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- [00:01]
Steve Austin
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Jerry 'The King' Lawler
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- [00:06]
Steve Austin
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- [00:36]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
When you sign up for a free.
- [00:37]
Steve Austin
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- [00:46]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
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- [01:33]
Steve Austin
Steve Austin show is brought to you for you today by our friends at Betonline. Get in the mix betonline ag and use the promo code podcast1 for your 50% welcome bonus bet online, your online sportsbook experts and exclusive partner of podcast1.
- [01:47]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Sportsnet podcast1 presents the Steve Austin show classics.
- [01:53]
Steve Austin
Jerry, the King Lawler's on the line. Jerry, what's happening man?
- [01:57]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Steve, thanks for having me back again, man. Everything's cool. How about you?
- [02:00]
Steve Austin
Oh, dude, just when we left off on the last episode, we were talking about promos and everything else and I've got five, six, seven pages of notes sitting here in front of me and I hadn't even used them one single time. Because, man, just in sitting there talking to you, one thing turns into another. And I'm not a classic interviewer by any stretch. It's just two cats from the world of pro wrestling talking.
- [02:25]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Yeah, and you know Steve, guys Like you and I. I wrote a book. I wrote my autobiography back in 2000. And I remember somewhere in the last chapter or in the early part of the book, I think I put. When I first started in the business, I would come into the locker rooms and I would hear some of the older wrestlers sitting around telling these old war stories. And then I wrote in there, if I ever. If I ever get like that, somebody take a gun and shoot me. And then at the end of the book, I think I wrote, well, somewhere out there, somebody's loading the gun right now, because. But you know what? It's just. That's just what happens. I mean, you know that those are your memories, and those are fond memories. And fortunately for you and I, sometimes people want to hear about our experiences that we had during our careers.
- [03:12]
Steve Austin
You know, every time I get somebody on the show, there's so much. So much of my crowd comes from the world of pro wrestling, as I do. And you obviously want to keep growing that audience, but they love talking about the old days. One thing I forgot to ask you, last time we talked, and I don't know if this was specific to the car I was in. I believe it's the way the Territory was run. I was in Uswa, it was 1990, and I was traveling with Chris Champion and Dutch Mantell, and every now and then I'd jump in with a couple of other guys. But for some reason, back in that Tennessee territory, all the boys rode down the road at night after the shows with their dome light on. Why was that? Did y' all do that, too?
- [03:49]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Somehow I started that.
- [03:51]
Steve Austin
You did?
- [03:53]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
I did start that. And I think I. Originally, I did it to keep myself from falling asleep. I think at first I. You know, the first few trips I made, man, when we would get dark in there, and I always. If you remember, I almost always rode by myself.
- [04:08]
Steve Austin
Yeah.
- [04:09]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
And. And just listening to the radio in the darkness or whatever, I'd get sleepy. And so I just remember one night I said, man, I'm. Turn this dome light on and light up my car and make it. Make. Make it feel like it's daytime. And it just became a habit. And somehow, I don't know, somehow it caught on. Everybody around the Territory in the Tennessee Territory started riding with their. With their dome lights on at night. It was crazy.
- [04:33]
Steve Austin
I couldn't understand it. I got there, and all of a sudden we'd ride down the road at dark. And of course, I was driving. I was a wheelman. They were putting gas in the car. I said, Turn your light on. I said, what are you talking about? Turn your dome light on. That's what we do here. And then later on, you know, back in the day, you know, we were drinking, you know, driving down the road. This is back when you could actually do it and not, you know, have any crashes or whatever. It's turned absolutely crazy these days. That's 25 years ago, however many years ago it was. But nonetheless. And I'm thinking, man, here we are drinking beer with our dome lights going, this isn't the smartest idea in the world. These guys would make real bad criminals.
- [05:09]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
That's exactly right. If you remember, we used to. We used to play, you know, it was so boring on the road, I mean, because, you know, our trips were the same every week.
- [05:18]
Steve Austin
Every week.
- [05:18]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
If you're staying in Memphis or Nashville, you know, on Mondays, you drive down to Memphis, 200 miles each way, you know, to. And from Tuesday, you drive up to Louisville, which was like 170 miles one way. And then Evansville was 150 miles. And Thursday may have been Lexington or, you know, whatever, but we got. We had a lot of long road trips. And so we were always looking for anything to do to entertain each other. I don't know if you remember, I was notorious for having a little portable, like a blue light that I would put up on my dashboard. And I would. I would. If ever I would see some, you know, one of the other wrestlers that were. That were past me or whatever, I would. Or I would pass them. I would pull off at, like, the next exit, and then, you know, watch as they went by, then speed up behind them and turn this blue light on. And then at night, keep my brights on and the blue light on the dashboard. And they'd tell them. I'd lean out and shout, okay, get out of here. Put your hands on your head and face the front of your car. You know, I can't tell you how many times I've walked up and frisked the guys and everything and goose them or something like that. One night, Kamala was the funniest story ever. He was kind of new in the business, and I just wrestled against him up in Nashville. And I pulled him over about halfway down to Memphis and pulled him off on the side of the interstate. And he's standing there on the interstate, big old Kamala with his hands on top of his head. And I saw him up behind him. I said, okay, raise your right foot up in the air. He's standing there on one leg with his hands on top of his head. I said, okay, now jump up and down. And suddenly he turns around and looks and he goes, oh, Jerry.
- [07:00]
Steve Austin
You know what? I was down. I was just fixing to get into business. I was playing football at North Texas State University outside of Dallas. I'd go up, watch Friday night show at the Sportatorium. I'd go to the Saturday morning television taping. And, you know, all of a sudden, here comes Kamala, the Ugandan giant. And y' all did these vignettes, videos of him. And these were shot in Hendersonville, right there on Jerry Jarrett's property, right?
- [07:25]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Yeah. It looked like it was Africa, didn't it?
- [07:27]
Steve Austin
It did. But break down how Kamala was created, because that was a great gimmick. And people bought into Kamala, man, because, man, when he come down with that hand strike, that was the real deal.
- [07:38]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Yeah, it was. Well, I'll tell you what it was. One Monday night, we were having wrestling at the Mid South Coliseum. And I remember, you know, we'd stand in the back. The guys. The guys could stand in the back and watch from around the corner, watch the matches that were going on out there in the arena. And all the wrestlers would come in this one back entrance. And I'm standing there watching the matches, and all of a sudden, I got a tap on my shoulder. And I turn around, and here's this big black guy, big, tall guy. And he said, Mr. Lawler, my name's Sugar Bear Harris. And he said, I live down here in Senatobia, Mississippi. And he said, I wanted to come up here and wrestle for you guys some if I could. And I just. I don't know what happened. I just looked at him and I said, has anybody seen you yet here tonight? Have you been walking around? No, sir. Just come in the back door. I said, would you go right around there and sit down in my dressing room? Don't let anybody see you. So he goes back there. I called. I went and got Jerry Jarrett. He. And I went back there and looked at him, and I swear there was this artist named Frank Frazetta who did these great fantasy paintings. And as soon as I saw this guy, this painting came to my mind. There's this famous painting where this beautiful girl is tied to a stake, and a bunch of these cannibals are like. And they're about to burn her at the stake. And a bunch of these cannibals were all doing this, like, crazy war dance around this girl. That's this painting, right? And that just came to my mind. And so I told Jerry, I said, man, I could paint this guy up. He could look terrific. So we told him to be in Hendersonville, Tennessee, at Jerry's. Jerry had a hundred acre farm up there in Hendersonville. We took him up there. The next day I pulled out a National Geographic, and if you remember, and the reason it was hot was at the time, the president of Uganda was IDI Amin. And he was a cannibal. He was a confessed cannibal. This guy was the president of Uganda. And that was in the news all over the place. And so that's why it made it topical. And we looked at some pictures. I brought that paint a picture of that painting that Frank Frazetta had done. And I painted Kamala's face. I painted James Harris's face up just like one of those cannibals in that picture. And we looked into the map of Uganda in National Geographic, and Kamala was actually a name of a city in. In the country of Uganda. And so that's where we came up with the name. Literally honed a spear out of a stick and put a wooden point on the end of it and put this old loincloth on him, took him out. And Jerry's back on some acreage back there and got a couple of pieces of dry ice and threw them out in this kind of little swampy lake that Jerry had. And we put James out there and turned the cameras on and had him come walking through this smoke. And it looked like. I mean, it literally looked like he was an African giant that was coming, walking towards the screen. And it was just one of those things that it just clicked, man. We called up and had J.J. dillon, who was not, you know, had not ever been in our territory because we didn't want to. We wanted to make him so totally different. So we had J.J. dillon cut a promo. We explained it to him, and he cut a promo saying that he had found this savage beast while touring the world, and he was going to bring him to the United States, and his first stop was going to be Memphis, Tennessee. And like you said at the time, man, if you did things right, people bought into it and they believed that this guy was a giant African cannibal that was being released every time he set foot in the ring. And he couldn't have worked more perfectly. I mean, we had to keep it simple. So that's where the chops came in. All the chops and the slapping itself on the stomach. And he didn't do much more than that. And it bite you, you know, he'd bite you and suddenly, next thing you know, you're bleeding. And I watched some of the takes of he and I having that first match and it was just. It was like magic. I mean, you know, he started biting my head, bleeding. He would touch my head with his fingers and. And start licking the blood off his fingers and. And it was just, you know, it was really. It really looked exactly like what we told the people he was.
- [11:46]
Steve Austin
You know, I remember that first. When y' all did that first video, I mean, there was like a 20 or 30 second clip y' all sent out. It was like showed him walking just like you said. And whoever did the voiceover is basically like Kamala, the Ugandan giant. Kamala. That was it. I was like, I gotta see this son of a bitch. This some bitch is crazy looking. Whose idea was. It was the moon and the stars on him.
- [12:11]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
That was. That was all. That all came from the painting. It was great that Frank was at. I'll show you sometime. This Frank was at a. Later on became friends with him. He's one of the greatest artists of all time. But anyway, that was just the way that the guy was. Body was decorated in that painting. And it's a funny story, for months, every night I would paint Kamala. I would do his face and all the paint on him down in the locker room beforehand, you know, and I would paint those stars and the big. The crescent moon on his stomach and yellow and the stars on his text were white. And the funny story, one night, after about three or four months of painting James, and you'd have to know him, he's just a big old teddy bear. Actually, that's what he used to wrestle as before Kamali wrestled with Sugar Bear Harris. But anyway, he just kept sitting there and I'd paint him up and he'd be patient. And then he one day, finally, after about three months, he looked down, he said, jerry, I want to ask you a question. I said, what's that, James? He said, why did you paint a big banana on my stomach every night? I said, james, it's not a banana, it's a crescent moon. He went, oh, okay.
- [13:27]
Steve Austin
All that time he thought I was a banana. As a real.
- [13:30]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
He thought I was making some kind of joke on him or something.
- [13:33]
Steve Austin
Oh, Jesus, that's good.
- [13:35]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
A big banana on his stomach. You're listening to another classic episode of the Steve Austin show, only on podcast one. Hey, it's Adam Kroll from the Adam Kroll the show. Betonline is the world's most trusted betting platform. And your number one source for online betting. From the earliest odds to in game live betting, BetOnline provides you with all the action and the ability to watch and bet on games as they happen. With the largest selection of odds on everything from football, NBA, college basketball as well. BetOnline has NHL, MMA and championship boxing. All your betting needs in one place. Head to betonline today to get in on the action with America's most trusted site for online wagering. So have some fun. Make these games and these events and these combat sports a little more interesting with bet online. Bet online. The game starts here. Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy, but I like it. Sure you met some of my dietary needs, but, but they've just got it all. So farewell oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy. Break up with bland breakfasts and taste AM PMs bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit.
- [15:11]
Steve Austin
AM PM Too much. Good stuff. You've had some, you know, your classic feuds with a ton of people with, you know, from Terry Funk. Oh, we got to talk for a second about that Terry Funk empty arena match. We talked about that a little bit earlier. What was the deal with the empty arena match?
- [15:36]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
You know, if you remember, Stephen, I mean, in the territory days we, you know, you, you work the same towns every week and usually once a week, I mean, you know, those days are certainly gone with the win now. I mean, you know, the WWE will hit a city if you're lucky, twice a year, you know, but, but back in the day it's just like for instance, our major city was Memphis. And we did Memphis every single Monday night. We had live wrestling every Saturday morning for 90 Minutes on, on Saturday morning TV in Memphis. And then that was like a, basically a 90 minute long commercial to come to the show at the Mid South Coliseum on Monday night. Yep, it was weekend and week out. So man, you were under the gun to. Like you said the last time I was on your show, when we talked about Jerry Jarrett promoting, he and I were under the gut every week to try to draw a crowd. I mean that, that building had 12,000 seats in it and you were just, you know, you were just looking to put as many people in there every Monday night as you could. And so when we would get somebody like a Terry Funk, a big name like Terry Funk that could come in on a weekly basis. For us, that was a big deal, you know, because it was hard to get somebody to come back week in and week in, week out. So what. What happened with Terry? Week we got going and we were just doing such a good run. We. I mean, we'd pro. We probably worked five or six straight weeks there. I swear it. Just. If I'm not mistaken, it may have been Terry's idea in the way he cut a promo one week. He just said, you know, it's hard to get a fair shake in this Memphis Ms. Lawler's hometown. He said, it starts from the minute I land in an airplane coming in from Texas. Soon as I get off, you know, I get picked up by the cab driver. He starts talking about how bad Lawler's going to beat me, and then he drives me 10 miles out of the way. So he charges me extra in the cab. They delay my baggage because they know I'm coming in to fight their hometown hero. He said, the fans are on Lawler's side, the cops are on Lawler's side. You announcers are on Lawlor's side. Everybody. Let me just tell you, if I could ever meet Lawlor on a common ground where he had no advantage, where he didn't have anybody to help him, anybody. No referee on his side or anything like that. So that was the premise of this thing. And he had a piece of paper in his hand. He told Lance Russell, he. He said, here's a paper with a place and a date, and if Lawler will meet me there, nobody but him and me, no referee, no fans, no nothing, I will beat him within an inch of his life, and I'll prove to everybody in Memphis what a phony he is, you know, that sort of thing. So that's how that came about. And then, of course, we did it on a Monday afternoon before the matches were that night, you know, he flew into town, and so we had the arena already set up for the matches that were going to be that Monday afternoon. So he and I just went over to the Coliseum early. Of course, nobody with Lance Russell and the cameraman was there, and that's where we had the match.
- [18:29]
Steve Austin
But how was it working with just all that silence? Because you listened to a crowd as good as anybody in the history of the business, and it certainly had to take the adrenaline out.
- [18:37]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Really unusual. I mean, that was the first time I'd done anything like that either, you know. And so it was strange. It was different. But Terry, you know, if you if you ever go back and watch the footage, Terry. Terry was never quiet for one second during that match. He was always shouting or yelling or something. So it wasn't exactly like it was completely, completely quiet, you know, But I just wish we'd have done more outside the ring and thrown into the chairs and different things like that. But it all led up to the big finish of what? Terry had busted the ring steps and had this big jagged piece of wood, and he got me in the ring and he was just about to stab me with that piece of wood when I ticked it back and he gouged himself in the eye. And of course the blood starts flowing out of his eye. And then the classic unforgettable thing. My eye, my eye. It was just so great, you know, and just what made it so different was, you know, Terry, it made it. Terry made it look like this. It was real. And the fact that, hey, nobody was there and this wasn't really going to be on TV or anything. So he was cussing. It was like a stone cold promo, you know, he says, where is that son of a bitch? I told you that yellow bastard wouldn't show up. You know, and this is what. This was unheard of at the time. So you knew he was going to bleep it out, but it still made it seem so real.
- [19:53]
Steve Austin
Hey, let's talk a little bit about Andy Kaufman. You guys had a damn feud and I watched that thing. Course I remember back in the day, whose idea was it to bring Andy Kaufman in?
- [20:04]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
It was Andy's idea.
- [20:05]
Steve Austin
So what did he do? Did he reach out to you and call you?
- [20:08]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
He reached out the first thing Andy did. And let me just give you a real quick background on Andy Kaufman. Andy Kaufman was from Long Island, New York. He grew up as a kid being a huge wrestling fan. I mean, that was. I mean, he. He told me he used to watch Nature Boy, Buddy Rogers and, and, and the funny thing about wrestling had a major influence on Andy's entire career. He used to tell me, he said, I was amazed at this, watching this nature boy Buddy Rogers, that somebody could go on TV and intentionally, he said, I could tell he was trying to make the people hate him. And he said, but yet he was still popular. And he said that just. He said that just like struck a chord with me. And as Andy grew up in his performances, always had that in the back of his mind, Andy would tell you. And he told me many times, he said, I'm not a comedian. I never told a joke in my life. He said, I'm just a performance artist. And he said, I just like to do things to elicit a response from my audience. And he said, I enjoy getting a negative response. I enjoy when people don't like me. And so he would do a lot of that sort of thing throughout his career. But then when he became the Latke character on Taxi, and Taxi was the number one show in America at the time, the highest rated show on tv, and Andy just wanted to use that celebrity. Celebrity status that he had to sort of live out a fantasy of his, and that was to be a bad guy wrestler. And so he started doing that in some of the nightclub comedy acts that he did and comedy clubs and things. He would invite women up on the stage to wrestle with him, and he'd have some mats down and he'd have his friend Bob Zamuda dressed in a referee shirt and come out, and he just played the role of bad guy wrestler. He'd insult the women and do all of this sort of, you know, degrading comments to him. And then. And then he'd wrestle him and actually beat him in a wrestling match. And he did that for a while. He did it on Saturday Night Live and on the Merv Griffin show and different. Different places. But he wanted to wrestle in front of an actual wrestling audience. So one night in. In New York, I think the show was at Long island. And he went to the show and he approached Vince McMahon Sr. At the time, and, you know, he introduced himself and said, you know, and told him what he had been doing. And he said, I just want to wrestle and wrestle in front of actual wrestling fans, in front of people that came to see wrestling and see the response that I'll get doing it there. Fortunately for me, Vince McMahon Sr. Said, well, Andy, he said, I'll be honest with you. He said, our fans are kind of skeptical anyway. And he said, I'm just hesitant to involve a Hollywood actor in our shows. He said, I'm just afraid that the people might think, you know, that we're all actors and that we're all acting. He said, so I appreciate it, but I'm going to pass at this point.
- [22:45]
Steve Austin
He was 30 years too soon.
- [22:47]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
30 years too soon, exactly. But my friend Bill after, you know, Bill, after he was the editor of Pro Wrestling Illustrated or a photographer and writer for them, he overheard the conversation and he knew Andy. He grew up in the same town, right? And he told Andy, said, hey, you know what? And of course, Andy, all he knew was New York wrestling. So Bill said, hey, I Got a friend, Jerry Lawler, has a territory down in Memphis, Tennessee. He said, I'll bet he'd be interested in this. Let me give him your number. And so out of the blue, I get a call from Andy Kaufman. And he's talking about coming down. And he just told me the same thing that he told Vincent Mann Sr. And I thought, God, I mean, this guy's the biggest. One of the biggest stars on television. Of course, we'll have you come down to Memphis. You know, that's how it all started. He came down literally just wanting to wrestle women out of the audience. And he did that. We sold out immediately. The people hated him. He made cut some promos talking about the women, talking about the south and all of this sort of stuff.
- [23:41]
Steve Austin
Did you help him with his promos, or was that just all him doing his thing?
- [23:45]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Well, the first one he did, he sent one in that he just did on his own. And the next ones, he actually came over to my house and we sat down and we cut promos with Ed. And he and I just came up with them for about an hour. And because, you know, he wasn't going to be able to come back every single week. So we wanted to have plenty of promos in the can. And I swear, after the first three weeks of showing his promos, the TV station manager called up and said, jerry, you guys, we can't show these Kaufman promos anymore. I said, why? He said, oh, my God. The people with their phone calls, they're threatening to burn the station down. You know, if we continue to show these people. The fans hate Andy. They don't, you know. And of course, you know what we had done? We gave him a bar of soap, and he cut the promo, saying, yeah, let me introduce you to people here in the south to something. This is. So say it after me. So he said, not soap. Not soap. It's soap. And he said, what you do is you put it under the faucet, run some water on it and rub it around your hands. It'll make lather. Put it under your arms and wash under your arms. And what? You know, it's like, you know, just insinuating. The people of the south would never bathe. Then we'd cut a promo the next week of a roll of toilet paper. He's telling stories like the people in the south had never even seen toilet paper. Paper. And so the people literally hated this guy. And we went for several weeks of him wrestling the women. And then I'm thinking, I gotta get a way to Get a rub off of this big Hollywood guy. So I went to Andy and I said, and literally, he was not thinking of doing anything but wrestling women. And I said, really? Absolutely. He never, never once thought of having a match with a man, right? And that's what I told him. I said, andy, this is gonna only go so far. We need to keep this going. I said, you need to have a wrestling match with a man. And he said, oh, no, no, no. I just. I'm the endogenous or wrestler, you know. And I. And he. And he said, I'll get hurt. And I said, look, you and I can have a match, and I promise you, you won't get hurt. It'll be simple, but most of it will be the build up, the lead up to the match. Tremendous, you know. And I said, we can just do anything to get out of it. And that's how, you know, that's how the match came about. And then, of course, we really didn't. If you remember, we didn't do anything in the match other than drop him on his head with a suplex one time, which he told me later knocked him out. And, yeah, but that was great. Just gave him a couple of pile drivers. And as the match was over, they disqualified me. And as the match was over, he's. He's just laying there. And so our referee, Jerry Calhoun, and then we, you know, we had to turn away crap, 12,000 people there. And they were all up around the ring and they were so happy that Andy had finally got what he deserved. And they're screaming and hollering. Andy just laid there motionless like he was dead, you know.
- [26:27]
Steve Austin
Yeah.
- [26:27]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
So I'm walking around holding my hands up, and finally the crowd's kind of, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm thinking, well, okay, it's time to get him up and get him back to the dressing room. So I told Calhoun, the referee, I said, all right, go over and lean over and tell Andy, you know, to help him up and get him back to his feet and get him back to the dressing room. So Calhoun walks over and he kneels down. And I'm just still walking around looking at the crowd and waving. And. And so Calhoun, I see him talking to him. So then Calhoun comes back to me and he says, and he says he wants an ambulance. And I said, an ambulance? He's not hurt. No, no, no, I said, just go over. Just go over and help him up and just tell him, you know, you get some guys to help him back. And I said, just sell you Know, act like he's hurt on the way back to the dredger. And so Calvin goes back over again and tells him. And then he minute later he comes back to me and says, really? He says, he really says he wants an ambulance. And I said, go tell Andy that an ambulance costs about 300 bucks to come out here. And I said, plus, where are you going to take him? He can't take him to hospital. And I said, tell him it's too expensive. We're not going to get an ambulance. Right? So Calhoun goes over and kneels down beside Andy again. And Andy's still not moving, just as mouthy, saying a few words. And the referee comes back over to me and says, he says he'll pay for it.
- [27:42]
Steve Austin
Oh God, that's great.
- [27:45]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
I said, well, okay, if he'll pay for it, tell him to call an ambulance. So next thing you know, they call the ambulance. We wait there another 15, 20 minutes. He's still there. The crowd wouldn't leave. They're all there. And he's laying there like he's dead. And his manager, George Shapiro from California was there and his writer Bob Zamuda were there by his side and his girlfriend and you know, and so finally in comes the ambulance. They put him on the stretcher and they put the neck brace on him, take him to the hospital. He goes through all the tests and he stays in the Memphis hospital for three days with his neck interaction.
- [28:16]
Steve Austin
Are you kidding me?
- [28:17]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Three days he stayed in the hospital with his neck contraction.
- [28:21]
Steve Austin
But he's okay, he's just working the gimmick.
- [28:23]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
He's okay, he's working the gimmick.
- [28:25]
Steve Austin
But go ahead and book that out. This was him on the fly thinking, this is what I'm going to do.
- [28:30]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Absolutely. Him on the fly thinking this is what I want to do. That's just the way he was. He was a genius. I mean, and even the bit on Letterman was him on the fly. I mean it was.
- [28:38]
Steve Austin
Well, let's talk about the Letterman thing. Thing. Little pause for the cause. But we're going to. I'm talking to Jerry the King Lawler. We're talking about his famous feud with Andy Kaufman. Gonna take a little break. Thanks to my sponsors keeping this show on the air for free. Laying down serious audio Whoop ass. A true crime podcast.
- [29:09]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
It got me upset because this is someone's kid and someone knows she's gone. That takes a different approach. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Focusing on the communities affected by life. Shattering crimes it made news throughout the.
- [29:26]
Steve Austin
Entire region that these two people had.
- [29:29]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Been shot while they slept. In such a safe community to give a new perspective on the devastation crimes can cause. It was shocking for something like this to happen in our little town. Featuring cases from quiet towns to bustling cities and interviewing the people closest to the case. My first thought was that it's an unusual location for us to have a homicide. Listen to the true crime podcast City Confidential and step beyond, beyond the yellow tape to learn just how far a crime can reach. There are certain cases in the history of Boston that I think sort of define the city. I think this is one of them. New episodes of the City Confidential podcast.
- [30:08]
Steve Austin
Are available every Thursday. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Damn, brother. Andy Coffins, the pile driver, in the hospital for three days. I'm talking to Jerry the King Lawler, the man who delivered this pile driver. So before we left to a little break, Jerry the pile driver heard, around the world, Andy Kaufman shells out 300 bucks to bring the ambulance out. You tight wads looking at the bottom line, don't want to spend 300 bones on ambulance. So he's in the hospital for three days. And so then you go to visit him, obviously, or call him. So what do you guys do to book the next part of the.
- [30:57]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Oh, no, I did not go to visit him at all. No, I didn't do that or call him or anything. It was just like he was there for three days, and then he went back. Then he went back to Hollywood, and the next. The next call I get from Andy was just one day out of the blue, and he said, hey, do you want to be on the David Letterman show? And I said, let me think about it, Andy. Yeah, I want to be on.
- [31:21]
Steve Austin
Dude, straight up. That's a shoot. He was in hospital three days. He was in. But he was in hospital for three days. He goes back to la, and then down the road, you get a call, and he says, you want to be on Letterman?
- [31:30]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Exactly.
- [31:31]
Steve Austin
Y' all hadn't talked?
- [31:32]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Had not talked.
- [31:33]
Steve Austin
Okay, go ahead. So what happens?
- [31:35]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Well, what do they want us to do on Letterman? And he said, I don't know yet. But he said, you know, it's just. He said, it's a big network TV show, and I just thought it'd be cool. It'd be a way to keep our. Our feud going. And I said, yeah, of course. And so, you know, then he get. They got back with me with the day. He said, the Letterman people would be calling me. So they got back with Me with all the travel arrangements.
- [31:54]
Steve Austin
Now, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it. When you say, yeah, of course, you're thinking, yeah, of course because you want to be on TV or yeah, of course we can keep this feud going.
- [32:02]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Well, both.
- [32:03]
Steve Austin
Okay, okay, I'm with you.
- [32:05]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Probably most of all, I want to be on tv. Okay, that's the most. But then, but then I'm thinking, you know, I mean, we had done nothing but draw sellouts with Andy, you know, fighting the women. And then the sellout with me down.
- [32:17]
Steve Austin
In Mexico, he had heat and he was selling tickets.
- [32:20]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Oh my God. Huge. Absolutely huge. And, and he just got it as far as being a, it's being a bad guy as being. He, I mean, he just had that natural instinct in him and he knew how to, he knew how to play it off. And he knew. Once again, we talked a long time ago about personal, you know, personal issues. He made it personal by attacking the women and attacking the people from Memphis. Well, and that just made everybody there. It was a personal issue with him. And here's this, you know, yeah, I'm the big star, I'm from Hollywood, and you people are just a bunch of hillbillies, a bunch of hicks. So when we went on, when we. The contact was to be at the Letterman on a certain date and I flew up there, there and got to the Rockefeller center there, and they had us meet early in the day. They filmed Letterman at 5:30 in the afternoon. So they met with us about 10:00 in the morning. They met with only me when I got there. They said, well, Andy didn't want to, Andy didn't want to be around you, so I'm going to have you meet with. I met with this Bob Morton who was the big producer of the show at the time. He said, well, here's what we want to do. We've got the footage of you pile driving Andy. We're going to show that. We're going to show Andy making some remarks about the women and about the south and that sort of stuff. And he said that'll be in the first segment. And he said then we want you and, and to talk a little bit and maybe in the first segment be a little bit antagonistic towards each other, not too much. And he said, then Dave will take a break. And he said, then we'll come back in the second segment. And during that segment, Andy will apologize to you for making fun of wrestling and you apologize to Andy for dropping him on his head with a pile driver. And then Andy Will get up and sing what the world needs now Is love, sweet love that's the way they had it laid out. That's what they told me. And then I left and went to my cab back to my hotel near Rockefeller center, waiting to come back at 5:30. When I was back in my hotel, Andy called me and said, well, what do you think? And I said, well, what do you think about what? He said, well, what they want us to do. And I said, well, I mean, you know, it sounds like it'll be funny. I said, but it'll probably pretty much be the end of our years of my feud with, with you and I apologizing to each other and everything being smoothed over. And he said, yeah, I know. That's what I was thinking too. But then he said, then just out of the blue, he hesitated a little bit. He said, wonder what would happen if you just hauled off and slugged me. And it was so funny because, you know, usually, usually what if you just haul up and punch me or something? But he used that return. He said, if you just hauled off and slugged me. And I said, well, Andy, I said, first of all, probably I'll get arrested. And I said, I want that and this. And second of all, you know, they won't show that. They probably just probably won't even show it. I said, we may have made this trip for nothing, you know. And he said, yeah, yeah, you're probably right, but wouldn't that be great? So that's. That right there is just the way. That's the last time I spoke to Andy, straight up before we went on the air. And I didn't seem at the taping before we walked out to be on there with Letterman. There was no other talking or planning about what was going to happen. I just. It was all that from that point on, it was just all flying by the seat of our pants. It was us all improv or winging it, if you want to say. I just knew that we went through the first segment and we were sort of antagonistic a little bit. And I realized why at that point, because when we were kind of. When it was time to go to a break, they had a ring. They had a wrestling ring bell under Dave's desk, right? He could ring it with his foot, right. He made it look like things were kind of getting out of hand. And he started ringing that bell and he said, okay, all right, we need to sell things down here and let's take a break and we'll come back and see if we get the hoses out and see if we can calm things down a little bit, right? So we took the break and during the break you just. Andy got up and walked away. They turned the lights down because it gets so hot in the studio. Turn all the lights down. There was a studio artist, I think about 650 people in this, in the studio, right? So anyway, the, just two minutes go by for the break and they say, okay, we're coming back on in 3, 2, 1. They turn the lights back up, boom, we're back on. Andy sits back down. And so Dave starts talking again. He says, well, you know, Jerry, do you think you owe Andy apology? And I said, and I don't know why I just said, I said, no, not really, you know, so it went from there. It just kind of escalated. He didn't apologize to me and I didn't apologize to him. And I think in watching it back, when I look at Dave's face, I think that's the first time he realized, oh, something's not going right, right? It's not the way we planned this, right? So then suddenly Dave just, I guess, I guess he thought, well, we're out of time for this segment. So it didn't go like we wanted to do. So he said, well, you know what, we're just gonna, we're gonna take a break here and we're gonna see if we can get things sorted out. So I knew that was our second segment and we were done after that, right? So when, when Paul Schaefer started playing the music and I swear, Steve, when I watch it back, it's like an out of body experience. It's like I'm watching somebody else do something. I don. Doing it. I just suddenly stood up, looked down at Andy, made eye contact with him, and I think at that moment he realized what I was about to do. And man, I just slapped the taste out of his mouth. Knocked him, right? I hit him as hard as I could, knocked him right out of the chair, over onto the floor. And the music stopped playing and everybody was just like a. Just like this hushed silence. And I watch it back and Dave is just like, he wouldn't even look at us. He's just like staring straight ahead like, oh my God, what just happened? You know? And so, so anyway, the security guard comes over and grabs me and takes me back to the green room. And then I can hear this commotion going on out there. Like, you know, Andy starts, gets up and starts just ranting and raving and screaming and all of this sort of stuff. And so about literally, usually they just take a break for two minutes. And literally about 15 minutes went by while all this commotion was going on. And sort of. Then finally it sort of quieted down. And I'm just sitting by myself in the green room, and suddenly the door kind of opens up a little bit and this intern sticks his head in. And he said, Mr. Lawlor, I think he was thinking, I'm gonna stick my head in here with a killer. Yeah, I was the first. First person to ever strike another guest on a talk show ever in history, right? And so he says, Mr. Lawler, Dave was wondering if you'd like to come back out and sort of wrap things up. And I said, sure, I'll do whatever. So I go back out into the studio and Andy's way over by the door, he said, and I sit down by Dave again. And it's all. It's a crowd. It turned into sort of like a wrestling crowd. All of a sudden, these 650 people start booing me. So then I sit down and there's going. They're going like 10, nine. And Dave looks over, said, Andy, are you gonna come back in here or not? And he says, no, if I do, I'll say words you can't say on television. And he says, okay. And there's three, two, one, we're on. And they says, well, I'm here and Jerry Lawler's here and Andy Coffin's here. And some nights I wish Tom Snyder were still here, which is just taking over for Tom Snyder on the show. So anyway, he said, well, Jerry, I like you. Thank you for being here. And right about that time, Andy comes in off set, standing behind Dave, and he starts pounding on Dave's desk and screaming every kind of obscenity you can think of.
- [39:15]
Steve Austin
Absolutely.
- [39:16]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
I mean, you know, he's just cussing, f you, F this, mother this. And then. And one thing you had to know about Andy, and I think this is what really sold Dave on the deal, was Andy didn't ever curse or swear or get upset or anything like that. And for him to be doing this was just so out of character. But I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, Andy, what's wrong with you? You know, they. They're obviously going to show the slap or they wouldn't have us back out here. And now here you are, You're. You're totally ruining it now. I was just thinking, you know, he's. This is never going to get aired. So with my body language, I try to sit back in the Chair and just like, cross my leg, like. Like show my disgust with Andy. Yeah, you're killing it, right?
- [39:54]
Steve Austin
Yeah.
- [39:55]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
And so he grabs Dave's coffee, makes eye contact with me to let me know what I'm about to do, what he's about to do, and he throws the coffee so that I can get out of the way of it, and I jump up again. And then he runs off the set again. The security guy comes back again and. And Dave was just so frazzled. It was. It was just unbelievable. So the security guy takes me off the set again and takes me straight to the elevator. And he. And I get on the elevator and I'm thinking, oh, what's he gonna do? Take me down, lock me up or whatever. As soon as the door closes on the elevator, the security guard says, man, I just want to get you out of the building. He said, because that Kaufman is an idiot. He said his elevator don't go all the way to the top floor, and he's probably gonna try to have you arrested. So let me get you out of here. He takes me downstairs, I get in the cab and I go back to my hotel. I didn't a. Have hear from anything from anybody. This was like at about maybe 7 o' clock or something. And the show, of course, came on at 11:30 and I didn't hear a word from anybody. And I'm thinking, what are they going to do? Are they going to show this or what? So anyway, I turned on the TV at 11:30 and there was the whole thing. They showed it all, except, of course, when Andy started cursing and swearing, they put it. They bleeped it out. But they didn't put in beats. They put. What made it even funnier, they put in these little. Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Every time he said a cuss word. Is it cuckoo?
- [41:09]
Steve Austin
There was a lot of.
- [41:11]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
It made it. Yeah, there were a lot of them, but it made it hilarious, you know. And then as soon as that was, as soon as that show went off the air, shows that segment went off the air, man, my phone blew up. It was like the New York Times. It was like the New York Post, the Daily News, you know, Inquirer magazine, Everybody you can think of started calling about that. And then the next day, it was on the front page. Pictures of me slapping Andy was on the front page of every New York newspaper. You know what? Just last week, Steve, the TV Guide had on the front cover and a big story about the top 60 most riveting moments in television history. And that it says in there, wrestler Jerry Lawler fights with Andy Kaufman on the David Letterman show was one of the top 60 stills to this day. I mean, the number one is like the Beatles making their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Elvis Presley appearing on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956. And it goes all the way, way back to television history. And that is included in the top 60 most riveting moments of pop culture.
- [42:09]
Steve Austin
You know, well, when you guys are doing this angle and it was tremendous, what do the boys think about Andy, man?
- [42:15]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Well, you know what? We kept him away from everybody else, and Andy was. Andy was different in the fact that he would do meditation before match. So we hate. He had his own dressing room. Nobody was allowed to bother him because he would literally meditate for like an hour and a half before it was time for him to go out and do anything, straight up, away from everybody. He was. He was. He was sort of a strange duck in the sense that he had these. He had these little, you know, he was different from what the guys, you know, from what we were used to being around. But. But by the same token, he was the nicest guy ever. Most respected, loved the wrestling business. I mean, Andy and I were the same age, and he never referred to me once as Jerry. He always called me Mr. Lawler. And I would always say, come on, Andy. But he just, you know, he was so respectful of the business and wrestling. And he told me before, you know, he said, I'd give up everything I'm doing in Hollywood. I'd give up the taxi, all the TV shows, everything, if I could just stay involved with wrestling. That's how much he loved it. You're listening to another classic episode of the Steve Austin show, only on podcast one.
- [43:18]
Steve Austin
Here's a message from our sponsor, ZipRecruiter. Right now, we cannot be overwhelmed. We have to work to keep our loved ones safe and protect our community. We have to work to stay strong, to stay connected, to stay focused. We have to work to inspire, to innovate, to build new solutions. But for all of this to work, we have to work together. As ZipRecruiter, we connect employers and people every day. But today is different. We are partnering with first responders, government officials, the medical community, the innovators in the manufacturing, transportation and food distribution industries to make sure we are finding the right people for the right jobs. Right now. Let's work together. Ziprecruiter.com work together. Well, you guys are feuding. 82. Did that carry into 83? Because he died in 84.
- [44:12]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
I mean, carried Right up until, right up until Andy passed away.
- [44:15]
Steve Austin
Yeah. So was he feeling the effects of the, of the cancer? So how was he to deal with. Was he feeling.
- [44:20]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
No, you know what? None of that ever showed that, that hit Andy so fast. But Andy and I had, you know, after that he came back and we had match after match. We, we dead ahead down to where he was doing boxing matches saying that he'd been trained by Muhammad Ali and showed, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And then he started bringing in people like Ken Patera, Jesse the Body Ventura, and all of these guys with a bounty on my head that they were some. He was of kind going to pay anybody $5,000 that could hospitalize me with a pile driver. And you know, we just, we just kept it going week in and week out, and Andy just kept coming back. And then one week, if you remember, I had a, I had a thing on Sunday morning called the Jerry Lawler show that was on Sunday morning. It's just, just a 30 minute talk show with court wrestling as a centerpiece. And I had Andy on as one of my guests on there one morning. And you know, he was in another studio and it made it look like he was, was out in Hollywood talking. And it was, it was around Thanksgiving and we were doing this little segment where we was calling the biggest turkey of the year. And we were going to superimpose Andy's head on turkey's body. And I'll never forget, they had the camera on Andy and he was sitting over there and he said, let me, let me tell you something, Lawler, if you put that my face on that turkey, I'm going to sue you, I promise you. And he was coughing throughout this.
- [45:36]
Steve Austin
I remember that.
- [45:37]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Yeah. And then after that interview was over, he walked over in the studio and he said, he said, jerry Wade. And say, Jerry said, Mr. Lawler, he said, I apologize for coughing during that. He said, but I just, I just this past week got diagnosed with cancer. Time he thought lung cancer. And so anyway, that was the first. And I just, like in the movie, I said, oh, Andy, you know, that's, that's not funny. And he said, no, I'm serious. And so then right after that he started going and getting treatment and, and then he immediately started losing his hair. And then once he lost his hair, he didn't come back anymore. And then the cancer was so fast acting, he only lasted about three months after that.
- [46:21]
Steve Austin
Oh, man, that was rough. How was your experience making man on the Moon the Story of Andy Kaufman?
- [46:28]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Well, I mean, Certainly I had a great time. I enjoyed it. The only exception was the fact that it was tough working with Jim Carrey because for some reason, one reason or other, Jim Carrey was so. I don't know if it's method acting or whatever, but he was so. He wanted to be so in character. He would show up every day on the set already dressed, already in makeup as Andy. Nobody, even the director. The director was Milos Forman, who directed man, who directed Amadeus and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. He was one of the most famous directors ever. Even he was not a laugh to refer to him as Jim Carrey. Everybody had to refer to him as Andy. Right? I mean, and so that's how. How in character he was. And so apparently one day I finally asked. I asked me los form, I said, does this guy, has he even read the script? Does he not know that Andy and I were really friends? Because he treated me throughout the movie like Andy and I acted always on television. We were bitter enemies, you know, I mean, he threw. He threw eggs at me at one time. He threw a bottle of juice that busted at my feet at me one time and then one. And then actually one time during the filming of the fight scene. He was so into wanting to do and experience everything that Andy experienced. He. We were getting ready to. We were doing the pile driver scene. So he, he had actually called the week before we flew out to Hollywood to do the thing. He called. I got a call in like 2:30 in the morning and I wake up and it's Jim Carrey and Danny DeVito and somebody from these, from our studio and an insurance guy, four people on a conference call with me at 2:30 in the morning. I'm like, what the hell? Anyway, there's. And Jim Carrey and they were asking me, do you think it would be possible for me to actually give Jim a pile driver without him getting hurt? And, and because Jim was adamant on the fact that he wanted to. He didn't want to use a stunt double. He wanted me to actually give him a pile driver so that it would be so resist realistic and it would be just like what happened to Andy. And. But the movie, the, you know, the people that were doing the movie, the insurance people and all this, they were against it. Danny DeVito was one of the producers. He was against it. Right. And. But Jim was good getting me on the line to try to convince him that there was no way he could get hurt. And so I'm telling him, I said, well, you know, I've given A power driver to a thousand people. And I've never really hurt anybody yet. So I'm pretty confident I could do it, you know, without him getting hurt. But anyway, one thing led to another. They wouldn't allow it. So we're getting ready to film the scene out in Hollywood. And they had a stunt double that looked as much like Jim Carrey as Jim Carrey did. It was amazing. This guy's all dressed up just like Jim Carrey. And so, so we. They had, when they're filming, they took the Olympic Auditorium out there and they tried to make it look like the Mid South Coliseum. And a funny story. And I guess the writers were from Hollywood and they bought into so much of this. The stick that Andy had said, we get out there and get ready to film this scene. And it's supposed to be the Mid South Coliseum. And Steve, I look in the audience and they've got probably a thousand extras in this audience and about half of them are wearing straw hats and overalls.
- [49:43]
Steve Austin
That's from myself, right?
- [49:47]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
So I went over to the director and I said, man, let me tell you something. I said, memphis is not like some Podunk hillbilly town. I said, I don't think I've ever seen anybody wear a straw hat. I've been wrestling there for 20 years. I said, I've never seen anybody wear a straw hat to the match. And I said, not all of these cowboy hats either. I said, it's not like a hillbilly town. I said, memphis is a blues town. It's not that, you know. So I swear this costuming guy gets out a megaphone. He goes up and says, everybody that's wearing a cowboy hat, lose the cowboy hat and straw hats, put them under your seat. A hundred people take off these cowboy hats and put them up under their seats, right? So we get ready, start, start filming the fight scene. And so Jim does all the lead up to lead up to the stuff of the antagonistic things. And then finally I get him. He gets me in the headlock and he's standing with me in the headlock. And the directorial cut. And so then the stunt double comes in, he gets me. Jim gets out of the ring, stunt double comes in, puts me in the headlock. I pick this guy up and he says, action. I pick him up, boom. Drop him on his head. And the director yells, come cut. He rolls out of the ring, Jim rolls back in and he lays down where that guy was. His action. And so then I reach over, they get a tight shot of Jim's Face. I reach over, I pick him up, I stick his head between my legs for the pile driver. And director yells, cut. He gets out of the ring. The stunt double gets in, puts his hand between my legs. Action. I pick him up. Boom. Give him the pile driver. Same thing. Cut. In rolls Jim. And we go through this for about 10 takes, right? And finally, the people in the audience are actually yelling at Carrie, what's the matter? You afraid to get a pound? Some of these. Some of these extras are actually right. And so we're getting ready. And this was amazing. It was like director Milos Forman gets on the microphone and says, ladies and gentlemen, I know you're getting antsy. I promise you this is the last take. We're going to do this one more time. We're just readjusting some lights. This is going to be the last take, and then we'll call it a wrap. Everybody give me. Everybody would go home. Sorry. Applauds. Right? So I'm standing there in my corner, and all of a sudden, here comes Bob Zamuda, who is. Who was Andy's best friend and writer and everything in real life. Andy. And he. He comes walking over to me in the rain. And he's just talked to. Just talked to Jim, who's in the other corner. And Bob Zamuda, kind of under his breath, says, hey, Jerry, on this take, when the director yet when you pick him up for the pile driver, and the director yells, cut, he said, just go ahead and give him the pile driver and we'll have it on film. And there'd be nothing they can do about it. And he said, jim, want you to give him the power driver. And so then he turns around and walks back across the ring, right? So now I'm thinking, holy crap, now this is all on me. I'm gonna give this. I know what he's gonna do. He's gonna lay there like he's hurt. He's gonna have him call in an ambulance and all this crap, just like Andy did.
- [52:45]
Steve Austin
Yep.
- [52:45]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
And I said, and I'm gonna look like the big A hole, right?
- [52:48]
Steve Austin
Yeah.
- [52:49]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
So the director, Milos Foreman, is walking by, said, everybody in the place, let's get ready. And I leaned down, I said, milos? And he said, yes, Jerry? I said, andy just sent Bob Zamuda over here or not Andy. I said, jim just sent Bob Zamudo over. And he said, when. When you yell cut, he wants me to go ahead and give him the pile driver. And he just wants to take the pile driver. And he said, oh, J.D. i'm so glad you told me. Thank you very much. He gets the magnify, says ladies and gentlemen. Gentlemen, that's a wrap we threw for the day. Thank you very much. Gosh, I looked over and Jim Carrey was freaking furious. He is eyes got his biggest saucers and he's looking at me and he storms out to the middle of the ring and he grabs the ring and he grabs the microphone that the ring announcer was using and he starts feeding the house and he said, let me tell you people something. I wanted to take a pile driver, but then the insurance people and they were afraid and they wouldn't let me doing I'm not afraid. And all of a sudden they cut the microphone off. Suddenly he couldn't be heard. And he was really even more furious now, right? So he starts screaming. I have worked on Broadway and I do not need a microphone to be heard. I am not afraid to take the pile driver. Lawler's just afraid to give it to me. And he comes right over. I mean this was like a total shoot. He comes right over and gets right in my face and veins are bulging out in the side the of his neck. I'm looking at him like he's nuts and he just looks at me and he spits right in my face. Wow, it's a big hugger. Right in my face. And I just, I went, what the. And I just lost it. And suddenly I think he came to his senses, realized what he had done and he runs, he turns around, he starts running across the ring. I've just lost it then. And I run across and I catch him right before he can slide out of the ring by his neck. I had him in like a reverse face lock, right? Reverse chin lock. And he's tried to slide out underneath the bottom rope. Now he had about a 300 pound, this big black guy that was his security guard. He sees what's going on. So he grabs Kerry by the ankles and he's trying to pull him out of the ring and I got him by his neck and I'm pulling him back into the ring and all of a sudden I'm thinking, oh, wait a minute, I can't. What am I going to do? I got beat up Jim Carrey here in front of the world, right? So I just finally let him go and down the guy pulls him down, down onto the floor and sure enough, wouldn't you know, they call an ambulance. He goes to the hospital. I go back to my trailer and everything and he goes to the hospital. And I didn't Hear any more until later on that night at like 11 o' clock news. I swear there's a freaking big hurricane. I don't know what the hurricane was. There was this hurricane going on in Florida. People are getting their homes blown away and everything. It's a big, huge news. And the lead story on the 11 o' clock news was Jim Carrey injured by a wrestler on the set of man on the moon. News at 11, you know, film at 11. And that was like the huge, big story all of Hollywood. And then the next day I get word that I'm fired from the movie and that I just, I go home and Jim Carrey wants me replaced and all the scenes reshot with somebody else. And so I'm just, just thinking, geez, you know, what, what am I going to do now? Anyway, I go home and about a week goes by and I didn't hear from anybody except all this news that I'm, I'm off the movie and they're going to replace me and everything. And then about a week later, I get a call from Milos Foreman and the director, and he says, jerry, can you be in New York on this date? We're going to film the, the Letterman scenes with David Letterman. And I said, I thought, I thought I'm fired. I thought, he want me. He's calmed down, everything is okay. We got a. All smoothed over. We love you, Jenny, you terrific.
- [56:30]
Steve Austin
Of course I do.
- [56:33]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
So the funny thing was then, of course, the scenes we were shooting next were the Letterman where I got to slap him. And man, oh man, did I pace that son of a bitch. I hit Jim Carrey so freaking hard. Much harder than I hit Andy Kaufman. And he got up and he was holding the side of his head, he said, oh my God, you really punked me out on that one. And he said, me, I hope you got that on one take because I can't do that again.
- [56:59]
Steve Austin
So he knew he'd been a jackass, huh?
- [57:01]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Oh, yeah, he knew it. He knew it. And he gave me, he gave me this nice North Face jacket. He gave me a bunch of gifts and stuff like that. And you know what? I just, I swear to God, I just. A few weeks ago, I haven't heard from Jim Carrey in years. A few weeks ago, I get a call from his secretary and says, jim has something he wants to give you. Want to get your mailing address, I think, what? And so I give him my mailing address. I give her my mailing address. I said, what is it? She said, oh, I can't tell you it's gonna be a surprise.
- [57:28]
Steve Austin
Oh, God, we don't like surprises.
- [57:33]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Yeah, exactly. So anyway, a couple of days later, I get this box and not very big box in the mail, and I open it up, there's this letter, a handwritten note from Jim Carrey. And it. And it was. It was weird in the sense that apparently, apparently somebody gave Jim Carrey the costume that I wore, the wrestling costume that I wore in the movie man on the Moon. And apparently he thought it was from me. I don't know. I never saw that. I wanted the costume. I never saw it after the making of the movie. But in this letter it says, dear Jerry, the gift of the costume that you wore in man on the Moon is possibly one of the greatest gifts I've ever received. Working with you in that movie was both an odyssey and was shining moment in something, I don't know, like really putting me over. Right. And he said. He said, I know that you have dabbled in music and cut your own albums. He said, I just wanted to give you something from my record album collection and I hope you enjoy it. And he said, next time you're in la, he said, I have a suite at the Staples Center. Give me a call. I'd love to have you as my guest. And so anyway, that's the letter. And then in the box were about eight record albums, pristine, condition, mint condition record albums, all by wrestlers, all like, there was, you know, the Hulk Hogan WWE album, album by Sweet Daddy Siki, album by Antonio Rocco. All of these different wrestlers that over the years, I mean, some of them went back to the, you know, the 60s and everything. All these records that had been cut by wrestlers that somehow he had in his record collection. And he sent them all to me for. For some reason or other. But anyway, that was his gift that he sent me.
- [59:08]
Steve Austin
So. Do you play them all the time?
- [59:09]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
No, I've never played it.
- [59:13]
Steve Austin
Before. We wrap this one up and you got to come back on the show because I knew when we started talking it was going to take multiple shows. But before we wrap up the conversation about Andy Kaufman and yourself, at one point during the feud, you wrestled a guy on behalf of, you know, Jim Carrey, and he was the Colossus of D. Death, Right? Who was the Colossus of Death? I must know.
- [59:39]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
The Colossus of Death was. Oh, my gosh, what is his name? He came in with. He came in with the Garvin's. He was the big guy. He came in with. With Jimmy Garvin as His partner, Steve. I'm the world's worst on trying to remember.
- [59:57]
Steve Austin
Just part of the way he walked across the ring with his hands up. You know, I was thinking Plan 9 from outer space. You know, it was tremendous. But. And then you'd go ahead and lock up with him because he had his arms out, you know, kind of like walking like a. Like he was sleepwalking kind of.
- [60:13]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Right. Like Frankenstein.
- [60:16]
Steve Austin
I just had to know who. The Colossus of Death.
- [60:18]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Oh, my gosh. If the next time you have me back, I'll have his name. I just can't recall it right now, but. And you would know him. Oh, gosh.
- [60:26]
Steve Austin
One of the lines also, I think when Kaufman kind of started feuding with Jimmy Hart there towards the end, they had to, you know, they had their little tiff and I guess Kaufman slapped Jimmy Hart and Hart was running off in the mouth that he had been slapped in front of 355,000 people. 355,000 people. I guess at the time, that was the population of Memphis.
- [60:47]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Exactly.
- [60:48]
Steve Austin
That was tremendous.
- [60:49]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
That was our viewing audience, that was our Saturday morning ratings. And we were, you know, in Memphis, of course you were proud. I mean, because the population of Memphis literally was about 700,000 people. And we had on Saturday mornings, 355,000 of those people were watching Saturday morning wrestling. So that was a huge. I mean, that was a big news story in Memphis. So for him, that's what he was referring to at the time. And you know, of course, to everybody that was watching, that did seem like a huge. A huge amount of people for Memphis tv. But you're right, the little tiff that when we worked Andy in and. And it all became a ruse as they were actually working together to get back at me in the end. But when they had. We had the little interview set there with Andy and Jimmy Hart fighting. If you watch that, it's the best non fight scene you'll ever see. Both these guys are like two girls slapping at each other. Neither one of them made contact with anything. And it was the funniest and the greatest pull apart that there's ever been in wrestling. If you.
- [61:50]
Steve Austin
Well, I'm talking to Jerry the King Lawler. You can follow him on Twitter at Jerry Lawler at Jerry Lawler on Twitter. His website is www.KingJerryLawlor.com. jerry, thanks for coming on the show. I hope you had a good time because we've got. Man, I've got six pages of notes I didn't even get to yet. So please say you'll come back.
- [62:12]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
I know I get a little long winded sometimes, especially when I'm talking about myself. I'll be more than glad to come back anytime. Thank you for joining us for another classic episode of the Steve Austin Show. Please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends. For more Steve Austin show, go to podcast1.com that's podcast o n e.com this September, CBS hits are streaming free on Pluto TV. I'm coming in for this month only. You can watch full seasons of the CBS shows you love, from the courtroom.
- [62:49]
Steve Austin
Drama of Matlock to the heroics of Fire Country.
- [62:52]
Jerry 'The King' Lawler
Go back to where it all began in NCIS Origins, or watch the hilarious hauntings of ghosts. All for free. Full seasons of the CBS shows you love this month only on Pluto tv Stream now. Pay Never.