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By Root 1281 0

at him and he loved the size and the stomp and the roar and the smell of this Coliseum where Elvis had performed and where he now rubbed to his longjohns’ content. And none of them could pin him but he pinned most of them. And he brayed at the sea of twisted faces and made his usual affront with the washing-scrubbing-peeling et cetera. And, suddenly, he had become a fully accredited Tarheel! “He had that heeled sense about him and that little prancy, insipid way that he strutted around that ring,” said Lance Russell, who called all matches at the Coliseum. “I never saw anybody who loved it any more than he did. He was just great. And, oh God, he wanted to come back!” Afterward, he made some more ornery tapes and said he would return on November 23 and he really couldn’t wait.

Budd Friedman asked him to host his syndicated television showcase, An Evening at the Improv, on October 29, but he would have rather been wrestling back down in that colossal arena, because he hadn’t stopped thinking about it, but he couldn’t wrestle now anyway because of the cyst on the back of his neck which had gotten so big and so ripe in the last couple of weeks that the doctor wanted to lance it but instead he told the doctor to wait a few more days because he wanted to try something new in the realm of audience participation. Linda made them wash their hands with the hot towels first. They came up one at a time. He told them not to press it too hard, just touch lightly. And he didn’t do it to be funny, either.

Lawler came to the airport to pick up Andy and his brother Michael when they arrived for the November event. Michael had come along to see the thousands clamoring for Andy’s blood. They would be joined by Sherry Tuseth of Jonesboro, Arkansas, an art-school student whom Andy had arranged to meet on his June excursion (beguiling fan letter) and who had kept him company during his incipient raids upon Memphis. They went to the Coliseum, where four women wanted a piece of him. He waved the fistful of grand at them and said, as usual, “Any woman that will beat me, as an extra prize, she will get to marry me!” Lawler stood at ringside and watched the first three go down quickly—“So the last one was this heavyset black girl named Foxy Brown—I’ll never forget her,” he said. “She was the first one that really gave Andy a contest that night. They started the match—and she runs across and grabs Andy and picks him up in the air and drops him for a body slam. I mean, the roof came off the Coliseum! All of a sudden, here’s this big mouth getting what he deserves, you know? And he starts scrambling, trying to run out of the ring—and she’s pulling his tights down, holding him in the ring. It was just classic.” And it was a draw.

Which was when Lawler decided to demand a rematch for Foxy Brown wherein he would become her coach and trainer. Andy loved this idea and immediately made broadcast tapes for Memphis television to say just how much he hated this idea—“I don’t know why Jerry Lawler’s getting his nose into it! He should keep his nose out of my business! Mr. Lawler, you think you can teach this woman how to wrestle? I will destroy her no matter what you say you can do! Mark my words, Mr. Lawler!” And both men tucked away their secret smiles and waited a week to advance a notion that would grow into a spectacle that was to be theirs alone.

That Foxy Brown went limp and was pinned in eight minutes thirty-five seconds during the November 30 rematch was irrelevant. Andy just sat on her after he won and gratuitously pushed her face into the mat and kept on pushing like the heel that he was supposed to be. And that was when Lawler was compelled to step into the ring and begin his new destiny—“So I just reached down and pulled him up off her. And he flies clear across the ring, falls over, then jumps up. And all of a sudden his eyes get big and he starts screaming at me.” And he kept screaming and then Lawler pushed him down again and Andy leapt out of the ring and grabbed Lance Russell’s ringside microphone and played his part—“I WILL SUE YOU, LAWLER!