Source: Talk is Jericho
On episode 231 of Talk Is Jericho, ‘Y2J’ Chris Jericho caught up with Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler to talk about a number of topics including Lawler meeting comedian Jerry Seinfeld, Dolph Ziggler’s involvement in Lawler’s 2012 cardiac arrest on WWE Monday Night RAW, and his recent heel turn on WWE SmackDown.
According to Lawler, Seinfeld’s manager reached out to him when the comedian was going to be performing in “The King’s” hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. Seinfeld is a big fan of Andy Kaufman and wanted to meet Lawler to learn more about the unprecedented angle between Lawler and Kaufman.
“I go down and here I am, backstage, and all of a sudden, here comes Jerry Seinfeld and his road manager walking in. And he was just so fascinated [by Andy Kaufman’s foray into professional wrestling]. And after we had spent like an hour with him, my girlfriend at the time says, ‘I can’t believe we got to meet Jerry Seinfeld and you did all the talking.’ I said, ‘well, that’s why we got to meet him because he wanted to hear about Andy’ and he was so fascinated with Andy Kaufman and that story. Yeah, [he wanted to know] exactly how the [David] Letterman show came about, and how we did the match, and just how that all came about.”
In September 2012, Lawler participated in tag team match on RAW with Randy Orton against CM Punk and Dolph Ziggler. Minutes after the match, Lawler suffered cardiac arrest. Lawler claimed that ‘The Show Off”s accurately named Heart Stopper elbow drops may have played a role in Lawler’s hospitalization.
“A lot of people say, ‘oh, you’re blaming Dolph’ or whatever. I mean, I certainly don’t at all.” Lawler added, “my cardiologist said that it could have been caused by, I just had gotten 10 elbow drops from Dolph in that match. And you know Dolph. When he does those elbow drops, I swear, this is no lie, this is one of the few things that I remember. I remember on about number five, I was laying there, I was thinking, ‘damn, whatever happened to the days we used to do this and not kill each other?’ And sure enough, later on, I died. Five elbow drops later, I’m dead! But what the doctor said what could have happened was the impact of that could have knocked my heart off rhythm a little bit and then it took a little bit, 10 minutes, a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, then 10 minutes later, I’m sitting over there at the desk, it just seized up and stopped.”
As for Lawler’s return to heel commentary, ‘The King’ is worried about talent taking his insults too seriously. Lawler indicated that Big Show is notorious for taking such barbs personally.
“Now, I’m sort of starting to do the heel commentator thing again and I worry because sometimes, guys really get their feelings hurt. Big Show, big time, I’ve got to be real careful about what you say about Big Show. He gets his feelings hurt real easy. And so a lot of these guys, I worry, they won’t realize, ‘hey, come on, it’s show business.'”
Along with these topics, Lawler discussed knowing The Rock was going to be a star when he was Flex Kavana, how ‘The King’ gimmick came to be, coming up with the Kamala gimmick, and much more. To check out this podcast, click here.