fold myself in half you want to know bad enough to do yoga for the next 40 years i don't so uh their promotion savages and pafos would all they would do is attack jerry lawler and memphis wrestling uh that's all they would do is attack Jerry Lawler and Memphis Wrestling.

That's all they would do is attack Jerry Lawler, attack Memphis Wrestling the whole time. They spent their whole TV show attacking people that don't work with them because they were trying to get attention and drum up attention for their own thing. It got to the point where they ended up working out a deal where they enveloped each other, basically, where they closed down the outlaw promotion and the Savages and everybody came to work for Jerry in Memphis. And he had a giant feud with Randy Macho Man Savage. That was a big, giant deal. And then Savage ended up in WWF after that. And five years later, he's slinging Slim Jims. And he's a nationally famous

dude so he's a corporation he's yeah he's a crazy looking corporation after that so he also has a lot of feuds with bill dundee if you ever saw bill dundee he's about um four foot nine probably i don't mean that seriously but he's probably five foot four maybe i don't know and he would like you know be wrestling and beating people and you're like he's so tiny though it's just not and this isn't on the up and up come on man like that sort of thing and he just didn't look like he was like a tough like chris benoit was like a little guy and he was little littler than other people but he looked mean and he wrestled tough and mean i never got that out of Bill Dundee. He's a good worker and shit, but everything he did, it didn't look real

because he looked like somebody's child out there trying to fight people. Rey Mysterio was tiny, but a backflip off the ropes like that, you think, of course the big guy's going to go down. Yes. It's a backflip. He just did a flippity-flop from fucking here to there. Yeah, obviously. He did a backflip, grabbed that guy's fucking neck with his ankles, and of course he fell down.

He threw him into the third row with his legs. Of course he's down. Yeah, obviously. But Dundee didn't do any of that shit. So he was a good worker, and the crowd seemed to buy it. Also, Bill Dundee would book for him, too. What they would do is, because Jerry Lawler was the booker, you know, makes all the feuds and matches, but I guess they would do, like, six months on and six months off with each other,

where Jerry would book for six, because booking is one of these things, apparently, where all these territories would get new bookers every, like, six, eight months or a year. You just run out of ideas. Are they writing a story, also? The bookers are doing all that shit. They're coming up with all the feuds. This one's going to fight this one, and we're going to go here to get to this big match and do all

that but after a while they just burn themselves out apparently so they'd have to get new ones all the time ideas it's it's an improv thing it's a yes and thing yes you need to step back and see it you know see the forest and then before you dip back into the trees. So he, they said every six months or so he would come in and they'd switch up. That's how they do it to keep it fresh and all that kind of shit. So, and it would give them, it was also a lot of extra work too. So, you know, but Jerry said he would, uh, most of the time he told Sean Oliver, Sean Oliver was trying to get him to do one of the kayfabe commentary guest booker spots. And Jerry told him that he goes, oh man, I don't know what the hell I'd even talk about.

He goes, I just wrote that stuff on a napkin on the way to the arena most of the time. On the way to the TV. He's like, I didn't even really think about it that much. He didn't give a shit. He's like, I never thought about it, really. So one more wrestling thing that we have to talk about a lot is, or not a lot, but a little here, is the AWA merger. Now, AWA, we've talked about extensively, Vern Gagne and all that. Well, here's one where Vern really fucked somebody good here.

Now, what they were doing is AWA was kind of dying. So they were trying to branch out. This was after they had already tried to combine with the NWA to have Pro Wrestling USA, which is multiple territories pooling their talent for a TV show and pay-per-views to compete with Vince McMahon. That didn't work out because all the promoters just tried to steal each other's talent and you know fuck each other so they tried to form a voltron yeah yeah it doesn't work if the voltrons are trying to like steal spark plugs out of the other guy's vehicle there it's not gonna work when the left arm's fighting the the right leg yeah and that's what they had a the super clash was their big pay-per-view they had or their big uh stadium show and they said that in the locker room they were trying to steal each other you know trying to sign each other's talent away from each other so they're like we can't have a partnership like this really so they end up partnering with memphis to try to make it a big try to make

they figure the two of them together will be a bigger deal so what they do is this is the time after kurt hennig had beat nick bockw, become the champion, Mr. Perfect later on Kurt Hennig. Okay, now Kurt Hennig wants to go to the WWF and become Mr. Perfect because Vince McMahon's offering him a lot of money, big gimmick, all this type of shit. So he's got to drop the belt, the AWA belt, before he leaves. They decide that Lawler's going to win it. And it's a big deal because Lawler had won the Memphis belt a million times but apparently the AWA belt five years earlier was considered one of the big belts it was NWA WWF and AWA it's a big three by now AWA was

really in the shits and it wasn't really considered that anymore but it was still a big deal to the people in memphis that he won a major title so he beats kurt hennig down there in memphis and uh he ends up a shitty finish by the way it was the hennig goes up hits his head on the ring post and falls in good match and a shit finish anyway so uh and uh after that they're going to have the big unification match with Texas Fritz Von Erich's territory we talked about all the Von Erich's alright it's a good thing we've done all the wrestling episodes earlier to build this base for all this shit or else I'd have

a lot to explain so they're going to do it's called Super Clash 3 it's going to be their big pay-per-view this is the answer to WrestleMania 3 this is the answer to wrestlemania 3 or this is the answer to wrestlemania 4 because i think it was early 88 this happened this is it man this is wwf has had their run we're gonna crush it they there is like 1500 people in the crowd for this fucking thing nobody's there i i think about that many people bought it on pay-per-view too like

nobody bought it on pay-per-view i remember Like nobody bought it on pay-per-view. I remember when I was a little kid, I wanted to see it because I wanted to see the matches, but I don't, it wasn't a, I don't, you know, nobody bought it.

So the main event is, and we talked about it in the Kerry Von Eric episode, Kerry Von Eric versus, uh, Jerry Lawler to unify the belts. And he said, Kerry was fucking out of it and didn't know what he was doing he said he had the razor blade on his finger because he needed to blade later on

and he scratched his arm and sliced his arm all up the beginning of the match carrie's arm is fucking bleeding the before he they even start fighting he's got blood streaming down his arm and uh spontaneous leaking man yeah yeah and uh the match ends up stopping with i believe jerry lawler's in the claw which is carrie's finishing move but carrie's bleeding so much onto he's bleeding like in jerry's mouth on his face i mean he's leaning over him, pouring blood just directly into his face. It's really gross. So he does all that shit, you know, dripping into his face, being all fucking disgusting. And then the ref stops the fight due to Kerry Von Erich's bleeding, I believe, not Jerry Lawler giving up. Jerry Lawler is the bad guy in this scenario. And so Jerry Lawler wins the unification and all that kind of shit.

Because the ref has a heart. Yes. He didn't want to see a man bleed or another man get more hepatitis. So they do all of that. Now, what ends up happening, though, is nobody gets paid from this event. Oh. Okay. So now he's the AWA heavyweight champion, and he's supposed to go be the AWA heavyweight champion.

But Vern's booking him everywhere, sending him all these dates to come and wrestle, but he hasn't got paid for this pay-per-view yet. And he's like, I am not going anywhere until I get fucking paid for this pay-per-view. And Vern said, well, then you're not going to be the champ. We'll strip you of the belt. He goes, that's great. You're not getting the belt back until I get paid for this fucking pay-per-view. Yeah. So when they made the AWA documentary in 2007, I believe,

Jerry Lawler still has the AWA championship belt because he still never got paid from Vern Gagne. And then Vern died like four years later, so he's never gotten that fucking money. Hilarious. Yeah. He still was waiting for it 20 years later, still he's never gotten that fucking money. Hilarious. Yeah. He still was waiting for it 20 years later, still hadn't gotten paid for that event. Now the music.

Let's get into that quickly here. Oh, boy. Okay. Manager Jimmy Hart was in Memphis at that time. That's where he started, too. And Jimmy Hart, anytime he's around, music's going to be made because that's what he did. He was in the Gentries, which was they had, I believe, a top five single in the 60s. Keep on dancing was their single.

That was his, huh? Yeah, keep on dancing. That's Jimmy Hart. He's in that group. Terrible. If you look up that video, you'll see young Jimmy Hart dancing around. It's fucking hilarious. So they're arguing.

it's fucking hilarious so they're arguing lawler wanted to record an album with his singing and he knew jimmy hart and all that and that's how hart got involved with all the wrestling shit because he wanted to come in and get involved with the music stuff and then he said well you'd be a great manager running around with that high-pitched voice so everybody called heart a wimp right they'd all chant wimp at him that was the big thing very creative so uh jerry decided he was going to make a song since it was the mid 80s and uh the song ghostbusters was very big yeah jerry made a song called wimp busters oh my god where he sings rhyme it's not no he made several other songs as well too uh they made a music video which we're gonna watch and uh macho man savage is in it fucking uh all sorts of shit here also wimp busters for wimp off for yeah also brian christopher is in it as a

young kid who is being bullied a young bullied child he plays brian christopher as we know from our other crime and sports episode on uh this is incredible yeah it's these fucking videos are uh it's it really is uh is it a i don't i don't know what why it's so fascinating, but the hubris, the real pride of what they are. They just believe they can do absolutely anything, up to and including something that requires so much talent. A different talent. A different talent. I'll never understand that. a different town i'll never understand that i don't understand wrestlers who want to sing athletes who want to act comics who want to play basketball fucking uh actors who want to be

politicians anything like that makes no fucking sense to me so just do what you do and do what you do fucking jesus all right so this is hold on do can you see this from your chair here or do you need to turn? Well, yeah, I can. All right. You turn, I'll turn. There we go. We'll meet in the middle.

There we go. Okay. What do we got? What do we got? Okay, you're close enough where I can kick you now. I like that. That's good. No puns.

No puns. You're getting kicked. Okay, here we go. Let's start it. Oh, my God. Right out of the gate, Jimmy the Hitman Hart. No, Jimmy Hart. Jimmy Hart with a Ghostbuster line through it.

No Jimmy Harts allowed. It's the ghost with Jimmy's heart on its face. That's all with a beard and Jimmy Hart hair. Okay, who's she? I don't know. A woman just came out of a closet. She did. She's scared.

Oh, that's... Oh, my God. What was that? Kamala, I think? She rolled her eyes about a fucking monster? Oh, another monster. Oh, all these monsters in the closets. Oh, my God. They're also full of monsters.

Oh, there's Lance Russell. Here's Jerry. Here we go. Macho man. Look at him. Throwing confetti. Who is that? And then now we got wrestling.

And now it's showing him beat up Jimmy Hart. Oh, that was Jimmy Hart getting his shit kicked out of him. Yeah, it's him beating up Jimmy Hart. Over and over again. There he goes again. I ain't afraid of no wimp. There he goes. Punching Jimmy Hart again.

Jimmy Hart's up. How many times did he hit that guy? Chicken a bikini all of a sudden. Where'd she come from? For whatever reason. Why is she here? They just needed a chicken a bikini all of a sudden. Where'd she come from? Why is she here? They just needed a chicken a bikini. That's some old Asian man.

Oh, Jimmy Hart is dancing around the chick in the bikini. Kicking sand on her. And then here comes Oh, there he is. And he pile driving. And Jimmy Hart being mauled again.

This is amazing. This is amazing. What did you do, Jerry? But it's not a pun. It's not funny. It's just stupid. We're not anywhere near done. No, we're going to turn it off.

It's just this over and over again. Oh, here comes... There you go that was there's little brian christopher being booked oh what jerry why is jerry lawler beating him up jerry lawler was just look at him there jerry lawler was on in the videos on some for some reason online at a high school cafeteria defending a kid people's faces against a bully here so So that's Wimp Busters. There's another couple minutes of this. You should really look these up, by the way.

I ain't afraid of no wimp. I ain't afraid of no wimp. What's next? This, I don't know, what song? Jerry Lawler sings a song about having sex with a woman using wrestling moves. That's the title of the video. Oh my. I don't know what's going on here

okay is this jerry lawler let's hope so that's a wimp well this is a guy i don't think jerry lawler plays piano oh that's his hair oh there's jerry there he is oh my god jerry what are you doing sir he looks fat as shit what the fuck what is happening the fuck is happening why did he do that wrestling with girls? Wrestling with

Yeah, that's what he said Wrestling with girls Yeah, that's what he said My shit What the fuck is happening? Why did he do this? I don't know. He said pile drive and love and some shit.

You can't say that. I don't. Especially as a grown man, you don't say that. You should know that. This is, what is this? Oh, this is the rest. Is that the music video for like Namgla? This is the tv show and oh they're showing him okay this is the making of wrestling with girls they're talking to the keyboard guy here wow what do you think about the music i told you to play pretty terrible right here's another

one i found oh boy this is called an eye for an eye oh jerry the that said the sing jerry the sing waller okay oh boy here he goes he's got like an elvis collar happening the video is horrific the orange hue it looks like this What the fuck Oh my god I never get mad He's just singing He's trying to make pop songs But the videos are all him fighting people They're all videos of him fighting men

What is happening He doesn't even He doesn't know he can't sing No he thinks he can sing. Yeah. Wow. He's playing guitar. Baffling.

His guitar player has no shirt on. That's how you know this is weird. Oh, boy. Look at that. He's got no shirt. But not like a flea way either, like a wrestler way. Like a I'm at the fucking fair, but I shouldn't be allowed to be way. And dancing way too fast to this beat.

Yeah, like he doesn't know what the song actually sounds like. He thinks we're playing the Eurythmics. Jerry's playing acoustic guitar. Yeah. Ooh. Sounds like. He looks a little Jason Aldini there, too. Fat with a very weird chin beard.

He had the chubby chin beard face going on. Is that all? It's a very ballsy move to have that thin of a beard on that fat of a face. Here's Bad News. Hold on. Let me see what this one is. That's going to be the... Hell on Bad News.

I think it's a country song. It is. There's no video for this one. Bad news travels like wildfire. Yep. Is that Jerry Lawler? Bad news travels slow. That's Jerry.

Yeah, that's Jerry. Wow. Okay, so you know that that's an old song here. That's a bad song. It's made better by who really sings it. I think, who is that? Is that Merle? No, that's not Merle.

This is off the Jerry Lawler song. This is... What are you fucking yelling about? Where's the video? Wow, this is crazy. Okay. That's enough of Jerry Lawler singing. I can't deal with it anymore.

He thought he was a pop star. And a country singer. There's no, like, wink and nod as he's singing. He's just, like, looking into the camera sincere as shit. Like, there's no. He's either more Andy Kaufman than Andy Kaufman, or he's terrible. One of the two. I haven't decided which one.

I'm thinking I'm going to go gonna go with terrible so all right we gotta buzz through here um anyway cash song right i can't remember that's something you should know i feel like that's information that you should be aware of more whitey morgan sings it today the best but i think uh i think okay it might be a porter wagner song i can't remember is it maybe a standard that like all of them sing it might be it might be one of those yeah it's just uh amarillo by morning now it's everybody sings it nobody cares yeah i think maybe it's one of those i think it's uh very much like that who wrote it yeah who, who gives a shit? It's a great song, as long as Jerry Lawler doesn't sing it. That's not good.

So he's married at this point. Remember that? He got married before the Kaufman thing. Who was that? Paula. Paula. So it's 1989. He's 40 years old.

Right. He is at a charity softball game at treadwell high school in memphis where he went you know going back home and he meets an 18 year old young lady there who he takes a fancy to you can't okay if you go to a high school for anything and you meet a girl and the word teen is in her age yeah you went to a high school and found a girl at that point that's creepy sorry for a girlfriend at high school i don't care if she doesn't go to a high school and found a girl at that point that's creepy sorry for a girlfriend at high school i don't care if she doesn't go to that high school if she never went to that high school doesn't matter i don't care she's picking up her brother yeah weird so um he

meets her she was at the game with her mother who was dating one of the players there who was on the same team as Lawler. And the daughter was like, well, I'll get one too, apparently. So, yeah. Wow. He was married at the time. And the way he puts it is that he considered having an affair with her. Okay. I think maybe he probably did have an affair because then him and his wife will get divorced later and she'll immediately move into the house. So I don't think he was like, I'll save her number for a couple of years from now when I get divorced.

Right. So he liked being a heel here. Here's some some things he gets to say. He said, are you kind of misses being a heel a little bit? He said, I learned it was a lot easier and a lot less trouble when you didn't have to please the crowd. You didn't have to worry about signing autographs or having your picture made so people would like you it was more fun being the bad guy especially with the tv interviews you could really speak your mind more that came natural for me and i liked it i agree sorry yep uh he said that he uh he uh yeah he, I found out what when you're a this is gross. He goes, when you're a good guy, though, you quote, I found out you get a lot more fringe benefits from being the fan favorite.

It sounds gross coming from him here. So 1991 divorces his wife, Paula, here immediately. The Stacey Carter moves in with him. That's the girl he's with here. Stacey. Stacey. Teenager's name. That's the girl he's with here. Of course. Stacey. Sounds like a teenager's name. It was.

A teenager in the 80s. She was a bank teller around that time. He helped get her a job at a photography studio, and I guess she opened a hair salon at some point here as well. Now, she'll end up being a WWE, I believe, a women's champion at one point in the late nineties as well. Yeah. So he says he's asked a lot about this point. You've been wrestling 20 years. Are you going to, are you going to quit? Is your body broken? And Lawler style isn't one of these styles. It's really going to break your body too much either. He's kind of got a real kind of a punch kick kind of a style. Not a of there's not a lot of moonsaults going on there any shit like that so he said quote your body just gets used to that certain type of specific abuse i wrestled on such a regular basis for 20 years probably six or seven nights a week and every night i would get picked up and body slammed and then maybe on your night off you go bowling and the next morning you wake up and say, oh, my God, I'm so sore from bowling. Which one?

You did it, right. It's specific muscle, too. Because there's some of these guys who weigh 400 pounds. This is always a trip. Guys will talk about this. There's guys who weigh 400 pounds that could go for 45 minutes in the ring and be fine. But if you got an athlete who's a marathon runner in there,

the best shape in the world, they wouldn't be able to breathe in three minutes in there. Because they have amazing cardio, but not for that. It's a different thing of go, stop, go, stop, do this. It's very difficult on people who don't do it all the time. Also, bowling will shred your thigh. Your thigh, your shoulder, your calf, your whole everything. shred your thigh your thigh your shoulder your calf your whole crazy thing yeah how much that whatever side is your dominant side will hurt for two weeks it's gonna hurt bad it's horrible so

it's oh god it does it's so that's one of if you did it like three times a week for a month you'd probably get over it but i don't know it's gonna take a while i think it's like about as tough as wrestling probably yeah so uh maybe i'm just obviously not so he said though quote i've never worked out a day in my life he said i've never and then he says also i've never even tasted one sip of beer wine whiskey or any type of alcohol or coffee quote unquote coffee or coffee um yeah so he said it's something he enjoys wrestling he said i never thought about the money or what i might be So he said it's something he enjoys wrestling. He said, I never thought about the money or what I might be.

I just thought it would be fun. And it has been. And he said at the time I would have paid to wrestle. So he said, now it's fun. He goes, wrestling isn't like a team sport. If you get some age and slow down in a team sport, they cut you because you hurt your team. Nobody else depends on you in wrestling. If you slow down and aren't as agile, you don't hurt anyone anyone else i'm content with where i am and what i'm doing i've had a good career led a fairly normal life and made a lot of money i don't have any complaints i've spent most

of my career here in memphis and didn't really want to stray from that uh that far from home i wasn't that well known to a national audience so all of a sudden here this was to them fresh face even though i've been in the business 20 years he's talking about wwe later on he says uh the fun thing is that i could go to new york and the fans in new york are the most obnoxious they are the worst they're the biggest bunch of jerks i've ever seen this is he's in a fucking southern paper so you can't say you like enjoy new york he says they don't like southerners up here either so with me coming from tennessee there was an immediate hatred form between myself and all those fans up there

by the way let me clear something up for anybody who obviously he's saying this for you know uh in the paper for you know get some shit going serving stuff right let me tell you something this is from i grew up in new york live here now there's a you know just a thing southerners if you think we hate you we don't think a fucking lick about you we don't care you're the red socks yeah get it the yankees the red socks think about the yankees a lot the reds the yankees only think about the red socks when they're playing them otherwise they're like I don't care what they're doing. We're great.

We're fine over here. We're doing our own thing. The Red Sox are over there beating another team going, if only that was the Yankees. That's what you guys do down there. Not all of you, obviously, but the ones who do,

if he was serious saying that, that person, no. That's in your brain. We don't even think about you we don't give a shit about about fucking 1865 we left and stopped fucking karen tell you what as soon as sherman mucking made his way back up the atlantic we stopped giving a shit what you did down there we don't care do whatever because now you're supposed to do what we do yeah do whatever just don't own people while you do it thank you that was the whole point and we're still trying to get that

and you still seem to be fighting it for some reason i don't understand it not that part of it but that's the only part we care about anyway uh he says it's getting tougher and tougher to hang with those younger guys i used to have a couple of tricks of the trade that only comes with experience he says i really thought i would just try wrestling one time and that would be it i feel real fortunate to have a career and make good money doing a job i love i've paid to get to do this so there you go by the way i don't know if you noticed but that whole thing i just said although it's true i was literally answering the paragraph above where he was saying how much more fun it is to be a heel up early i was doing that up earlier he was saying how much fun it is

to be a heel and not give a shit and you could say crazy shit and all that and then i just went off on that whole thing saying because as i said it's fun to be a heel. So I was just being a fun heel, actually. That stuff's true, but I wasn't. I was breaking balls. Anyway, so the ratings for the Memphis TV show are still amazing, by the way. He even had a Jerry Lawler show, which ran on Sundays. Yeah, what was that thing? Was it King's Court or some shit like that? No, no, no, not on WWE. On a local Memphisphis station he had his

own talk show just a talk show where he came on and just hi i'm jerry lawler i'm gonna talk was it still called king's court no it was called the jerry lawler show oh okay it was it nothing to do with that wwe he wasn't even in wwe yet at this point he was just using it his own name yeah he's just in memphis he just goes on he has a talk talk show. It's a Richard Bay show. Yeah, kind of like in a major market. They used to have the coach would have a TV show, the football coach. It would have a TV show that he'd have to do every week. They still do it in college. All the college shows, all the coaches have a show on FS1 or whatever.

It's exhausting. It's exhausting. So anyway, it's was so well in ratings they said at this point in July of 92 the show was seen in 65,000 households a week which is about 103 people 103,000 people in Memphis

which is Memphis is not a big city that's a shitload of people so the station manager said our wrestling show is still the highest rated wrestling show in America and it's still the only live weekly wrestling show in America.

So it's really a phenomenon. So he used to do it live also. But he said he can't imagine leaving Memphis. He said that he can't imagine it. He said not only because he has such a big fan following, but he does numerous commercial work. He does tons of commercials. Tons of them. Plus, he's involved in community,

in the community, particularly the Skinner Center for the Disabled. And he says, quote, it's amazing that people with Down syndrome, for some reason, they can really relate to wrestling as opposed to other sports. Those people are big fans and they're loyal fans. Those people. He's just like, that that is for i don't know

what it is about this sport as compared to other ones but they relate to it so that's weird as shit so there's even an ad right under it for there's the schedule of events in the city going on this includes right above it the junior pageant at the Central High School. It's the Jerry Lawler softball game. And there's all sorts of other shit there going on in the weekend. The Bullet Town Celebration. What is this? The Tennessee Forest Festival.

The McLemoresville Cotton Festival. Has nothing to do with thrift shops. No. The apple festival as well wow that's great spiders and pies the benefit barbecue pork sandwiches uh pork barbecue plates with baked beans and coleslaw for five dollars all right it's a lot of festivals that's there's some of the davy crockett days, October Fest, Fall Fun Fest. Every month we got an event. This is all in a fucking week.

Gene Davenport's going to be there with, quote, Western dinner music. I don't know what the fuck that means. What is Western dinner music? I don't know what that is. Is there lunch music too? I don't know. The Ed O'Neill band is going to be there.

Oh, yes. Al Bundy's coming to town hell yeah i'd listen to whatever that is is he bitching about women admission is three dollars i'm sure it's not the guy i think no i don't think it is uh wow a country gold band still water band rick allen okay uh peggy kirk oh stand-up comedy oh jesus 9 30 p.m every friday Gold Band, Stillwater Band, Rick Allen. Okay. Peggy Kirk. Oh, stand-up comedy. Oh, Jesus. 9.30 p.m. every Friday and Saturday night at South Street Lounge inside Buado's restaurant.

Featuring professional touring comedians. Yep. Admission? Yeah. $6. $6. They're paying those comics nothing. Those are not touring anybody what year was that

92 92 price for same admission at a comedy club inside a mexican restaurant yeah inside a day's in that was free actually that that we didn't even take the six bucks those guys but this shit it's amazing this is not good man those poor comics and then uh if none of that suits your fancy just head over to little caesars where the two medium pizzas with up to three toppings are 8.98 james that was the original pizza pizza right there it's the pizza pizza that's it with plus free crazy bread holy shit Two three topping pizzas and crazy bread for nine bucks. Nine dollars. How terrible is that food?

I mean, honestly, it's like six pounds of food for nine dollars. It's not right. Surprisingly, that gives you heart disease. Weird, right? That'll make you shit yourself involuntarily. Terrific. So it's amazing how shocked we are. It's amazing how amazed we are that we're all dying of heart disease in America with shit like that.

We're like, I'll give you a pizza. It's going to have greasy cheese and three kinds of pork on it. Two of them and some bread smothered in a bunch of oil and shit for $9. Nine bucks, son. smothered in a bunch of oil and shit for $9, right? Nine bucks, son. Yeah. Everybody in your family can have their own deal with two heart-stopping pizzas.

So, oh, man. They should have to legally put quotey fingers up when they call that pizza. Yeah, pizza. Should be in the fine print. Not actually pizza. Pizza shaped product. I think Kraft Foods has to say this is not cheese, right? Don't they? It's an imitation cheese, it says.

Imitation cheese product. That's what they should have to say about that pizza. This is imitation pizza. It's like prop pizza. Right. Like it looks like pizza don't eat it good god no jesus please don't put that in your mouth that's not dough that's just a paint can lid under there that we put sausage cheese on but it stays stiff don't eat it that's the same thing why it's round that's so perfectly searched we needed a good circle. I think we got one. It's a lid off of a five-gallon pancake.

That's all. Ta-da. Dinner is served. It's even got the lip on it like a crust. You can't beat it. Just holds it in. So, 92, after he says he doesn't ever think he'd leave Memphis, he begins his career as an announcer for the WWF at the time,

currently the WWE. This is when, it's not just him leaving his own territory, though. This is the USWA at this point, which became the USWA when they merged with Fritz Von Erich's territory in Texas in 89. So anyway, they have a working relationship

with the WWF here. WWF wants to use them as a minor league thing because they've killed all the other territories where they used to get people from. So now they look around and go, huh, where the fuck do, okay. What are we going to do now? Well, there's one territory left. I guess let's nurture it and use it as a, they would use it as a minor league system, just like baseball. You know, like a guy's coming back from an injury. He's been out for two months.

They send him down to AA for like a week to get his swing back. Rehab him and get him back. That's what they would do with WWE. If a big star was hurt, when he'd come back, he'd go down to Memphis for a couple weeks and work out his timing and then get back with them. They'd use their guys. They'd bring them up through there and all sorts of shit like that so uh he has a big feud with bret hart and the whole hart family for a while that's a big deal here um a bunch of bullshit they have uh uh there was a fucking so stupid they're supposed to have a survivor series match okay that's the thing they're supposed to have a Survivor Series match. Okay.

That's the thing. They're supposed to have a big match at Survivor Series with Bret Hart and his family versus the king and his the king's court, which are going to be a bunch of masked guys. Yeah. And it turned out to be Shawn Michaels. It made no sense because the king couldn't do it. But for now, grace. Let's just say grace. He's made.

He's dominated his territory for 20 years, and now he's made it to the big time, and he's going to have a big match on a pay-per-view. We'll say grace. Okay? 93, I found some really stupid softball game they were in that they had. It was covered heavily by the newspaper. The only reason I put it in is because Brian Christopher is playing in this game as well. Oh, the kid from the video. The kid from the video, yeah.

His son from his first marriage here. And he was, I guess, he was playing. The King's Army was playing. Brian's Bombers were playing another team. So that's Brian Christopher's team. So they had a big deal. I guess 125 people showed up for that, though. Watched them play softball

to watch a bullshit softball it's not a bad draw i gotta say here um not bad at all so um now it's at this point you go well why isn't he going to be in the survivor series if he's booked in the survivor series well let's see here let's let's find out why let's do this here let's see here. Let's find out why. Let's do this. I'm going to read you something from a newspaper from 1993 in Memphis. Quote, I've not kept up with Lawler's career over the years, but I must admit growing up, my brother and I put him second only to the fabulous Jackie Fargo. See, told you. Lawler could always draw a crowd, and at matches and on television, he was always a hit with the younger crowd.

Apparently, according to the AP report, his association with the younger crowd has gone too far. That's the opening to this. Yikes. A grand jury indicts Jerry Lawler, charging him with one count of second-degree rape, three counts of second-degree sodomy, and one count of harassing a witness. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, Jerry, just have a fucking beer. Enough trouble. Then you had to fuck with him afterwards? Just have a beer, Jerry.

Jesus Christ. For the love of shit. Have some of the house wine. It's fine. Oh, who cares, man? So the indictment charges that he engaged in, quote, deviant sexual intercourse, which is the sodomy counts, and sexual intercourse with a girl on June 6th and July 7th in Louisville. They are, by the way, the charges are and the accusations are that there is two different girls. Oh, no.

One of them being 14 and one of them being 13 okay so it didn't get better yes and it wasn't and 17 and a half no not that that's much better but it's still better than 13 so i mean if if one's 18 you know i mean it's technically legal it's still disgusting well that's when he met his fucking current wife yeah yeah oh yuck her current girlfriend and he's like trying to talk her into like having her older sister you know i mean i get yeah that's disgusting but i can see the i can see that happening but this is way no this is out of out of line rape and sodomy counts are both felonies carrying possible prison sentences of five to ten years each. Oh, so steep.

We take that real serious. Yeah, the harassment charge is a misdemeanor with the maximum penalty of 12 months in jail and a $500 fine. He's accused of having sex with both of the eighth graders. Yikes. Remember how I say sophomore and we laugh? Yeah. Eighth grader. There isn't even a word for that.

It's just a girl in eighth grade. Yeah. There isn't even a... There's none of that. It's just... Doesn't even... Eighth grader. No blanket terms.

Eighth grader. So both of the eighth graders in a neighboring jurisdiction across the Ohio River in Indiana also. So no charges are filed there. These are just filed over here. Another wrestler whom the girls told police they also had sex with in Indiana hasn't been charged either.

So Indiana's going to wait and take a wait-and-see approach to this thing. According to the story, Detective Mike Redmond of the City County Crimes Against Children Unit said the girl was a fan of wrestling matches at the Louisville Gardens, where Lawler often appears. Redmond said

that no force was used and the charges were brought because of the girl's age. Duh. Yeah. Force is not the issue. According to the indictment, he's accused of having sex with the Louisville girl June 6th and July 7th. The lawyer, Tim McCall, Lawler's lawyer, told the Associated Press that the charges are

false. Lawler's. So anyway, they said that he's obviously could be facing trouble in Indiana as well. He is actually, you know, he's indicted and everything. He pleads innocent to rape and sodomy charges. And yeah, he it's fucking crazy here. They indicted him on three counts of second degree sodomy charges and um yeah he uh it's fucking crazy here they indicted him on three counts of second degree sodomy one count of second degree rape blah blah blah this is all for the 14 year old louisville girl now it was not at the same time it was two deaf different

two different that's the accusation so yeah that's the accusation they he gets out on a thousand dollar bond might as well just ro art him at that point right yeah like i get it that everyone around there knows who he is and he's not going anywhere because he's got like a bunch of shit to do and appointments and stuff but i don't know promote where he's gonna be you know make him reach into his pocket a little though make it a it. A thousand dollars? That's just not, yeah, it's not enough. If there's enough to indict, let's treat it like it's a crime. Let's treat it like the actual crime it is and make it hurt. That would be nice.

So the district of Memphis attorney here, here's the problem, okay? At some point, Lawler's attorney had met with this girl before the charges came down. So that is considered harassing a witness here in this case. So Lawler, after he's let go on the bond, says, quote, I feel good about what took place here today. I would feel not good about being charged with sodomy. That's a bad thing to say he says this is from the newspaper here that he has acknowledged that he has had contacts with young female fans outside the louisville gardens but vehemently denies any improprieties he said he saw the two girls who accused him of engaging in sex with him on only two occasions, neither of which included inappropriate physical contact.

They asked him if he had exercised poor judgment in his relationship with young fans. Lawler said he realizes now that the contacts with them outside the arena are no longer possible. He said it used to be nobody thought anything about it. Maybe they fucking should have. Are you kidding me? If some wrestler is fine, if some wrestler hung out with your 14 year old daughter outside the arena, would there be no second thought about that? There would be lots of first thoughts, lots of first, second and third thoughts. He said, but times have changed so much.

If you're even around anybody they can say anything yeah it's like you can't even fuck kids anymore it's like it's like every time you fuck a kid now there's like district attorneys that want to get involved it's like come on man crazy this is by the way wrestling has had a real issue over the years with guys fucking teenage girls it's a known thing in the 80s and the 70s that was like a big deal guys would fuck teenage girls and there was a couple guys who didn't like that kind of shit and you weren't allowed to brag about it in front of them because they'd beat the shit out of you right larry hennig being one of those guys according to rowdy rowdy piper he said uh he beat watched

him beat the hell out of some guy for bragging about fucking an underage girl watching pummel a guy in a bar over it so uh but yeah this was a thing i mean we're talking obviously buck zoom hoff with his own daughter we're talking about art bar who had the same exact problem in uh portland and art bar had a problem where it was the same thing it was like a 15 16 year old girl it was all quote consensual and all that kind of shit. And they were like, but, you know, the other wrestlers don't even think twice. They're like, you know, but she was just too young, so he got in trouble. Well, duh. That reminds me, James.

Somebody sent us an autographed Buck Zumhoff picture, and I can't wait to give it back to you. I don't want this in my house. No, we'll have to put some sort of something on that. I want it in your house. I'm going to make some sort of something on that i want it in your house i'm gonna make a little black curtain and hang it over it it's gonna be the curtain of shame i'm making a black gross he uh so you're not even allowed to hang out with kids anymore jesus christ crazy so he tries to take control of the narrative at this point he tries to take complete control of the press narrative and say that he

even feels bad for these poor girls you know but obviously they're nothing i'm just i'm just the poor guy taking society's shit for how they've been treated basically it's yeah he says that it's totally false he's gonna prove it he said i've got a lot of family here in this town and i want you to know that in the next couple of days, you're going to be hearing some stories or seeing some stories on some allegations made about me. This is what he was telling when this all came out. And I just want to say right now that each and every one of these are totally false. And I guarantee you that I will prove that if it has to be in a court of law. That's all I'm going to say about that.

So he says, not true at all. That's a lot of words for for no he also said every time somebody tries to have some prestige they try to throw something up in their face oh that's an uh a fan said that i've been watching waller a long time and i don't believe he did it i've been watching him a long time so i don't believe he did it um another this is yeah back then remember the things they were saying about the mike tyson's yeah that was that shit was crazy this is the what the same year i think or a year later so yeah so he another one a wrestler a wrestler reggie be fine reggie be fine he says i don't believe it he's an all right dude he's been around a long time in here in Memphis. I don't think he did nothing like

that. Meanwhile, he literally works for Jerry Lawler. He's employed by Jerry Lawler. So now Jerry early in the process here writes a letter to the prosecutors where he wants to clear up some shit. Really he wants to talk a whole bunch of shit about

these girls and smear them. This is addressed to Lisa and Nick, who is Lisa Schweikert and Nick King, who are the prosecutors in this case. That's what they believe anyway, presumably. This comes from a recent Deadspin recently re-brought this up again and really did some good work dipping into it because Jerry controlled the press narrative. If you look at the newspapers from 93 he owns this shit it's only his statements coming out there's nothing of the prosecutor nothing of the police nothing of the girls other than you'll see so he says this um okay and i quote i feel if you did a background search on me, you would find that I've always tried to treat people with respect from the smallest of the wrestling fans to the mayors and senators.

And I think they in turn would tell you that my word is good. I also know that if I did a background search, that if you did a background search on the two girls in question these are children mind you 14 year old eighth grade eighth graders right middle schoolers middle schoolers you would find that one of them is having a sexual relationship with the other one's brother okay that's how he starts talking about them you know let's do it in their own words you mean an age-appropriate relationship yeah right possibly and I think that's just disgusting. Let's do. He doesn't need to have hair on his armpits.

That's not right. Jesus Christ. Okay. In their own words, quote, that their mothers are both aware of the relationship, that she smokes, drinks, and has been suspended from school several times. That she brags publicly about having numerous sex partners. Has claimed to be pregnant. Has exposed herself publicly and committed lesbian acts in front of witnesses. Committed lesbian acts in front of witnesses.

The other girl is currently in a sexual relationship with a 40-year-old neighbor whom she babysits for. And also was caught having sex with a black man caught like it's a crime wow her mother was aware of both these situations and admits that her daughter lies to her all the time the girl also claims to have had sex with several wrestlers she also bragged in public about having numerous sex partners and that she has committed lesbian acts in front of witnesses again so so why can't i fuck him well yeah so this girl clearly can't be trusted she's committed lesbian acts in front of god and witnesses and everything else and she's been caught having sex with a black man so i'll be i'm just what am i i'm going home now i'm just crumpling up the

charges and we're throwing them out right i'm crumpling up my sheet here i got a hot pocket in the microwave i gotta go wowie wowie wow so um jerry then there's a i guess the prosecutors search a i don't know if this is a it's a it's an attorney's office. They get a warrant and serve it on an attorney's office to obtain tapes of telephone conversations between Lawler and the two girls who are possible witnesses. I guess there's tapes of that there. And the jury side's trying to say that's outrageous conduct to have to search an attorney's place but if the attorney is hiding evidence then that's what they do ask fucking bruce cutler john gaudy's lawyer who got kicked off of that he couldn't be his fucking lawyer that's how if you you can't

just be a lawyer and then you're not above the law there's privilege but you're not above the law you can't just like not get fucking you can't just hide evidence. You can't hide evidence just because it's detrimental to your case. I mean, I guess you can, but not if they know it's there. That's not going to work. So, yeah, the Survivor Series match happens without him. Later on, this will set up a King of the Ring 1995 with Bret Hart and Jerry Lawler with the big kiss my foot match and all that bullshit. It was really stupid. Back to the rape.

So Jerry publicly just says the girls have the girl recanted. The girls have recanted their stories completely. Don't worry about it. Jerry Lawler's attorney went and got an affidavit from the girl saying exactly whether they wanted her to say or what they would have liked her to say. I'm sure. Don't know if it's true or not. I have no way of knowing that. But yeah, they said that they've recanted the stories.

And because of, quote, conversations with other wrestling fans. These are children that they had. I don't know who if they had them doing it. I'm not going to say they did. But adult wrestling fans were going up and grilling these kids about, because that's not harassing a witness because it's not Jerry doing it, and they're not saying Jerry made me do it. They're just going up and grilling these girls about this shit and trying to get answers.

And then they're taking these answers to the court and saying that's what they said, like that was a deposition or something. being harangued at the back of a wrestling show is not a deposition so uh they're saying that jerry lawler's saying they recanted the story bill massey his attorney says he expects to get the charges against lawler dismissed at the arraignment uh which he doesn't by the way there uh he alluded to the developments here He talked about it on a television interview. He said, we anticipate the whole situation to be over very soon. He said, the lawyer said he met with the girl and her mother at their request. Obviously, they called him and obtained a statement completely exonerating Lawler.

Completely exonerating Lawler. Quote, the young lady says this never happened. This is Lawler's attorney. It just got blown out of proportion. And when she tried to stop the prosecution, the authorities didn't want to. They didn't want to hear the truth. They said, well, it doesn't matter. We're doing it anyway.

Right. Sure. anyway right sure so uh he said that uh he also said lawyer has the lawyer said that lawler has not given the girl and her mother anything in exchange for the statement no money's changed hands no promises of anything in the future nothing at all just they thought their moral center was askew and they didn't want to deal with it anymore. So, um, quote, she and her family are very crushed and hurt by the unwanted attention. She's getting the, uh, they said that they have a family friend.

They, this, they said, this is what ends up. This is how it happened. This is the lawyer saying this quote, they have a family friend who almost sees himself as a fatherly figure to this young lady.

This is how the whole thing came out. He will constantly probe into where she's going and what she's doing. himself as a fatherly figure to this young lady this is how the whole thing came out he will constantly probe into where she's going and what she's doing almost like she's 14 or something and going out running the streets like you'd be like where were you and who were you with you know like she's got a responsible adult working out for her her welfare so strange he'll constantly do that and then and it questions her even accuses her of going out with people constantly like every other parent in america were you with this one were you with that one yeah good god this gentleman was accusing her at one time i think it was just in september and he just kept

on and on he was saying who else have you been with just to spite this man and to make him leave her alone and to make him back off she said if it will make you happy i've been with jerry lawler so just to be spiteful she said jerry lawler and then named a few others and the lawyer says this man went to the police and that's where it got started that's their story that it was was just like out-of-control bullshit. He said that he also got a statement from the same girl clearing him of any wrongdoing in southern Indiana. Got to clear that up, too, for that jurisdiction. He said, quote, Everybody's a bit leery of this and did not want to come in too quickly.

He said this is of the Indiana authorities. The whole way it happened was rather questionable, and in my opinion, that Indiana was holding back to wait and see what happened in Kentucky. I'm hopeful with this statement, we can have this whole thing resolved quickly in both states. All over with. He says, quote, Mr. Lawler sees this young lady as more or less of a victim of the system herself, her and her family. This just got blown out of proportion, and that happens sometimes with major celebrity figures. The girl's been a fan of his for years, never misses the matches in Louisville.

He says, quote, there are groups of these young wrestling fans that follow these wrestlers everywhere. They have to keep security by them to keep them at bay. He has spoken with them, of course. But as far as going out with them on a date situation or anything like that, absolutely not. One time when Lawler was wrestling in Louisville or Indiana, she found out what room he was in and came over there. And he talked to her for about 30 minutes or so. And that was all. Because he's a kind man, James. He's just a kind man.

He said that, quote, she made up the story in frustration after talking to this John Segevan guy who's a Louisville bakery employee and former boyfriend of her sister who was watching over her and asking her stuff. So he took the story to police and he said, quote, I told the attack. Oh, this is the the Massey guy said, I told the detectives what I told already told John. I told them that on the morning of May 26, a friend of mine and I. Oh, this is the girl met Jerry Lawler at Louisville Gardens and went with him to the days in in Sellersburg, Indiana. I told them that both the friend and i performed oral sex on jerry lawler i was not telling the truth this is her recanting

affidavit that the lawyer got from her jerry lawler's lawyer i was afraid and police detectives told me they wanted me to tell them what i had told john that's why i said this and i know what i did was wrong we did go over to jerry lawler's room though and he did take us out to eat at taco bell shopping at value city and back to louisville gardens why would he why would he no no i don't a man doesn't buy take fans shopping and feed them yo no allegedly fucking whatever the fuck you have to say to make this legally fine in my opinion allegedly whatever the fuck you do not take two eighth grade girls if you're a mid-40s man after a wrestling match take them at to your motel are you kidding me you could not if their room was on fire no i'd be like

i'll meet you out in the hall i'll meet you out in the hall i'm you're not coming in this fucking room then take them to taco bell like we're on a fucking on a date and then shopping at value city what is this pretty woman what the fuck is going on? He's the most frugal pedophile on earth, if that's the case. Well, that's why he maybe, that's why he chooses to hang out with these girls. Real impressed by that shit.

It's a cheap date. A $14 date. Frugal dick. That's the statement that the lawyer obtained from her. So that's all. That means that people must have saw them at Taco Bell, saw them at Value City, saw them at the motel. Those are undeniable. They knew they're all with him somewhere there.

Yeah. Yeah. People say they all everybody recognizes Jerry Lawler in this area. Hey, that's the king. So why are you with those two young girls? Yeah. It's the king with his daughters. Yes. He's 44 and they're fucking 13, 14.

Yes, that is daughter material there. Easy. So, yeah. Yeah. So that means they have. So in order, the attorney said you have to include that you hung out with him. So that is disturbing to me. that that is disturbing to me she she also said she repeated to the detectives similar fabricated stories about additional incidents involving lawler on june 7th and july 7th or june 6th and

july 7th in louisville incidents she said involved her but not her friend and those are the charges that led to the indictment uh she said quote lawler has treated me as a friend for a few years now and has always been nice to me and my mother. I'm sorry I said these things. And yeah, Lawler said that the in his affidavit, he said that the there's an admission in these tapes about her saying she didn't do it. But one of the two girls told police that Lawler told her all she had to do is lie and say this never happened and that was the key to the whole thing so the other girl who didn't make an affidavit said he came to me and said all i had to do is lie and it would be over yeah and this one says this shit and then she says that so it's that's her story we're um so both the girls uh names obviously are going to

be redacted out of this and all that sort of thing yeah so um um the letter states we told the first story to detectives about doing sexual things with jerry lawler that's totally not true then we told the truth the second time why is this case still going on all this is doing is putting our families through stress and worries we just want this to be over with. So can we all just go on with our lives? Please take this into consideration. That's also what she put on there. So here's the fans investigating.

Okay. Two girls. This is two acquaintances of the girls said they began hearing rumors about the girls in Lawler in August and questioned them closely about the matter. This is wild. This is Shannon Kenny, who's 20. Not a friend of a 13-year-old, by the way. I went in and neither's a 44-year-old. You're not friends. Friends

when you're 13 are age-appropriate. 16's a little old for a friend. You know what I'm saying? For a 13-year-old. Fuck out of here. here so if your kid was hanging out with 17 year old boys he's 13 you'd be like no too old no not your friends exactly how about 20 and 44 even even if it's my boy and it's uh 18 year old boys no leave even your boy hanging out with 17 year old boys you're like nope let him play fortnight leave him

alone yep that's it she said i went and asked jerry about it so she knows jerry if she can walk up to him i pulled him off to the side and said look i'm hearing that you slept with her i said you didn't right and he said no i didn't she's only 12 years old she wasn't 12 but i've been with him alone myself and i'm of age and he didn't try anything on me. Well, what does that say? She almost wrote the joke herself there. That was literally a joke. Like if someone wrote a joke, they'd be like, I've been over there.

I'm of age. He never tries anything. Oh, but I'm and then Jay Leno giggles. You know, like that's like a hacky joke. He said, I went to her and she was like, no, none of that ever happened. Like, why would she tell you anyway? Because it's none of your fucking business. 20 year old creeper.

She doesn't want to keep talking about this and reliving it. It's horrible. Susan Ward, 22, another fan, said she and Kenny, the other one there, both questioned the two girls about the rumors on another occasion. So they're harassing these girls. Will you leave these little girls alone? No wonder why they want the whole thing dropped. I mean, true or not, if it was true even, you'd be like, oh my God, I can't go anywhere without people harassing me about this. She said that she questioned them and she said, quote, we asked them if they ever did anything.

We'd both been grilling them right and left. I said, you never messed with them right and they said no gross dude what are you what the fuck is this shit and the interrogation this is the newspaper they're in terror we interrogated them thoroughly okay um so um they said that teenage girls are always hanging around the wrestlers for ever, as long as they could remember, they said. She said, quote, but I've never known any of personal relationships. Like, they're idols and these little kids are in love with, you know, not for sex. Of course not.

That never happens. So they talked to Jeff Gaylord about it. Remember him? Yeah. Our boy from a few episodes back there. He's in Memphis at this point, and he says that the wrestlers should be, and most of them are, aware and concerned about the potential pitfalls of underage female fans. No, there aren't. That's what he said.

That's not a thing. Wow. Gaylord said, quote, they try to power position each one of them. You know, they all want your attention focused on them. And they'll say and do just about anything to get that attention. If they want to hug, I make sure both of my hands are on the table. Most of the fan contact is at the table where they were yourself, photographs and autographs and shit. So he said the girl that was named in the allegations against Lawler approached him last summer.

And he said, quote, I've been with a wrestler. He said that she said in like a sing songy taunting voice like a child would do on a playground, you know, like an eighth grader. And I said, what do you mean? Did you have sex with a wrestler? And she said, no, but I want to. OK, well, you still can't fuck her though doesn't matter how much she wants to she's a child jeff gaylord should have been around so much earlier jesus so much earlier so dumb chris hansen wrestling edition that's all it would be

wrestling with predators that's what it would be called wrestling with predators so we're gonna pin them all um and by the way lawyers i talked to a bunch of lawyers here and they all say that it's not unusual at all for the victim of a sexual assault to recant her story in a sex crime case because a lot of times once it comes out things like this happen things like you're threatened because you're a fucking child right not only that your family starts telling you why don't we just push this let's just side with everybody this has happened people are talking to me at work it's in the blah blah blah and it that they end up fucking that happens a lot i don't know if it happened here now the deadspin article that came out a few years ago now bringing it back up again and by the way lawler did it to himself that it

came back up again because he will talk about it but in 2017 somebody said oh wow and posted an old newspaper clipping of his arrest for rape and sodomy yeah and he said like i found this cool old memphis wrestling thing here and lawler not looking or something retweeted it retweeted the story of him and people were like what the fuck is wrong with you why are you retweeting this you fucking idiot so then that's the hubris he's so proud of himself that got the attention of some reporter at deadspin and they decided to get back into this a little bit and talk to the cops because they looked through it and it lawler had all like i said he was on the offensive the entire time. So what's the story here? So he said that Lawler tried to get back up, got several witnesses to sign affidavits on his behalf.

They're basically all the same themes as Lawler's shit of like these girls are skanks and you can't believe them because they fuck black guys and commit lesbian acts in front of witnesses. If they did it in private it's one thing but jesus christ in front of people under the stars give me a fucking break doing it in places where you can get caught come on come on uh there's also affidavits from fans claiming that one of the girls recanted the allegation and the other one claimed she was going to get ten thousand dollars out of lawler for it So one affidavit, though, they say in this article is a bit out of place. It's from the person who drove Lawler to the motel where the girls said they met him. And the point of the statement appears to be that she didn't see the girls enter his room. Lawler, though, because that's one of the affidavits he presented.

But he had told police during a 90 minute interview that yes, the girls had been in his room. So right away he never denied that they were in his fucking motel room. And he said the same thing to Indy investigators in Indiana. And he maintained they use the motel phone and that was it. Got right out of there. He said he talked to him for 30. This is a 30 minutes and they wanted to use a phone.

And so then we went to Taco Bell. Yeah. None of it makes any sense. None of it. Well, I'll read you from the police file here. Police file also debunks much of the historical narrative around the case, some of which was set by Lawler himself. He really did set the narrative. In an interview with Lawler published December 18th, 1993. Issue of Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter.

Editor Wade Keller asked Lawler if he had anything to say about the case that he had not already expressed publicly. Quote, I think it was made to sound so much worse than it was when the only way it was reported is Jerry Lawler is charged with rape. That's what he, that was his quote. Doesn't look good. No. with rape that's what he that was his quote doesn't look good no when in all actuality all it is here's a young girl who goes to a wrestling who claimed to who goes to a wrestling who claimed to her friend of hers that she had sex with jerry lawler i mean how many groupies or girls who go to wrestling have claimed to have sex with the wrestlers millions and then this just got told

to the wrong individual so that's what he said is that what women did back then they just claimed to fuck them all i don't know if they claimed to i don't fucking know maybe that's a wild wild claim yeah i mean i know they there was a lot of groupies they tried to fuck the wrestlers but how many times have you gone to concert james and then been like told all your friends the next day yeah i'd fuck method man and all the wu-tang yeah it was pretty cool dude yeah it was a bukkake party man it was pretty dope capadonna was there too yeah they got like even the peripheral even the peripheral woo was there it was crazy poor inspector poor inspector so uh the police report however says the investigation began after one of the girls was confronted about having a sexual relationship with a boy by a male family friend.

That's the guy we were talking about. The girl told the man that she had, in fact, slept with the boy. When asked if she'd had sexual contact with anyone else, she named Lawler and Bill Martin, who wrestled as Bill Marino in USWA and wasn't charged because that was Indiana the friend told the girl's mother and one of them uh called the crimes against children unit to report it so the guy did the guy who Lawler says called the cops he wasn't the one who called the cops the mother called the cops initially the mother also told the police that after confirming the details with her daughter she called the mother of the other girl and their stories matched up the accounts that both girls

gave to police which involved lawler stripping naked the girls being hesitant to do anything and all of them watching cartoons before the girls finally performed oral sex on lawler also matched up god damn it like. Like I said, I don't know anything and legally and I don't know and allegedly and all that shit that if I had to, if you said, how would Jerry Lawler do this? That's exactly how I would think he would

do it. And the other point is that if that is true, he did. I want to know what cartoon it was. Did he woo him with like uh peppy lepew or like the jetsons i think it's 93 would probably be ren and stimpy i think he got him maybe because back then that would be you'd have to go edgy i think if you want yeah something if you're if you want some creepy uh you know pedophile sex i think you gotta go edgy don't you with these girls it's just

disgusting man i don't even know so that matched up man later all before the case went public lawler running a tape recorder called the girls homes where he ended up speaking to at least one of them and or their mothers allegations yeah that's harassing the witness allegations were then relayed about him suggesting that this be taken care of by talking to his lawyer. One of the girls maintained that everything she said was true, but she was unsure if she wanted to pursue the case in light of Lawler's call. She found it intimidating. Previously, the initial police interview, one of the girls had broken down in tears while telling detectives what happened in the motel room with Lawler. As for the issue of whether or not the girls recanted,

retired Louisville detective Mike Redmond, remember him from before, he worked the case. He told Deadspin that they never did recant. Instead, they refused to testify against Lawler, with Redmond's interpretation of the decision being that the girls didn't want to get the king into trouble because everybody would hate them then because he's so beloved. Wow. king into trouble because everybody would hate them then because he's so beloved um wow and uh

1994 finally by the way um he uh the uh the first the john segavan guy the guy who they said came forward he's he's charged with raping one of the girls what the fuck john so afterwards and i guess he ends up raping a 15 year old girl who i believe is the same one and now that girl's pregnant by the way oh no don't know if it's the same one that made the accusation or a different 15 year old girl or what but he knocked up a 15 year old and is arrested for it so So that's terrible. So February, what is it, the 23rd here? Jesus Christ, this is pretty bad. February the 23rd here, 1994, the other girls, the girls decide they didn't want to testify. They didn't want to do anything.

So they had to drop most of the charges against him. They're dismissed. Except he actually pleads guilty to harassing a witness have to because he couldn't there was no way around that one um so uh one of lawler's attorneys cited the girl's reluctance to testify as a factor in the deal being made the prosecution would not comment on the plea past saying that that it served justice. And yeah, they didn't say if... He sent a letter that was in the fucking newspaper accusing these girls of terrible things.

Like literally, that's why he sent that to him because he knew that would get out publicly. So that is a fucking horrible thing to do, whether it's true or not. It's fucking horrible. Any of it's true. I don't even know. It's just fucking horrible.

So anyway, fall of 1994, he feuds with doink the clown the wwe soon as it's over they take him right back by the way no problem as they've done in the they've done that in the past to see pat patterson mel phillips fucking uh garvin terry garvin there's a fucking it's happened a lot so yeah this is uh a feud with doink where doink has a little person sidekick named dink so then lawler gets another he gets his own little person sidekick named queasy so then they would add more sidekicks so in the end it was it was a goddamn Survivor Series match with Doink, with Dink, Wink, and Pink. And then Lawler had Queasy, Cheesy, and Sleazy. Oh, my God. That was maybe the worst match I've ever seen in my life.

Not fun. Two grown men with three little people. Yep. On each side of them. That's how it works, on each side. That is an eight-man total. 1994, he stars with Michael J. Well, not stars with, but he's in an episode of Life with Mikey, which is a Michael J. Fox sitcom from back then.

Have you ever seen this sitcom? I don't think I have. It was ABC, I think. I think. Yeah, I think it was. It was ABC, I think. I think. Yeah, I think it was.

I guess he says that he plays a wrestler in it. Shocking. He takes part in a wrestling match at a birthday celebration for a little girl. Quote, I'm a big, mean, masked wrestler. It was so funny. They kept changing the name. At first, I was going to be Mad Max. Then they apparently realized it was a movie Mad Max, so they named me the Terminator.

They had to know they couldn't use Mad Max. They definitely had to know they couldn't use Terminator. So an hour later, they changed my name to the Lobotomizer, which is a terrible name. He's a Kennedy. Right. And Michael J. Fox gets into the wrestling, too. This is pre-diagnosis here. Oh, too. This is pre-diagnosis here. Oh, boy.

He says, quote, I pick him up over my head, spin him around four or five times, and throw him onto the other wrestler. He catches him, and they both fall back on the mat. And then that wrestler throws Michael onto the ring floor. And I guess they had a stuntman at first. But Fox, I guess, watched the stunt double do it a couple times. And then he said, I want in. I'm doing that. Maybe this is what caused it. We don't know.

Can we blame Waller? He never took a wrestling move before this, I can't imagine. So you know what? He said the director was really dead set against it. He came up to me and said, can you do this without getting him hurt? I said, well, all I'm going to do is pick him up. When I throw him, the wrestler basically will catch him. That won't hurt him.

The wrestler's going to take the brunt of the blow when he falls down. Then he's tossing him onto the mat. That won't hurt. So he said Michael J. Fox loved it, got all excited, was super into it. And he did it. And he did it. And then now look at him. Fucking poor bastard.

Now look at him. Now look at what happened to the poor guy. Thanks a lot, Jer. Thanks, Jerry. Jesus, you're really fucking up here. Grace was, that was a hard grace, wasn't it? It was. So he's doing commercials all over Memphis at this point for Gwatney Chevrolet Geo, Term City Furniture and Appliance,

I-Tech Fireworks City, and also for some holiday fun shop i want commercials so bad jesus christ that's awful so he also at this point goes and wrestles for jim cornett's uh smoky mountain wrestling in its dying days he becomes the champion has a little bit of a thing here in 96 where he draws ultimate warrior comes back to wwf and he has a big he you know drew a big picture of ultimate warrior and it's like a cartoony kind of crazy looking picture it's good though yeah and it's all framed and shit and then he's gonna present it to him in the ring and then lawler ends up smashing it over his head of course because anything like that's getting smashed because it's wrestling yeah no trophy or picture can go unbroken.

So Lawler says, quote, Who would have thought that a wrestler would ever make a million dollars for one match? But it happens. And a lot of the cable TV stars make $750,000 or $800,000 per year. It used to be you got paid based on the percentage of the gate receipts. Now all these guys have big contracts. It's human nature to do as little as possible to make as much as possible that's why you get some stinking lousy matches these guys get lazy and our sport has suffered because of that no jared that's the

american dream that's the whole idea in america you work to a point where you do less and make more you fucking idiot he i think that's an every the worldwide dream i think i would hope that's what people it's just human nature it's just what we gotta do he's cheap as fuck too and there's a honky tonk man is his cousin by the way i don't know if you knew that or not but honky tonk man's his cousin honky tonk man wrestled in memphis and at one point he met he remembers getting a 998 check for a week because he was selling out main events. So Jerry said to him, what's it feel like to make your first $1,000 check? And he goes, I don't know.

I haven't made my first $1,000 check yet. I just made a $998 check. And Jerry went, see, I told you, and turned around to the other guy. I said, I told you he'd fucking do that. I told you, and turned around to the other guy. I said, I told you he'd fucking do that. I told you. He literally wrote him a $998 check to see if he would complain about it and then ask him about it to try to irk him. How about you give him the extra two bucks and not be a twat? $2, Jer, you fucking jerk.

Just to see if he could fuck with him. That's the kind of guy that he was as a promoter. So much so that during this time, when he came to WWF, there was a lot of guy that he was as a promoter so much so that during this time when he came to wwf there was a lot of people that fucking hated him that had worked for him in the past and got his shitty payoffs so i believe it was x-pac who did it uh took a very very large dump in his crown in the locker room and got just a big shit right in his crown and then jerry went to vince someone's shitting in my crown and there was a rule that you can't touch Jerry's crown anymore. No shitting in Jerry's hat.

It's a solid move, though. If I was told do not shit in his hat ever again, I would piss in it. You'd be stalking it to shit in it. I would shit elsewhere and bring it to throw it in it i wouldn't yeah so stupid 97 he does a little with ecw i won't talk much about it but he goes in he hits tommy dreamer in the nuts with a fucking cane at one point that's pretty bad uh i think he broke one of his balls too he had to go to the hospital oh my god yeah bad stuff 90s filming man on the moon which is the jim carrey andy kaufman film and he's in it because he's in it i mean he's in it that's most of the

end of andy's life there so uh during that apparently uh he actually went after he put jim carrey in the hospital at one point uh during filming i guess jim was really trying to be super method this is when he was first couple years doing drama so i feel like he felt like weird jim carrey times and he yeah he got real crazy and uh the one who is this the carrie's manager said jim was immersed in the role as andy uh played it as andy would have mr lawler reacted unprofessionally and he attacked him he attacked him and injured his neck apparently he i don't know if it's real or not but i guess he grabbed him by the hair and kind of fucking

whipped him around a little bit and jim had to go get his neck checked out afterwards because he doesn't weigh 240 pound right um waller denied that he savagely attacked the actor he said no that wasn't it at all and the director said, Jerry's still in the movie. We're shooting our final scenes today. So that's that. 1999. Yeah. He is at the Memphis International Airport. And Officer Camille Carleen Pegas charged that after she issued Lawler a parking ticket, he screamed obscenities at her, crpled the ticket threw it at her chest she then told lawler not to leave but he instead started his van and quote accelerated toward her

as she turned to avoid being struck she said he ran over her foot oh jerry jerry remember when randy moss did that it was like he was like he fucking filleted a baby on national television when he did that. It was like he shot the cop. And it was within two years of this. And did you hear one thing about this? Never heard of it. Exactly. That says a lot right there.

So Lawler said the officer was nowhere near his van when he pulled away, and he didn't run over her foot. He said he just paid $48 to get his van at a long-term parking had pulled around the baggage claim to load his luggage after returning home from florida he said that the officer told him that she ticketed him for being parked in an area set aside for active loading only i said what is he doing you can't do that he's saying i'm the king yeah this is my car first no this is memphis i go get my car and pull it up and then somebody has my bags waiting for me because i i do what i want here i i can fucking fuck 14 year olds with impunity are you kidding me allegedly they're not saying that

happened we don't know if that happened or not no idea judging by the legal charges it didn't happen we have no clue that was was a fictional Jerry Lawler character. So that I just said, I'd say that satire. He said, what am I supposed to do? What are you supposed to do? Throw your bags into a moving vehicle? That's what he said. So anyway, he's charged with reckless endangerment.

You walk to your car, you put them in your car and leave like fucking everybody else. Yeah. It's a pain in the ass and you got to do it. It's a nightmare. It sucks. That's traveling, you fucking jerk. Tough shit. He ends up pleading guilty to reckless endangerment and pays a, you sir, a fuck off $25 fine.

Okay. Take that. 1999, he decides he wants to be mayor of Memphis. Oh God. His platform is focused on making the streets safer for residents, beautifying the city, and improving the quality of education. He also vows to attract business to Memphis, improve the traffic flow, create more parks,

and decrease property taxes. So you want to fix the roads and create parks with no extra income. Yeah, that'll work. We can do that. No problem. We're going to decrease our own revenue stream and do more. How? Everybody grab a shovel and we can do this.

That's the only way you can do that. Let's all beautify. He said it's not going to be a typical political message because I think voters have been turned off by the mudslinging and the typical partisanship that goes along with those who run for public office as he tried to um he tried to you know make this serious here uh one of the other candidates said if he can beat mary rose mccormick which i think he can pin her one two three if i'm being honest with you i think he can pile drive mary rose no problem. She doesn't sound like one that can withstand a pile driver. I don't think she can, man. I'm just saying.

He apparently says that his fundraising goal is like he's got to go over $100,000. And he says, I know from my own business experience, it doesn't make good business sense to spend more money than you take in. So I've said I will not spend more than $140,000 to win this election. So there you go. He gets the rock to come do a campaign event for him. Oh, what? In 99, in the peak of his shit here. He, Lawler says, I feel like we're losing the city that we all love inch by inch.

We're losing out on jobs. We're losing out on housing. We're losing out on roads. Are they falling apart and going away yeah remember that highway now it's nothing now it's orange grove in some segments of our city we're losing whole generations of people to drugs and crime and to hopelessness and uh his platform included cuts to crime and improve education he said the way we take back the streets is with a well-paid police force that has high morals and high morale.

But no one will pay them those high wages because no taxes. He said, I will see that the city schools are air conditioned. Oh, that's cheap. Yeah, let's add more to this. Wow. But in 95, you guys don't have air conditioning yet? No. Fuck schools here still don't have it.

But this is the South. It's hot in Memphis. Yeah, that's my point. It schools here. Still don't have it. But this is the South. It's hot in Memphis. That's my point. It's bad. He says that if AutoZone can build Memphis a ballpark, then I think other corporations can help Memphis maintain educational excellence. Because you want to be beholden to corporations with your education. That's what you want.

You want fucking, didn't they do that as a joke on The Simpsons back in the day? Like, you know, in the future it'd be like your history lesson sponsored by pepsi how many pepsis are your algebra lesson how many pepsis if you were drinking a pepsi and your friend was drinking a pepsi that's what that is and that's what it would be i think they do that for nothing fuck out of here worse than that they're gonna delete anything in history that they did wrong if it's yeah yeah that's it. Yeah, they could do anything. Oh, good. History brought to you by Exxon Valdez.

No oil spill in this book at all. Yeah, none. They asked him, what qualifications do you have to be mayor? He said, in my mind, the mayor's basically a decision maker. I think what I bring to the table is someone who has no strings attached, no political past, don't owe anything to special interest groups or to any groups whatsoever, and can just look every situation

with some common sense. Oh, boy. Your decisions are terrible, Jer. Wow. That sounds like every non-political person that runs for office says that. Because I know nothing about it, I'll do a better job at it.

Imagine if an auto mechanic said that to you. Yeah, I'd love to rebuild your engine because I'm an outsider i feel like i'll concentrate more on learning those specific things to your engine yeah but you don't know how you don't know how the fucking car works because you're not a fucking mechanic yeah but i make steaks on the weekend so yeah but i yeah but you know but i'm a line cook at Applebee's. So I feel like the management there is the same as, you know, understanding school bonds and municipal fucking in overpricing your radiator. Yeah, because I should deal with the police union and their pension plan and everything. I feel like and negotiate with them because that's really what I'm an expert at. So, yeah, he said the rock ends up campaigning, like I said, and The Rock, what he says, wow. He gets some votes, too.

He's going to get some votes from getting The Rock in here. One guy here, who is this? Carrie Brown, who's 29, said, anybody who'd bring The Rock to Beale Street has my vote. I'm definitely voting for Jerry. Jesus Christ. Her friend, Stephanie Bravo, they're each 27. They dished out $50 for the fundraiser here to see The Rock. He brought our hottie here. He's got us.

That's what they said because they want to fuck The Rock. Oh, my God. Fans at the University of Memphis rally weren't as easily swayed here. Bo Luxman, 28, says he thinks lawler's a great guy but isn't a right man for a mayor luxman came to lawler's rally to see the rock but he's voting for someone else so he said yeah i wanted to see the rock and all but he uh the guy's a wrestler yeah he's polling at six percent at this point here that's not good now rock said uh quote it doesn't matter how you're going to do in the poll how you're doing in the polls let the rock tell the newspaper what they

can do with their poll then he said take the newspaper the sunday edition and roll it up keep rolling it turn it sideways pour some of that famous memphis barbecue sauce on top and stick it straight up their candy asses that's that's his fucking bullshit okay right up their candy ass so they all cheered uh one 21 year old law student said that she was offended by the rocks language yeah quote i think it's ridiculous to have educated people shouting obscenities some people think that's positive but if anything is but i think it's derogatory and he shouldn't be able to say that here they're at a college i wasn't trying to get my locker i was just trying to get

to my locker and i stumbled upon this travesty i'm just trying to get a book this guy's telling me to shove the times up my ass sideways she said that she doesn't know um who she's gonna vote for but sure shit isn't gonna be that idiot basically whoever know who she's going to vote for, but it sure as shit isn't going to be that idiot, basically. Whoever brought that guy just lost my vote. That's fucking hilarious. It's so funny. Here is another guy, an 18-year-old who just registered to vote. He said, Jerry Lawler's a man of his word.

I've been watching Jerry Lawler for years. I'm tired of all these professional politicians dishing out all this stuff. I believe Jerry will be different. Oh, God. Stop voting will be different oh god stop voting you please don't vote you're not smart enough to vote you're not ready um wow uh that is crazy the rock this was one of his first jobs in memphis that's why he came there and um yeah betty robinson 39 said she plans to vote for lawler she said everybody who gets in there has been lying to me in the mayor's office. So maybe Lawler will be a little different. Why? Why would you think that?

Why would you think that? Someone who's never been, you know, accountable to anybody would probably be more honest with me. No, they wouldn't. They'll lie more. God damn it. Karen Arnold, 56, says she hasn't decided who she'll support for mayor but she'll consider voting for lawler i think he has a lot to offer there's more there than just the wrestling oh god so she says brian clay uh here uh he says that he will consider voting for lawler even though he has a history historically supported some other candidate he said young

people are really at the crossroads on this thing. He said the current mayor back when he was elected kept saying help is on the way. I don't see it. And with Lawler in the race, he's the kind who pushes out any of the others who are considering an altar as an alternative to those two. Another one said that she thinks that she's a she said she's a black woman and she thinks that he's going to get a lot of black votes she said they like the man as a wrestler what makes you think

they wouldn't like him as a mayor matter of fact they may love him so there you go that's fucking wild the mayoral results though he comes in 12th out of 15 candidates so he beat two people he beat three people yeah i mean they might have their hair might have been on fire literally so we don't know with 11.7 of

the ballots and um he's disappointed afterwards you know he's disappointed and he goes home and you know he forgot to stop at taco bell and right he's just wishing some food would pop up and nothing's there. He's like, God damn it. I wish somebody would come to my hotel room door and at least talk to me for 30 minutes or make a phone call or something. And then a knock is at the door and it's definitely not the person that he wanted. It's my grandma. And she's got her apple knife and Sherry's in trouble.

And she says. Ma, how is it you've come to arrive here? Ma, why are you here? Why? No, I don't. No, I take my, I keep my knife right where it is. I hear story. I don't like the story, but why you come here?

First of all, I don't eat the Taco Bell. It come here what you first of all i don't eat the taco bell it's no good for you you know eat that that's no good and why are you a young girl you hang out why the young girl you old man look at my look at you you old me of you balls a wrinkle down your knees are you gonna with the young girl man no no i i can't no no i bro i didn't bring you any meatball get out no no i got it poof and in a in a poof of marinara sauce she is uh definitely gone and jerry is and paring knives and jerry's very confused he's like i've never seen no italian before so she smells delicious smells delicious september 2000 marries stacy carter or miss kitty or cat whatever she's going by this week that's those are her wrestling names she uh he also appears in a cameo of in a music video of someone i've never heard of so i assume it's country music

clay davidson yeah not good okay all right there you go so in 2001 his wife here stacy is involved in a storyline in the whole deal uh in wrestling here uh what ends up happening is though uh she ends up being released by the wwf and lawler ends up quitting the company with her in protest yeah so all this time he's gonna quit for his new wife um apparently after that like he came back but then left again and then they ended up splitting up and then he's back in the WWF he's like I'm sorry, guys. Never mind. You guys are right. She's an asshole. Never mind. My bad. Yeah. Stacey ended up leaving, working in real estate in Florida, and then ended up marrying the wrestler who played Kazarni in the WWE at the time.

So there you go. They were married. Jimmy Hart was there. Edge was there. A bunch of wrestlers were there. 2002, he released It's Good to Be the King Sometimes, his autobiography. He collects things. He collects Coca-Cola and Superman merchandise and owns a replica of the Batmobile.

Like a fucking kit car of the 1960s batmobile we're talking the adam west he's a fucking that's a grown child superman merchandise coca-cola shit everywhere they said more there's not a coca-cola fucking factory that has more coca-cola shit wagons and and like like the marlboro sponsored shit but coke yeah but, but Coca-Cola. He said he has all sorts of shit. He says, you know you're in trouble when you get a certificate of good taste from the Coca-Cola company in Atlanta. Yeah. You must buy so much shit. His newest addition here was a red Coca-Cola big button with a Coke bottle and the company's script done in neon.

He said he saw it while he was in Vegas for a pay-per-view and dressed in full wrestling shit stopped an interview to go into an antique store to buy it wow that's how crazy he is that's how much he loves coca-cola loves it uh 2004 he's got jukeboxes as well with old 45s in him you know like an old-timey jukebox so he meets a stripper at taco bell. Okay. This is a, that's where I'll steer, you know? So he meets a stripper at Taco Bell and begins dating her. He is Taco Bell's. Like he loves,

he would love a punch card from Taco Bell. Oh, if they had like a free sandwich at the end of that rainbow, a free gordita, he'd be so happy. Furious. They serve Pepsi. God damn it.

Yeah, really? I'm surprised. So apparently he was, Jesus Christ, she thought he had, somehow the rumor was out that he had $250,000 in cash stashed in this jukebox, okay? So she tries to arrange a burglary with two Memphis policemen charged in a corruption case and everything. Wow. Yeah, it's fucking interesting.

They didn't get anything out of the whole deal. Officer David Tate, who is 37, who's been on the force for 18 years, assigned to the can canine unit was charged with plotting a burglary taking bribes from nightclubs protecting drug dealers and transporting prostitutes oh my god uh after this federal authorities announced his arrest they said that the fbi wiretaps of him boasting he would kill to get two hundred thousand dollars from someone's jukebox essentially jerry's is gonna kill for it he said quote i ain't going out like a punk i'll stand there and trade lead with them he told his girlfriend over the phone so i he resigned from the force i'm gonna take uh after multiple charges um he recruited as helpers two

other officers billy scott and john d vaugh So they were also there. They were willing to trade lead, too? Well, the wiretap captured Tate discussing the burglary, telling the girlfriend that he had the floor planned for the house and that the owner wasn't home on Mondays. Because that's Monday Night Raw where he's announcing. He said he was prepared to fit one of them with a bulletproof vest because he believed the homeowner was armed and said he planned to wear a pizza delivery uniform to case the place he said that lawler's home was the target they found out they uh they was out of town on on monday uh lawler said those guys sound so brazen it's shocking the fact that some of our police are corrupt. He said, what kind of person would shoot somebody for $66,000? He said it was supposed to be $200,000.

He says he owns it. It's a split between four people. Yeah, well, there you go. There you go. He said he owns an old.22 caliber rifle and has very little value other than sentimental value in his home. He says his jukebox has about 100 CDs in it, but not the kind you can take to the bank.

So just regular old CDs. Yeah, that's how it works here. Also, these cops were Tate was accused in an array of federal charges that we described of taking bribes to tip off topless nightclubs when raids were coming and taking prostitutes who are actually undercover FBI agents to high rollers at tunica casinos and of protecting couriers taking ecstasy and high-grade methamphetamine to a buyer in mississippi holy shit he is a fucking party this guy uh wow 2007 jerry is inducted into the wwe of Fame by William Shatner. Is that right?

Yeah, because they had a storyline, funny little thing in 1995. June 2007, he's in Mississippi. He's accused of assaulting some wrestling manager, but this sounds like this guy deserved it and I don't even care about it. But still, a guy named Sal the Big Cheese Carrente accuses Jerry of punching him three times. He's a wrestling manager.

This happened apparently according to the complaint. Lawler punched Carrente when he was on his way to the locker room, and then they got into it later in the parking lot. So Lawler said that he thought that carenti had hit a fan and during that he said while he was hitting the guy lawler while lawler was hitting carenti lawler was yelling you stupid motherfucker you don't ever hit a fan if that's what it was great he should be kicking his ass good you say you're helping the business uh but lawler said he doesn't give a fuck they said there's a court date schedule but only if they can get lawler served with the subpoena and otherwise they can't they can't do it because he wants to sue him so um 2009 lawler again runs for mayor of memphis

in a special mayoral election uh he comes in fifth this time wow out of six candidates though oh that's not that's not good he only gets four percent of the vote way worse so i mean i don't know if people just uh you know they didn't know it was him or they didn't they forgot about him i mean four percent's pretty bad you almost got to feel sorry for the guy at that point or maybe not yeah you know who i really feel sorry for maybe maybe the people who they thought were actually on the ballot. We don't know. Who I feel sorry for are these people. Jerry Lawler, project manager at the University of Wisconsin.

He's a U.S. He also works in the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs. Oh. Jerry Lawler, retired IT director at the Archdiocese of St. Louis. They sound like they might have similar interests. You never know. Retired IT director at the Archdiocese of St. Louis. They sound like they might have similar interests. You never know. Retired. Jerry Lawler, Java soft engineer at IEEE Computer Society in Israel.

Jerry Lawler, cutting supervisor at Priority Envelope in Lenexa, Kansas. And finally, Jerry Lawler, clinical psychologist at Safe Harbor Behavioral Care in Baltimore, Maryland. There you go. So that's hilarious. He tries to run another Jerry Lawler's Memphis wrestling in 2010, but it doesn't work out so well. And I think it'll last three shows, and that's that. September 2012, here, he, what is this one? Oh, yes. September 2012, he has a heart attack on live television. Is that right?

That shit was real. He had a fucking heart attack. He had participated in a match, and CM Punk, I think, elbowed him in the chest a bunch of times, which he thinks might have done this whole thing. But at the end of the broadcast, they took him out of there and then the broadcast went on. But he went down. He was breathing independently, was doing fine. So it was confirmed that Lawler suffered a heart attack.

He underwent an angioplasty to improve blood flow. But on the 12th, he reported to be easing off sedation. They got him back to normal. They said the results of several CT scans show no sign of any damage. They said that the heart attack wasn't caused by a blocked artery. It was an unexplained cardiac arrest. They ended up saying. And so he was medically cleared and he went back. Lawler says, quote, I have alluded to the fact that 10 minutes before I had a cardiac arrest, he said a cardiac arrest and a heart attack are two different things. A heart attack a lot of

times is caused by clog arteries or something like that, plaque in your veins and that sort of thing. And you usually feel some pain because it's restricting blood flow. Cardiac arrest is when your heart, it's usually sort of like an electrical type thing, your heart just stops. Only 7 out of 1,000 people who suffer cardiac arrest survive. Usually those 7 out of 100,000 people survive because they're in a hospital or get immediate care. He said, fortunately, our ringside doctor was right there with the paramedics. So that helps. He said, oh, it was Dolph Ziggler.

He said, the crazy thing was my heart had been knocked off rhythm, and I believe it was by the elbows, he said, by Dolph Ziggler. It took about 10 minutes for it to just freeze up and stop. He said, once they got the heart back in the correct rhythm, he said, I haven't had any problems since then. Been totally fine. Dolph almost killed him. So that's very possible, too. There was a hockey player, late 80s, who got hit in the puck with a chest and hit in the chest with a puck and got in a game and got a heart attack. By the end of the game, he couldn't breathe and he was all, what the fuck?

He had a heart attack from that. He survived, too. So 2012, he's in a movie. It is called a horror comedy called Girls Gone Dead. Oh, boy. And he plays Sheriff Jackson Cole. A group of six ex-high school cheerleaders are stalked by a killer with a medieval warhammer and battle axe during their first spring break from college. Okay.

2015, he's still wrestling. 2015, he beats Terry Funk, by the way, which is amazing because they're both 100. The two of them together are like 180 years old. 2016, he opens a wrestling-themed restaurant called Jerry Lawler's Hall of Fame Bar and Grill on Beale Street. Awful. And then he also opened King Jerry Lawlerler's memphis barbecue company in cordova tennessee 2016 he's 66 years old yep he's at home with his 27 year old fiancee named lauren mcbride yeah he uh he told police that uh mcbride tells police who are called that a verbal altercation

between her and lawler turned violent when he struck her in the head and pinned her against the stove in the kitchen. She also said she kicked him in the groin, threw a candle at him and scratched his face. So now either way, there ends up being a gun in the middle of this. No. Someone went and retrieved a handgun and placed it on the kitchen counter. Now, McBride says that Lawler did it, got the gun, came out, put it down, and told her to go ahead and kill herself

if she wants to. And Lawler said, and McBride said, or Lawler says that she brought it out saying she was going to kill herself. And that's how it happened. So, his story was she was super drunk and he was trying to stop her from leaving the house she wanted to go drive each said the

other one committed physical assault so uh they said great we're arresting both of you yes terrific and they arrest both of them down there and um yeah uh mcbride said he got an unloaded pistol put it on the kitchen counter and told her to kill herself. Jerry gets right on top of it, releases a statement to the press because he knows that works from earlier. He said, quote, When she drinks, we get into it. We get into a little bit of a shouting match and then she wants to leave. I was not going to let her leave in the car because she was not in any condition to drive. She got more and more upset.

It's an unfortunate situation as a result of someone drinking too much. I'm saddened by it, and I hope we can get past this. So the WWE and its silver-haired middle-aged white man response was, WWE has a zero-tolerance policy, zero tolerance for matters involving domestic violence, and per our policy jerry lawler has been suspended indefinitely following this arrest indefinite two weeks later reinstated by the wwa it's out of the news so you know that seems indefinite or something right

so uh 2017 i told you he retweeted his own fucking shit. 2018, his son Brian dies. Brian Christopher. And we covered that here. He also has another son that does some shit named Kevin also that we never talked about. But 2008, Kevin was arrested on charges of aggravated burglary and trespassing. So there you go. Who's the worst dad?

Andy Reid or Jerry Lawler? Fuck me me this is terrible man yeah jerry ends up filing a lawsuit which he fucking should have remember we talked about that against the prison you can hear all about that in the uh brian christopher episode but he said you know um i the guy told me he was gonna fucking take care of him the brian begged for help all this type of shit he thought he had a to fucking take care of him. Brian begged for help, all this type of shit. He thought he had a concussion, and they told him to go fuck himself, and then he killed himself. Remember the huge bolts protruding and all that? That's all in the lawsuit.

2020, Jerry celebrates 50 years of wrestling. Wow. In 2020, he teams up with the Rock and Roll Express to beat Matt Riviera, Tommy Rich, and Doug Gilbert in Jackson,ennessee this is like the old crew like an old 80s memphis crew there yeah so um wwe got in trouble uh he was still announcing on april 13th 2020 a match between akira to uh tozawa and austin theory uh tozawa hit a senton to the floor and lawler called it a quote ramen noodle moonsault so um he got in trouble for that obviously and uh yeah that's just a you know he said that uh

he said quote and so the next thing he goes off the top rope and he flies off. And I looked at Brian or Byron and said, oh, look, there's a ramen noodle moonsault. What is racist about that? I thought it was funny. That's a ridiculous name. Right. And all of a sudden the Internet blows up. Oh, King's a racist.

Even to Zao the next week comes back and said, it's nothing racist. I eat ramen noodles every week. But the next week I wasn't on Raw anymore. So I don't know if that's what happened. But anyway, you've got to be very careful out there. Or just think before you say something dumb. So in 2021, August 14th, 2021, he beat Enzo Amore in a casket match

at the Poughkeepsie Civic Center 10 minutes from my house a casket match a casket match um he says that uh the new wrestling sucks and he doesn't like it I won't even give the whole quote because who cares here's some awards he won from the wrestling observer newsletter this is David Meltzer's newsletter here. He did win Best Color Commentator, 95 and 96. By the way, he was the reason I couldn't watch WWE in the 90s. I cannot stand his commentary. I hate that high-pitched voice. I get that he's knowledgeable and he's telling the product.

I totally understand it. I can't physically put it in my ear. I didn't watch it for years because of him. I still don't. I can't stand him. I can't physically put it in my ear. I didn't watch it for years because of him. I still don't. I can't stand it. I can't watch it. So he says he also won Feud of the Year in 87 versus Austin Idol and Tommy Rich.

Feud of the Year in 92 when he and Jeff Jarrett were against the Moondogs for a whole year. Feud of the Year in 93 versus Bret Hart until that came to a shit and when he got charged with sodomy. Worst Feud of the Year in 94 against Doink and Dink and Pink and Slink

and fucking, I don't know. And two eighth graders. Yeah, and a ramen noodle moonsault. He said, Worst Television Announcer in 2002. Worst Worked Match of the Year was 94. That's the queasy, sleazy, worst worked match of the year was 94. That's the queasy, sleazy, and cheesy match. And finally, also,

the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 1996. So he's done a lot. Can't get enough of Jerry Lawler? Well, good news. I think he's back on WWE again, or they at least re-signed him. So he's going to be around. And you can go on ProWrestlingTees.com if you want to get some T-shirts.

They have about 700,000 Jerry Lawler T-shirts. Is that right? That said, allegedly, so-called, don't know. Maybe. Maybe. That's Jerry Lawler. That's for sure. That's Jerry the King Lawler.

Yeah. If you enjoyed that, please, please get on whatever platform you're on. We just ranted about Jerry Lawler for three hours. So it takes two seconds. Wherever you're listening, give us five stars, especially Spotify, because you can just started to be able to do that. So that helps a lot. Get on that and hang out with us.

Thank you for everybody that's done that. Speaking of that, you should also get on shutupandgivememurder.com right now for all of your merchandise needs, all of your live show needs. We have you covered all throughout 2022.

Come out and see us at a goddamn show. Also, hit us up on social media at Crime and Sports on Twitter and Facebook at Small Town Murder on Instagram. You can find out all the latest news,

all the stuff that's going on, and everything like that. Patreon.com slash crimeandsports. It is happening this week. Really good stuff. First of all, for the crime and sports, by the way, anybody $5 or above, you get access to smalltownmurders bonus, crime and sports bonus. Any bonus that comes out you are going to have it we promise the whole back catalog there's over 100 episodes on there hit it up uh this this week you're going to get and you're going to get uh what four episodes a month you can't beat it you're going to get crime and sports this week is the i'm going to do a year

in sports crime we're going to take 1995 yeah and a newspaper several of them did archives of all the arrests of the year and we're going to read off all these arrests and hear some crazy fucking stories that happened it'll be a lot of fun 1995 year in sports and then for small town murder we're going to do one of the most requested things that people have been asking for we are going to discuss what the hell happened in the john bonnet ramsey investigation yeah we know what happened to poor john bonnet in the house i'm not going to go over the butchery of a little girl we know what happened there that's it was disgusting and horrible what the fuck happened with this investigation what about the letter obviously no one's going to goddamn break into a house

kill a little girl and then write several drafts of a long letter while they're doing it in there. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But it was on their stationery, so it's not like they brought it. So who wrote the goddamn letter? What's up with mom? What the fuck's up with dad? Did the brother do it? Is that the big theory?

We're going to talk about it all. God damn it. It's locked and loaded. The JonBenet Ramsey story there. You get all of that and more at Patreon.com slash Crime and Sports. You should do that right now. I do recommend that. That said, Jimmy, I need a list of the people who have done those things, who have been

so goddamn wonderful to us for so goddamn long. Jimmy, hit me with the names of these fantastic people. This week's executive producers are Melissa Turner, Jordan Bennett, Susanna Platt, Tiffany on behalf of all of the best grandmas, Garrett Anderson, Jovan Gant, Natasha Harris, Megan Bartmanovich,

Bartmanovich, I think, and Brandy Lyman or Limone. I'm not sure. Either way, thank you all so, so much. Truly. You're the best. You're invaluable. Other producers this week are Trina Cobb, Heather Callahan, Alex Ortiz, TJ Young, Don

of the Flamingo. I don't know. What is that? Those are words. Don of the Flamingo. I don't know what that is. Cool. Thank you.

Flamingo person. Corporal Carl Kirshner. Zach's new son, Henry James Carano. Maddie Rydall. Swamp Queen Jess. Happy hour in Marrero, Louisiana. He is a trucker, and he checks in from everywhere he goes. That's actually home.

Baseball writer Peter Schmuck. That's a real person, James. Oh, awesome. Barbara Howells. Nicole Eneclarico, I think. Gary Howard and Truck Stop Murder Podcast. Steve Schnell, Sheila Wigton. Gary.

Gary's there. Gary. Got Heavy Metal Scientist. Steve Schnell. These are our buddies coming up here. Todd Theroff, I think. Soulja Boy's droopy girlfriend, whoever that is. Kimberly Alves.

Toru. It's 90 Day Fiance reference. Oh, is it? She is droopy, yeah. Oh. Is she droopy girlfriend whoever that is kimberly alves uh it's 90 day fiance reference oh is it she is droopy yeah oh is she droopy she's an older lady she's an older lady and he's 32 and so is it soja boy or soldier boy he's a nigerian rapper got it oh good stuff christ toru tanaka i think that's the guy from uh it's a wrestler yeah Andy was in yeah okay yeah Janice Hill Brian Whitehead happy birthday Brian happy birthday Kara Buehrer's birthday also

happy birthday is it Kara I think it's Kara it might be Kara I don't know peanut butter happy fucking birthday peanut butter jelly and baseball bat James uh Keith Cole's son got a got him a small town murder shirt for Christmas happy birthday

Merry Christmas enjoy Bethany Remillard Frank Zecca happy birthday buddy he's a New Year's baby Kathleen June Linda Brilla Nicole Quintiliana Quintilani Quintilani

fuck this Jeff Shrewsbury Rocky Reynolds Quintelani. Fuck this. Jeff Shrewsbury, Rocky Reynolds, Brennan Potter, Sally W., Devin Schmidt, Stephanie Heer, De'Erica, Candace Williams, Lisa Taylor, Michael Evans, Nicole Connery, Trevor Kirkendall, Lacey Holyfield, Cherry or Cherie Richmond, Carolyn Anthoffer, I think Eli, Eli Faust, Juan Romero, Miles Mattingly, Catherine Towns, Kelly Hobart, Jolie Hinenkamp, I think, Sam Crouch, Stephanie Oliveira, Cooper Smith, Angelica with no last name, Angelica. It's probably Angelica. It's probably not Angelica, I'm going to say.

You know, just from life experience in general courtney cone danny devito's mom also danny devito's dad uh and aaron kozlowski rachel sherwood michael milzia i think so i'm real i'm so real i'm I don't know. Danielle Tihon, Jessica Austell, Matthew Fields, Chantel Friend, Nancy Swank, Kyle Powers, Braden Conover, Misty Day, Faith with no last name, Tess Gill, Tyler with no last name, Tori Gallagher, Jessica Kemp, Kiana Nicole, I think, Kiana maybe, Hannah Briggs, Andrew Boggs, Charlotte Moeller, Madeline Alexis, Terry Harkless, Nicole Bracken, Fomi Opals, Sarah with no last name, Holly or Haley? Haley. No, that's Holly. Richards. Richards. They're spelled different. That one.

Yeah. Is it an A or an O? I don't know. J. Isabel Delisle, Kenny Portillo, or Portillo, I'm not sure. Are you Italian or Spanish, Chief? Which one? Evan Campbell, Melinda Torito, Bill Hassinger, Beck and Sean McKenzie, Haley Hobday, Aaron Carlisle, Katie Thomas, Hannah Berkner, Megan Kayser, Audio Media News, JB with no last name, Gary Wilson, Daniel with no last name, Happy Days,

Allison Hoberg, I think I said that, William H. Bonney, oh, that's Billy the Kid, Christopher Badger, Mike Kelly, April Clausen, Ebony West, Michael Lloydoyd jones steve willett tory with no last name faith mclean schermer troy holly or hail uh kimberly arjo what arrojo arrojo arrojo monica wilson ashley lalonde uh kimberly hunter laura laura goddard jesus i choked on it. Kyle Trapp, John Faulkner, Jonathan Markell, Alison Crooks, Michael of the Month. Yep. Aaron Rose, Beach Bum Exotics, Adam H., Evan Wallert, Justin and Katya, Rachel K., Ashley Ward, Colby Gabbert, Kayla Erdzik, Chelsea Hanson, Ryan Higgs, Kara Norris, Bryce Schmidke, Tara Gilchrist, Greg Bradshaw, Ellen White, Dustin Gregory, Brian Schell, Thomas Erbeck, Alicia with no last name, Josh Brackfield, Zachary Gallagher, Aria Gutier, Kevin Poole, Mark Belizia, Ruben Vacek, Scott McLeod, Aaron Tillery, Graham Davis, Rebecca Saracino. This is ridiculous. Dylan Moore, Jen Begley, Rachel Holsheiser. He means his reading is ridiculous, not your names, by the way.

I wrote all this. Tyler Manfred, Ashley Wittig, Shenanica, Shenanican Skywalker, Matt Crater, Jessica Carbajal, Bryce Palm, Darren Mattson, David Alvira, Danito Allen, Joseph Tiberi, Big Dick Daddy, Boss Man Fucking Sir. Those are all words. Marcus Miller, DJ Dai. Is it DJ or Dai? I don't know what this is. It might be Dai Prince. Alan Schultz, Kevin Mott, Stuart Glenn, Paul Warmth, Nyshal Sharma, Joe.

Oh, boy, Joe. It's N-A-U-A-M-n-n that's not a word maybe is that a ramen noodle uh i don't know what that is i don't know either jeffrey phoebig i think phobic uh casey geitzelman ramen ray Wood, Alex Bataglia, Aidan Youngblood, Lisa Selvidge, Frank Shelley, Ted Yaminski, Seth Rohrer, Madison Francis White, A.J. Horner, Ted Turd-Thompsons, Stephanie Taylor, Tiffany Valene, Matthew Martin, Matthew, McDole, Courtney, no, just Rhodes, not McRhodes, Smokin' Wolf, Amy Krumenaker, Edward Key, Joan Tiemann, precious, Benjamin, William Menteo, Dame with no last name, Renee Knudson, Homestretch, holy Christ, Don Euler, I think. Keelan Ryan. Ben Snead. Julia Long. Thumb in my ass. Jen Aniano.

Rachel. Nope, that's Raina. Raina R. Corey Lindsey. Rachel Gribble. Bridget Cohn. Shauna Cornette. Greg Wiles.

Corey Ballint. Todd Bates. Jess Ramsey. Hannah with no last name, Patricia Talsma-Reed, Joshua Robertson, Anne-Marie Ashley, Jennifer Fox, Justine Jeffries, Jen would know last name, Luke Kenyon, Jacob, nope, that's just Jake, Jake Goldstein, Dawn would know last name, Fiona Shore, Nicole Neuer, Robin Bennett, Jolene Boucher, Nicole Neuer, Robin Bennett, Jolene Boucher, Ivan Natkin, Omaros Kolios, I think, Wendy Gonzalez, Leah Malik, Roxanne Hines, Hines, Hines, yeah, Matt, I had to talk myself into it,

Matt Donges, Mario Sullivan, Belinda Richards, Sven Jafuckin, what? Kack? I don't know what it is. Bridget O'Connor, Lindsey Clark. Sorry. Garrett Anderson, Jennifer Dalton, Devin Robillard, Matt Hunley, Julian Mabee, and Graham Wagner, and obviously all of our patrons. You guys are fantastic. Thank you.

That was five pages of shit I can't say. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. are fantastic thank you that was five pages of shit i can't say thank you thank you thank you so much everybody honestly for all that you do for us we cannot thank you enough for for sticking by us and for being so cool and thank you for all of your nice sentiments about my grandmother and everything you guys are really still raining in it's still raining in and we really really do appreciate that you know it takes a couple weeks, holidays, not everybody's listening. They catch up later. So thanks so much.

It really means a lot to my family. I just wanted to say that. Everybody, they noticed that, and they all passed it around. Oh, look at what these nice things they're doing for Grandma. Like, it's really nice. It makes everybody feel good. So thank you for letting everybody know what a good impact she had on you guys. Thank you so much.

And Jimmy, what if they wanted to thank you? How could they find you? Oh boy. I appreciate you guys finding me on Instagram and Twitter at Wisman sucks. W H I S M a N sucks. Where are you? James? I am at Jimmy P is funny or, you know what?

Just look up crime and sports podcast. We're the hosts and you can find us on there and follow us all up and do all of that shit. Yeah. Keep doing it. Keep coming back every goddamn week because we're here ready for 2022. We're jacked, Jimmy, and we're ready to go. And live from the Crime and Sports studios, we will see you next week. Bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Crime and Sports early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

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