ViceTV tonight. New series that features Memphis wrestling in it’s heyday during tonight’s episode. Many repeats the next week so lots of chances to set the dvr.

It was good. Probably could be an entire series just based on Memphis alone.

That story about Jerry Jarrett actually tearing that guys eyeball out was pretty gruesome.

As great as the old territory days were for the fans and the talent they were also ran in a mob like fashion behind the scenes. It was incredibly dangerous to cross a promoter who ran the territory.

(10-06-2022 10:33 AM)salukiblue Wrote:  It was good. Probably could be an entire series just based on Memphis alone.

That would be awesome. Wish they’d focused more on the 80s but it was pretty good.

Next weeks episode is about the Lawler Kaufman feud

If I mention some of the things going on I would likely get a permanent ban from the group.

It wasn't shown but watching the show made me remember o e of my favorite video clips from way back when. I'm sorry I don't know how to put in a YouTube clip but it's Lawler vs. Dundee loses leave town montage set to the Rocky theme. Joe cutting his arm always scared the hell out of me too. What are some of everyone's favorite memories from way back when?

(10-08-2022 03:29 PM)Rufus T. Firefly Wrote:  It wasn't shown but watching the show made me remember o e of my favorite video clips from way back when. I'm sorry I don't know how to put in a YouTube clip but it's Lawler vs. Dundee loses leave town montage set to the Rocky theme. Joe cutting his arm always scared the hell out of me too. What are some of everyone's favorite memories from way back when?

Some of their best stuff was when Randy Savage finally showed up and started up that long feud with Lawler.

The massive feud of Austin Idol & Tommy Rich vs Lawler in 1987.

The Undertaker vs Sid Vicious in '94, that was a really big crowd for that late period. They had not had a big house like that in several years.

Those final days in the MSC they had that feud with Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling. Bullet Bob Armstrong and the smoky mountain thugs lol. That was around '95 or so.

They still had a lot of talent in those days, Brian Christopher, PG-13, Billy Jack Haynes, Sid Vicious. SMW would bring in the Rock n Roll Express, the Armstrongs, the Dirty White Boy and Tracy Smothers, etc. That was the last gasp of good stuff really.

(10-07-2022 01:10 PM)MemphisFan95 Wrote:  Next weeks episode is about the Lawler Kaufman feud

This was an incredibly fascinating episode. Stuff I had never heard before. They had everybody fooled, including many wrestlers. Every network news station did a story about it. Lawler said many of the things Andy Kaufman just ad libbed on the spot. They just let him go. He really was a comedic genius.

(10-19-2022 02:08 PM)UofMark Wrote:  

(10-07-2022 01:10 PM)MemphisFan95 Wrote:  Next weeks episode is about the Lawler Kaufman feud

This was an incredibly fascinating episode. Stuff I had never heard before. They had everybody fooled, including many wrestlers. Every network news station did a story about it. Lawler said many of the things Andy Kaufman just ad libbed on the spot. They just let him go. He really was a comedic genius.

Andy knew how to make it look real.
After the Lawler slap, he filed a lawsuit against NBC for $200 million.
The fact that he did that, and it made the papers...made it look real to a teenaged me.
My father swore up and down it wasn't real...but that thought never entered my mind.
My father had passed away by the time Jerry released his book, where he admitted it was fake years later.
One more time I had to admit that that old goat was right. LOL.

Those first 2 episodes on Memphis wrestling were incredibly entertaining. Episode 3 was on the AWA and Verne Gagne and was fairly boring. The only part that was good was the Ken Patera story of being arrested and brawling with a dozen cops.

Patera ended up serving 2 years over the incident.

Ken has always had a short fuse in interviews and his story was that some teen tossed a 30lb rock through a McDonalds window and he got blamed which was how it started. Some of the people at the table told him they suspected he was the one who threw the rock and Ken started to mad. lol

There was a good story on Mad Dog Vachon nearly jumping out of plane. That guy was crazy for real.

If the old territorial promoters had taken him more seriously, the Lawler feud showed Andy Kaufmann could have been one of the top drawing heels & managers in the business. He understood how to get heat and he was a big name at the time. He totally got the psychology of it.

Of course he tragically died shortly after, but Lawler and Jerry Jarrett sold a lot of tickets and milked the angle well.

They sold it so perfectly even the rival promoters thought it was real and called Jarrett up to thank him for messing Kaufman up. lol

Even Bill Watts called up Jarrett and thought it was legit.

(10-07-2022 01:10 PM)MemphisFan95 Wrote:  Next weeks episode is about the Lawler Kaufman Con

fixed it there for you

Inter-gender Wrestling Champion is hilarious:

Kaufman finally stepped into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man—Lawler himself.[21] Kaufman taunted the residents of Memphis by playing "videos showing residents how to use soap" and proclaiming the city to be "the nation's redneck capital".[21] The ongoing Lawler-Kaufman feud, which often featured Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a number of staged "works", such as a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman.[69][70]

For some time after that first match, Kaufman appeared wearing a neck brace,[21] insisting that his injuries were much worse than they really were. Kaufman would continue to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000: that if he were pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that Kaufman would also shave his head.[71]

Eventually it was revealed that the feud and wrestling matches were staged works,[72] and that Kaufman and Lawler were friends. This was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman aired on NBC in 1995. Jim Carrey, who revealed the secret, later went on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. In a 1997 interview with the Memphis Flyer, Lawler said he had improvised during their first match and the Letterman incident.

Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography It's Good to Be the King ... Sometimes, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair exaggerated it. He also said that Kaufman's furious tirade and performance on Letterman was Kaufman's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair. Promoter Jerry Jarrett later recalled that for two years he would mail Kaufman payments comparable to what other main-event wrestlers were getting at the time, but Kaufman never deposited the cheques

For those that don’t have cable

https://youtu.be/zQqWMYuwQ2s

Lawler once said that he and Kaufman were friends and Jerry appreciated Andy's talent.
Lawler also worked with Jim Carrey on Carrey's portrayal of Kaufman in the movie.
Let's just say, Lawler did not like Carrey nearly as much as he liked Andy.

(10-22-2022 06:38 AM)BinghamptonNed Wrote:  For those that don’t have cable

https://youtu.be/zQqWMYuwQ2s

awesome, thanks for sharing

I saw on the other board that this is the smartest group of fans.

(10-24-2022 11:33 AM)Tiger87 Wrote:  Lawler once said that he and Kaufman were friends and Jerry appreciated Andy's talent.
Lawler also worked with Jim Carrey on Carrey's portrayal of Kaufman in the movie.
Let's just say, Lawler did not like Carrey nearly as much as he liked Andy.

Because Carey did stupid stuff that Kaufman never did. I guess Carey didn't know wrestling wasn't real.

(10-24-2022 08:40 PM)Hernando Hills Tiger Wrote:  

(10-24-2022 11:33 AM)Tiger87 Wrote:  Lawler once said that he and Kaufman were friends and Jerry appreciated Andy's talent.
Lawler also worked with Jim Carrey on Carrey's portrayal of Kaufman in the movie.
Let's just say, Lawler did not like Carrey nearly as much as he liked Andy.

Because Carey did stupid stuff that Kaufman never did. I guess Carey didn't know wrestling wasn't real.

He said Carey was just a pompous jerk.