• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1327 0

his head would nestle between Lawler’s thighs as he fell into a thudding sit. So there on Calhoun’s den carpet Andy submitted to Lawler dangling him by the ankles as Lawler talked him through each maneuver—“I told him, ‘You know, we’ll just keep the match very simple and very basic. You know how to get a headlock around me, don’t you?’ And he said: ‘Oh, yeah, I can do that.’ And I said, ‘Well, just get a headlock on me, and we’ll just go from there. Because I may do a move on you like a suplex from the headlock. If I do, just tuck your chin and try not to let the back of your head hit the mat and you’ll be all right, I’ll take care of you.’ And the move that I’m famous for, if I get a chance, is the piledriver. It’s funny—I remember I said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t break your neck or anything.’ But I told him that not much of the head should make contact with the mat, just a little bit. I mean, you could do it and try to protect somebody, or you could do it and make sure their head did hit. It just depends on the placement—on how far you stick their head down between your legs. I showed him how I would keep his head way off that mat.”

They went through this a couple of times that night and Sherry Tuseth was struck by Andy’s respectfulness toward Lawler and how he relinquished all control to him. “He was pretty much in awe of him all the time,” she said. “But what was real surprising to me was just how quickly they could rehearse something like that. It took about five minutes.”

George flew in because. Andy had given George assurances, but still. George had not known of the extent of the choreography, so therefore. George was not thrilled. George was very extremely concerned. Zmuda told him not to worry. George sat ringside next to Sherry. George recollected afterward—He wrestled Jerry Lawler. All the pre-interviews seemed to indicate that Andy was very worried about this guy…. There was a guy, Woody Something, from Associated Press, who interviewed Jerry Lawler and he told me that Jerry wasn’t kidding around with this wrestling match. Andy went into the ring at the Mid-South Coliseum to a tremendous chorus of boos. For the first five minutes after Andy went into the ring, he was dancing around, jumping around like a monkey, got out of the ring to protect himself, and after five minutes Jerry Lawler offered to let Andy put him in a headlock. So Andy got Lawler in a head-lock. Lawler picked him up and threw him right on his back on the canvas. He hit pretty hard. Then Lawler grabbed him and gave him a piledriver, which is an illegal hold…. He did this twice. It looked like Andy’s neck was broken. He was out for a couple of minutes. Then he woke in a lot of pain and the audience was hooting and cheering and really happy that Andy was hurt.

Lawler recollected after many passing years:

“We went five to seven minutes before we actually even touched. So I offered him the free headlock and, just as I told him, we went into the suplex. But funny thing was the suplex knocked him out. It really did knock him goofy and he could not get up. I’ve watched the tape a thousand times. And even though he tried to tuck his head, his head still hit real hard. I mean, if it had been any of the other wrestlers, you wouldn’t even have thought anything about it. But Andy wasn’t accustomed to taking that type of abuse or whatever. It just knocked him goofy there for a minute. And I had hoped to have a little bit of a match. So I went straight to the piledriver, which meant it was already a disqualification. But now I’m thinking to myself, Oh my gosh—this has probably been a minute and a half’s worth of action for these 12,000 people here. I figured, man, I need to do something else. We’ve cheated ’em out of a wrestling match. And so that’s where the second piledriver came into effect. I gave him another one. I mean, I’ve taken probably five hundred piledrivers in my career. You just brace yourself for it, that’s just part of wrestling. All of the stuff hurts to an extent, but it’s not like a big-injury-type thing. And so I’m telling him while