Watch out Budweiser, the “King of Wrestling” is coming for your throne as the “King of Beers.” This week, Memphis-based Meddlesome Brewing Company is rolling out its newest offering: Jerry “The King” Lager.
“A while back I was contacted by someone from the brewery who explained to me they make beers with names that are familiar with Memphis,” Jerry Lawler said. “One was 201 Hoplar and they had the idea to do a Jerry ‘The King’ Lager. I thought it sounded fun, so I gave them the go ahead to use my name.”
Lawler, who prides himself on never having a sip of alcohol in his entire life, now has a beer named in his honor to go along with his bar located on the drunkest street in town. When asked if he would end his 68 years of sobriety to taste the beer named in his honor, the King said “I’ve never tasted beer, wine, or whiskey in my life and I’m not going to start just because one’s named after me.”
(I did get a chance to sample Jerry “The King” Lager last Saturday live on the radio. Listen here for my taste test.)
Starting Wednesday, the lager will be on tap at the brewery’s taproom, which is conveniently located for wrestling fans wanting to spend a day in Cordova. According to Google Maps, Meddlesome Brewing is just a two-minute drive to the King’s other restaurant- Jerry Lawler Memphis BBQ Company. You can’t buy Meddlesome beers in stores yet; however the taproom will offer the beer “to go” in 32-ounce cans and 64-ounce growlers.
Meddlesome is not the first Memphis-area brewery to embrace the Bluff City’s relationship with pro wrestling. Memphis Made Brewing’s taproom has a Royal Rumble pinball machine and often serves as the host venue for my regular Rasslin’ Trivia Nights. Wiseacre Brewing has made some short-lived wrestling-themed adult beverages (a taproom-only release of Sandy Ravage’s The Cream and an experimental keg of Cocoa B. Ware Brown Ale), and they spotlighted Memphis wrestling as the theme of their annual mural outside their brewery in 2015.
For those local brewmasters looking for a Memphis rasslin’ inspired name for your next beer, I present to you this list (insert Chris Jericho joke here) free of charge:
Even though Jerry “The King” Lawler emceed WWE’s annual Hall of Fame ceremony that featured the inductions of Jeff Jarrett and Sputnik Monroe, as well as an appearance by Jimmy Hart, the most Memphis thing to happen in New Orleans over WrestleMania 34 weekend occurred the night before. With WrestleMania weekend coinciding with the 35th anniversary of Lawler’s legendary match against Andy Kaufman, the King celebrated with some fireworks. At WrestleCon’s Supershow (one of many non-WWE affiliated events held in New Orleans during wrestling’s “Super Bowl” weekend), independent wrestler Joey Ryan was in the ring dressed as Kaufman when he fell victim to one of Lawler’s signature moves:
Last night, @JerryLawler shot a fireball at my dick while I was dressed as Andy Kaufman on the 35th anniversary of Lawler pile driving Kaufman. Pro Wrestling is pretty great. #WrestleConpic.twitter.com/qQGH7Si4px
Jerry Lawler Throws Fire at Crotch of Wrestler Dressed as Andy Kaufman
As David Letterman might say: I think you can get away with hitting someone below the belt. But one thing you can’t do is throw fire (or coffee) down there. I’ve said it over and over again!
More to come: This post starts our regular pro wrestling coverage here at memphisflyer.com. (How cool is it that our first post happens to be on Rusev Day?!) Appropriately, the name of this blog also pays homage to Kaufman and this classic promo:
Instead of dropping Hulk Hogan in a pile driver at a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden, Jerry Lawler talked about his art teacher with potter Agnes Stark at the Incognito! art show at Memphis Botanic Garden.
Lawler was one of the artists in the art show, where guests bid on artwork not knowing who actually did the artwork. All the work in the show, held Jan. 26, was unsigned; guests learned who the artist was after they bought the work.
Lawler and Stark talked about the late Helen Stahl, who was Lawler’s art teacher at Treadwell High School. She also was a friend of Stark’s.
“I’ve drawn all my life,” Lawler said. Stahl was his teacher in the 10th, 1th and 12th grades. “I majored in art. And then when I graduated in 1967 she had put together a portfolio of my work I had done in her class and submitted it to Memphis State (now University of Memphis). I won a full tuition commercial art scholarship.”
Lawler is an amazingly talented artist. Years ago, I drove to Waterford, Mississippi to his art opening at a little gallery, which was jam packed when I arrived. He draws and paints in a variety of styles.
“Crazy Mixed Up Kid” is the title of his painting in Incognito!. “It was sort of a comic book art piece,” he said. “I’m just a fan of that style art. Last year, I did a panel from a Batman comic book. And this was actually a panel from a romance comic book.”
Lawler, by the way, now can be seen on Memphis billboards with the words “Product of Public Schools.”
……
Michael Donahue
Miles Tamboli and his dad, Roy Tamboli, at 20 Under 30 reception
Memphis Flyer’s Twenty Under Thirty Class of 2018 was honored at a reception Jan. 24 at Old Dominick Distillery.
Each year, the Flyer devotes an issue to the best and brightest Memphians under 30. Readers nominated more than 50 exceptional young people. They were introduced and given plaques during the reception.
“It’s a huge honor to be with these people who are doing really cool things in this city where you can make a huge impact as someone under 30,” said Molly Wallace, who is building libraries in KIPP Memphis Collegiate Schools.
…….
Michael Donahue
Memphis in May poster unveiling featuring art by Erin Harmon, right.
I’m half Czechoslovakian (my mother’s maiden name was “Strunc”), so I’m ready for this year’s Memphis in May International Festival salute to the Czech Republic.
The celebration kicked off with the unveiling of this year’s commemorative poster Jan. 25 at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Memphis artist Erin Harmon, a professor of art at Rhodes College, is the artist. “The picture depicts multiple aspects of, basically, the visual culture of the Czech Republic,” Harmon said. “Art, architecture and design were things that I just got real inspired by when I was doing research on the country and culture.
“I couldn’t narrow it down to one image. It’s a collection of images in circles. The circles are interconnected. There’s a lot of motion in the picture.”
The viewer can read the images as if they’re coming out of this silhouette of a woman’s head done in Art Nouveau style in the bottom left hand corner. “I think the Czech Republic is known for Art Nouveau in its architecture and great history of graphic arts and design. And artists like Alphonse Mucha.”
The silhouette is a link to Mucha, Harmon said. “He would include a lot of heavily outlined profiles of women’s heads in his paintings. The silhouette is the actual head of a soprano. She was an actress and a singer and the first Czech star of the Metropolitan Opera – Jarmila Novotna. I found a profile shot of her from a record of hers. I traced her portrait and put her portrait in the style of Mucha.”
The pink and gold halo around her head is taken from the arches of the facade of the Jubilee Synagogue in Prague. Other sites included in the painting are Our Lady Before Tyn (Prague), The Rock Castle (Sloupe), Tepla Monastary (Tepla), The Altneuschul (Prague), San Nicolas Cathedral (Prague), and the Strahov Monastary (Prague).
Harmon also pays homage to Czech toy designer Libuse Niklova, Czech artist Egon
Schiele and graphic designer Ladislav Sutnar.
Her artwork actually is a painted paper collage. “So, it’s all painted and paper and then put back together. You can see that in the original, but it may be difficult to detect in the poster.”
It’s a terrible day for fans of Memphis wrestling. Lance Russell, a longtime program manager for WHBQ and one of the most beloved wrestling commentators in the history of sports entertainment has died. In 2014 the man known to heels coast-to-coast as ol’ Banana Nose, talked to The Memphis Flyer about King Lawler, Memphis wrestling, and playing himself in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. This is a reprint of that interview with lots of links.
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91 (5)
Memphis Flyer: You and Dave Brown werethe eye of this colorful, chaotic storm. Calling wrestling like it was any other sport during the glory days of Jackie Fargo, Tojo Yamamoto, and Jerry “The King” Lawler vs. Andy “the clown” Kaufman. Can you even go a day without talking to somebody about wrestling?
Lance Russell: Well, it’s easier down here [in Florida] than it was when I lived in Memphis. When I wasn’t talking in person to some fan about wrestling, I was talking on the telephone. Somebody was always calling. You know, people say, “Boy, whatever happened to the good old days of Memphis wrestling?” Well, I can tell you Memphis wrestling is just as alive as it ever has been.
You’d be the one to know.
My son was looking at his computer a couple of nights ago and found where somebody had made a list of people who were involved in wrestling as promoters or wrestlers or managers or referees and even announcers. And they have them ranked by age. My son said, “Did you realize that in the United States you are the fifth oldest person involved in wrestling that is still alive?” When I got up the next day I said to my son, outside of wanting to kill you, I was amused all night long. I didn’t sleep, but I was amused.
I suspect that makes you a go-to resource, having seen wrestlers from so many territories and having also worked for Turner Broadcasting.
I can tell you as a director of programming for WHBQ in Memphis for all of those years, I’m not proud of the fact that I didn’t put an edict out that there will be no erasing of tapes fromTalent Party or wrestling or any of those kinds of things. We erased everything. And sometimes we would record on the same tape two weeks in a row. We kept telling ourselves we were saving money.
You know Vince McMahon is getting ready to program Memphis wrestling on the network he started so he’s trying to pin down all the programs. And, in Memphis, everything we ever had in terms of tapes is all just blasted asunder. Jerry Lawler ended up with the biggest quantity of tapes. Jimmy Hart, a wrestler and wrestling manager who worked with Vince McMahon in New York after he left Memphis, ended up with a lot of tapes. People pay good money for them too, and now Vince McMahon wants to broadcast Memphis wrestling every day.
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91 (4)
Why are people still fascinated with Memphis wrestling?
I’m gonna tell you, Memphis was absolutely totally different than any territory in the country. I eventually went with Turner Broadcasting, and when I went there and I ran into guys from the East Coast and West Coast they’d say, “All you clowns in Memphis spend more time making jokes than anything else.” And we did, because it made people happy. They were tickled to death to look forward to some of the foolishness that went on. And we were proud of it. It was good entertainment.
What made Dave and I different was the programming. The different matches that we booked. The different characters that were made up. Like Kamala the Giant, who is from right down in Mississippi and was very popular all over the country. I hired Dave to work in television. Dave was an all-night radio jock for WHBQ, and I knew him as a person and liked him very much. Anyhow, he questioned wrestling. I said, “Man, if you want to work in television, you will learn more in two months of wrestling than two years of anything else.” So he took a chance, and he was great. Dave and I also agreed on one thing you never talk about in wrestling. See, I was a wrestling fan, and I had been ever since the days when I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and worked in the auditorium as an usher. I never wanted anybody to say to me, “Hey, I’m going to win in the third fall on this match.” I don’t want to be a stiff actor saying some lines, I wanted to call things as I saw them in my face for the first time.
My lifetime friend, Lance Russell died early this morning. I cannot express how sad I am. He was responsible for my tv career success. pic.twitter.com/6jXV8OtEex
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91
No matter how over the top it was, it was completely alive. Anything could happen.
We had great matches too. But in the meantime, we didn’t mind tickling your funny bone. We’d have a guy or a gal shaved bald right there in the middle of the ring.
I thought I was going to get killed one night in the Memphis Coliseum, when Jerry Lawler put up his hair and Bill Dundee put up his wife’s hair and Dundee lost. We had our own barber who was there to cut hair when necessary. He thought he was going to be killed. The crowd was incensed that Lawler had cheated to win and this vivacious young redhead was losing her hair. It’s hilarious when you stop and think about a situation getting that serious over what was actually a very funny incident.
But that’s the Memphis audience, right? It’s why the famous Lawler/Kaufman feud couldn’t have happened anywhere else.
You’re right about that. There was a kind of audience reaction that we had cultivated either on purpose or unknowingly. And this is the thing that attracted Andy Kaufman. As a kid, Andy would watch wrestling and he would see the bad guy: Just by raising his hand he could get this big reaction from the crowd. That power that wrestlers held captivated him, and he initially tried to get the attention of Vince McMahon’s father and his grandfather who, in addition to promoting boxing, also promoted wrestling. They said “What are you trying to do, make a joke out of wrestling?” Well, Andy ran across a guy who worked for the wrestling magazines and he said to check out the guys in Memphis, who will do anything. And they’re great show people.
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91 (8)
Even if the outcomes are known, this is unscripted stuff.
I got a big guy from Canada supposedly. He comes out there [to interview] and he says, “Jerry Lawler! I’m going to get him! I’m taking a blood oath!” And I’m the program director at WHBQ, so I say, “No, I don’t want any blood. Don’t be busting his eye open on television. We don’t want our audience to have to put up with that.” And this idiot has got one of these big double-headed axes, and he runs the blade down his massive arm and I’m sitting here looking at it, and I know that the camera is right on this thing, and all of a sudden here comes the stream of red right into the camera. I thought, “Oh my God, he’s cutting his arm open on television for crying out loud.” I almost had a heart attack.
[Let’s talk about] Jerry Lawler, the King of Memphis wrestling.
The superlatives for Lawler? I don’t have enough of them. But I can tell you I’ve seen a lot of wrestlers, and Jerry Lawler is a guy who is gifted in so many directions. I promise, I don’t owe him money or anything. I’m just telling the truth. He is the most talented guy in the business and people hated him in the East because of what he’s done in Memphis. I mean, he became a television host on Channel 5, and he was very good at what he did.
RIP Lance Russell. The voice of pro wrestling for decades & with @JerryLawler, the face of Memphis Wrestling. Legend. All-time great. pic.twitter.com/ROV2lna9y4
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91 (3)
And you recognized his skills right away.
When he was 15, his dad took him down to the auditorium every Monday for wrestling. We had no way to record the matches; it was too expensive at that time. So when Dave and I did the show, we’d have to just talk about what happened. Well, Jerry was a natural artist. He draws these 11″ x 14″ pictures on pieces of cardboard. He drew maybe the finishing move from a match or something. Then Dave and I could talk about the picture.
I found those pictures in my attic about five years ago. I’ve had them for 35 years.
You got to play yourself in Man on the Moon. That had to be affirming to have that Kaufman/Lawler feud become widely recognized as a big moment in pop culture.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve got several copies of it. Unfortunately they cut out some of my best scenes. That was fun though.
And what about the actual feud. Did you guys know you were making history?
We were all working. That’s what we did for a living.
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91 (6)
Legendary Memphis Wrestling Announcer Lance Russell Dies at 91 (9)
Jerry “The King” Lawler and his fiance, Lauryn McBride, were in the audience at the Kings of Leon show Saturday May 6 at the Beale Street Music Festival.
Jerry recalled the time the band members wanted their picture taken with him. “They were first getting started,” Jerry said.
He was in Arlington making an appearance at the time. The Kings of Leon also were at the venue with their amps and musical instruments in a trailer, he said. “They saw that I was there and they came out and said, ‘We want a picture of you with your crown.’ I took the picture with them. I never thought anything about it until they became famous.”
Michael Donahue
Rick Gardner and Dike Bacon at HBG Design
HBG Design (formerly Hnedak Bobo Group) showed off its newly-designed office space at a reception May 4 at 1 Commerce Square.
The architecture and interior design firm invited friends to see the new offices, said HBG Design marketing manager Dana Ramsey. The firm moved from its old offices at 104 Front Street on Nov. 1.
“Along with our new office space, we also rolled out our new brand – a new logo, our new name and branded information,” Dana said.
Grinder, Taber & Grinder construction worked with HBG Design to create the new space. The closed office and workstations on the 23rd and 24th floors were demolished to create an open floor plan. The 23rd floor ceiling was cut through to create a stairway to connect the two levels.
Star & Micey provided music and Another Roadside Attraction prepared hors d’oeuvres for the reception, which drew about 120 people.
Michael Donahue
Marcus Bell and Romeo Khazen at Susan B. Komen
The 2017 community health care grants were announced at the Memphis-Mid-South affiliate of Susan G. Komen annual grant reception May 4 at The Westin Memphis Beale Street. “We have 10 community health care grants,” said executive director Elaine Hare. “We presented $402,000 to eight health care providers and two support groups.”
The recipients provide breast health and breast cancer services in the Mid-South.
The money for the community grant recipients is from the 2016 Race for the Cure, which was held Oct. 29.
About 75 people, including grantees, Race for the Cure sponsors and winning team captains, attended the reception.
Cheese Crime
There needs to be an addendum to the old saying “Don’t cry over spilled milk.” Don’t stab people over spilled cheese dip, especially if it’s not Pancho’s. Seriously people, don’t do that.
An unidentified 35-year-old Memphis woman was rushed into surgery at Methodist hospital Sunday morning after she wrecked the car she was driving to the emergency room. She’d been stabbed by another woman, Yolanda Tucker, who, according to a police report, became unreasonably upset after the victim spilled a container of Rotel. The two women were sharing the dip with a man, Michael Weston, who loaned Tucker his pocket knife. Both Tucker and Weston were taken into custody.
Royal Reprieve
Memphis wrestler Jerry Lawler’s WWE suspension has been lifted. That means the 66-year-old Hall-of-Famer should be able to reclaim his throne now that charges of domestic assault have been dismissed. Lawler and his 27-year-old fiancée, Lauryn McBride, were both taken into custody early Friday morning following kicking, scratching, and candle-throwing at Lawler’s East Memphis residence. Police were unable to determine who was the aggressor.
Neverending Elvis
It’s been a big week for Memphis’ most famous presumably deceased celebrity. First, a New York Daily News report quoted Elvis’ step-brother, David Stanley, claiming that Presley’s overdose was intentional. Stanley later took to social media, claiming he had been misrepresented and had no certain knowledge of Elvis’ intentions. Also, reports continue to circulate claiming that Elvis is alive and working as a ponytailed groundskeeper at Graceland. According to various media sources, he sent a secret “I’m alive” message by scratching his face.
If you’re going down, you might as well go down swinging. Am I right?
Derrick Thomas, arrested in Jonesboro, Arkansas, last month for indecent exposure and “enjoying himself,” decided to expose himself again — this time in Judge Keith Blackman’s courtroom.
According to news reports, Thomas was granted permission to leave the courtroom for a drink of water. He returned — running by all accounts — with his shirt off, his pants around his ankles, and his arms in the air.
“Court is back in session,” Thomas was quoted as saying.
Thomas laughed as three police officers forced his pants up and removed him from the courtroom. Then he added something to the effect of “They will put [on my] tombstone that [I] was the one that got naked in the courtroom.”
Everybody has a bucket list, apparently.
Dethroned?
Jerry Lawler, the 66-year-old King of Memphis wrasslin’, has been suspended indefinitely from the WWE pending the outcome of a domestic assault arrest. Lawler and his 27-year-old fiancée, Lauryn McBride, were both taken into custody following a violent encounter at Lawler’s East Memphis residence last week. According to reports, fire was thrown. Well, candle anyway. Lawler, whose feud with Andy Kaufman helped to popularize professional sports entertainment (aka wrasslin’), recently opened a club on Beale Street.
The furor over the future of the Mid-South Coliseum has been one of Memphis’ defining civic kerfuffles of the decade. Over its five-decade history, it has been the venue for concerts by the likes of Elvis, the Beatles, and David Bowie, as well as Tiger basketball games and graduations. But the thing the Coliseum is the most famous for is not Elvis Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis. It’s wrestling. Throughout the 1970s, the round house was the site of epic weekly battles between the likes of Tojo Yamamoto, Bill Dundee, and the King himself, Jerry Lawler. Their images went out over the airwaves to millions of households all over the South and Midwest and made folk heroes and villains out of an unlikely cast of characters.
In 1974, Sherman Willmott came to Memphis from Connecticut as an impressionable child, only to discover the joys of TV wrestling. “When we moved here, my sister and I had never seen anything like it,” he says. “We watched cartoons, and then afterwards wrestling came on. Our minds were blown. My sister was crying and screaming because George Barnes and Bill Dundee had put Tojo in the ropes, and one of the guys from Australia — Barnes and Dundee were from Australia — was jumping off the top rope of the ring and hitting Tojo with a chair. We couldn’t believe the referee would let this go on.”
From that moment on, Willmott would be a fan of what he calls “soap opera for the working man.” Professional wrestling was already a national phenomenon in the 1970s, and Memphis was the closest thing there was a national capital for the “sport.” “Lawler is particularly talented with ring technique,” Willmott says. “These guys are so good they don’t even look like they’re working an act. That’s what made it so believable.”
Hulk Hogan
In the 1990s, Willmott founded Shangri-La Records, which brought Memphis alternative music into the national spotlight. His Shangri-La Projects label has produced books on Memphis history, many with local author Ron Hall. “After we did the Garage Rock Yearbook, he threw this thing out to me that he was working on a coffee table book on wrestling. I went to his house to check out the pictures he had acquired, and the ephemera and the ads for the book, and it blew my mind. Ron had grown up here in the 1960s in Memphis as a fan of Billy Wicks and Sputnik Monroe and these guys who were before my time here in Memphis. Growing up with wrestling here in Memphis was awesome. It was a fun little book project to do. Ron brought the ’60s feel to the book project, which was a lot different from the ’70s. In the 1970s, they started doing the music and the more outrageous stuff like scaffolding matches, that originated here in Memphis. They would tie people into the ring with chain-link fences and things like that. The book project was just a fun deal, and I thought maybe we should promote it with a documentary to get the word out. I looked around for people to work on the film, and called Chad Schaffler, because I knew he was a filmmaker, and he was working on a Good Luck Dark Star video at the time. I called and asked if he knew anyone who would like to work on a low-budget documentary, and he said ‘Yeah, me!’ It worked out great. Chad took the ball and ran with it. He tracked down a lot of these guys. We didn’t even know who was alive at the time. We had a punch list of people we wanted to interview, and he found most of them. We got the Coliseum opened through the film commission, and interviewed a bunch of them at once. Lawler was one of the guys we interviewed, and he opened up his little book of phone numbers and shared that with Chad. He tracked down a number of these guys in Nashville and North Carolina. Handsome Jimmy Valiant was in West Virginia.”
Released in 2011, Memphis Heat had a successful four-week run at Studio on the Square. “We knew it was a great film, with great subject matter, but we didn’t really know where it would go. We toured it through the South in movie theaters, and that went really good in Memphis, Nashville, and Atlanta. It’s such a huge learning curve to do something like that when you’re starting out with a $5,000 budget documentary. It got the word out. Even if people didn’t get out to see it, it helped build awareness for the film.”
This week, on the fifth anniversary of the film’s opening, Memphis Heat will return for an encore screening at the Malco Paradiso in conjunction with the release of its soundtrack album, produced by Doug Easley and featuring the River City Tanlines. It’s a good chance to get caught up on a unique bit of the city’s history, with a great piece of Memphis filmmaking.
What happens in Nashvegas doesn’t always stay in Nashvegas. California resident Tod Brilliant told WSMV-TV he was “pretty impressed” by the people he encountered while visiting Music City. He was referring to how calmly people working in the Nashville airport went about their business while a very large, extremely naked man wandered about the premises. The Nashville nudist’s blurry bare bottom became internet-famous overnight, prompting hundreds of international news reports. According to WSMV, Brilliant walked right up to the naked man and said, “You’re amazing,” to which the naked man replied “Thanks.” Then, according to Brilliant, “they came for him.”
This photo making its way around the internet documents what has to be among the least comfortable escalator rides in history.
Lawler Trumped
Who needs wrestling when there’s social media? Earlier this month, Memphis wrestling legend Jerry “The King” Lawler learned that there are no “faces” on Twitter, only heels, when he tweeted his support for Donald Trump. What followed was a flurry of tweets wherein Lawler was described as everything from a “fat scumbag” to a “slimy sexist scumbag” and just about every other kind of scumbag you can imagine. Other commenters just wished he’d die, resulting in the kind of high-drama media heat wrestlers usually thrive on. But instead of pulling down his shoulder strap, throwing fire, or calling his critics a bunch of toothless hillbillies, Lawler told WMC’s Kontji Anthony the tweet was probably ill-advised, and he’d be staying out of politics. Sadly, this probably means Trump isn’t considering the King as a potential running mate.
Jerry “The King” Lawler,” Memphis’ most famous practitioner of the grappling arts, has declared himself a supporter of the presidential ambitions of Donald J. Trump.
He did so Tuesday in the tweet shown below …
If you go to Lawler’s twitter feed, you can read the many verbal body-slams being thrown at the King from those who are not impressed with his choice of candidate. But ol’ Jerry was giving as good as he got …