[1990-05-12-USWA-Memphis TV] Jerry Lawler and Jimmy Valiant

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Lawler turns the spin cycle on to explain what happened at Mid South Coliseum. Apparently, Jimmy Valiant fell asleep during the match, and Lawler tried to revive him with smelling salts. Good to know, as I was worried that he may have cheated. I should have known he wouldn't do that, what was I thinking? Some radio DJ and a random masked guy are with him.

 

It's Mother's Day weekend, so Lawler has a clip of him visiting Jimmy Valiant's house, which looks like it was boarded up by the police. For some reason, I'm not surprised. He ends up finding his "mom" at a laundromat. When it comes to moms who are obviously actors, I much prefer AC Slater's fake mom that Zach hired to break up his date with a girl Zach was interested in.

 

Back at the studio, Valiant isn't very happy at all with this and chases Lawler away before cutting a promo vowing revenge on Lawler for bashing his mother, who apparently passed away some time ago. He gets all Dusty and tells everyone to call their mothers this weekend. They got some fresh blood in over summer that really heated things up in the USWA, which is good, because as great as Lawler is, and as entertaining as even Valiant can be, some of this stuff is starting to wear thin.

[PeteF3]

Lawler declares that "What you saw was not actually what happened" and Dave's WTF look of bewilderment is priceless. Lawler plugs some radio station DJ and a masked bodyguard before introducing a video piece on Jimmy Valiant's mother. The audio seems to cut out 1/3 of the way and Lawler has to narrate it for us after the fact. He tracks Valiant's mom to a laundromat where she has to do his laundry and receive dog food as a Mother's Day gift. This part went on way too long for very little payoff.

 

Valiant runs Lawler off with a trash can before exhorting all of us to do something nice for Mother's Day and defends the feelings of the fans in the crowd mocked by Lawler each week as well as the woman in the video. Another stretcher match Monday, this time with Ronnie P. Gossett suspended above the ring, hopefully without the MSC roof caving in.

[soup23]

Really didn't like the skit all that much but Valiants vowing revenge promo and him reaching out to the emotional side of the fans was very well done.

[Kevin Ridge]

Lawler says he completely outsmarted Valiant allowing him to punch himself out to the point where he fell asleep in their match. Another stretcher match signed but this time Gossett will be placed in a cage.

 

Lawler goes to interview Valiant’s mother. Dave Brown is very skeptical that was indeed Valiant’s mother. Jimmy shows up and runs off Lawler. Valiant doesn’t like Lawler talking about his mom as she is no longer around. Somber stuff.

[Cox]

This is simple, yet great stuff. Jerry Lawler is an asshole who visits a boarded up old house and claims it's Valiant's mothers, then interviews Valiant's mother at a laundromat. Valiant has enough of Lawler's assholery and runs him off, cutting the first serious promo on the Yearbook about how his mother passed away and how he's going to kick Lawler's ass on Monday. It's simple, great stuff to make Valiant sympatheic and make Lawler an asshole...

 

...yet it doesn't work, because the crowd still prefers Lawler over Valiant. The Memphis fans just do not want to cheer Lawler and prefer him to Valiant, even if they otherwise like Valiant.

[TravJ1979]

One of the best Valiant promos I've ever seen. His heel promos in the 70's were awesome and this was probably the best since then.

[garretta]

I agree that Jimmy's promo was excellent and heartfelt; you can tell that he's serious because he drops his accent. But the effect's ruined, because even Dave can't hide his laughter after the skit. When are they going to give up on Lawler being a heel in Memphis? The man's simply too much of a legend and he knows it, and so do the people. I can see making him a tweener if you want to put him in against someone who you'd really like the fans to cheer once his program with Lawler is done; there have been times this year when the crowd booed the King almost in spite of themselves (like when he beat up on Chris Champion) so you can get away with semi-heel Lawler for a while. But not for almost seven or eight months, and not against the nonentities he's been in there with except for Valiant, who's trying his damndest but is also almost completely shot.

 

This run started, for those who may not have the 80s Memphis set, with a turn against Dundee and Mantel in the fall of '89, which led to Kerry coming in and going after the Unified title. But once they'd worked the MSC a few times, it was time to turn Lawler back, even if he stayed a heel in Dallas (which the Memphis fans wouldn't have known, apparently). Except for Valiant, he's had nobody at his level to work with him, and I don't need his promos to tell me that either.

 

King Cobra, a fading Junkyard Dog, and a green-as-new-meat Mike Awesome aren't exactly the stuff kings are made of. He should have been fighting Tony Anthony and the Soultaker instead, with maybe visits from some of Akbar's Texas army like Gary Young, or maybe Terence Garvin (since no one would know that they're friends in Dallas). Hell, have John Tatum crash the studio one day and claim that Lawler's buddy Bill Dundee stole his girlfriend. Jerry could deny they were buddies, Tatum could call him a liar and slap him around a little, and we have a ready-made MSC main event.

 

I'll be interested to see if this Snowman character freshens things up as much as the people on this board say he will. God knows the Memphis side needs it desperately.

[drew wardlaw]

Cool Valiant promo, different than the dancing man we've seen before. He was so emotional it almost made me want to call my mother (I didn't).

[GSR]

Jerry Lawler joins Dave Brown and Dave says that they’ve just seen a video of what happened between him and ‘Handsome’ Jimmy Valiant last week. Lawler says that he knows what he saw, but he will tell them exactly what happened though. Before he does that he introduces Wayne Bright (some radio jockey) and his bodyguard, who’ve got a T-shirt and some bumper stickers for ‘The King’. Lawler says that what you see is not always what you get. The bout between him and Valiant was a ‘stretcher match’ and the only way the match can end is when one man is carried out of there on a stretcher. ‘The King’ doesn’t claim to be the biggest or the strongest man in professional wrestling, but what he is without doubt, is the smartest man. When he saw he was going to be in a ‘stretcher match’ with Jimmy Valiant he stepped back and decided on a strategy. Everyone saw that tape of the last time he gave a concert in Memphis and Valiant came in and busted a guitar over his head. Well that was in ‘Handsome’ Jimmy’s ‘good old days’, but if you take a look at him now you realise that father time has kicked him in the butt! He knows that Jimmy Valiant couldn’t hurt him with a sledgehammer and that he just had to take his time until he was tired and exhausted. The one thing he didn’t figure on was Jimmy Valiant getting so tired that he’d fall asleep right in front of that crowd! He found a rag and put some smelling salts on it to try and wake him up, but he had no luck and finally had to put him on a stretcher and send him right out the back door! Dave isn’t convinced by his explanation and says that the ringsiders said there was a distinctive smell of ether, but ‘The King’ cuts him off to talk about this upcoming ‘stretcher match’. He claims that Jimmy Valiant and Eddie Marlin have got together and they think that Ronnie Gossett had something to do with his victory, so they’re going to suspend him from the roof so that he’s hanging 50ft up in the air. Although Lawler is not too sure how they are going to go about that with Gossett! Dave finds it funny, but not so ‘The King’ who claims that Gossett has a fear of heights, is in poor health and has a heart condition and something like this could be the end for him! The crowd cheer and clap at this and Lawler quips that they are the same people who cheered for the iceberg when the Titanic went down, and promises that Valiant will take another stretcher ride this week.

 

Lawler says that tomorrow is Mother’s Day and he had an idea to take a camera and try and find Jimmy Valiant’s mother so that they could do an interview with her. It wasn’t easy but he eventually found her. ‘The King’ plays the tape and he’s outside a run down, derelict looking house with no windows. He says that Valiant bought it for his mother, but then sees there’s a note on the door saying how it’s been condemned by the Memphis Housing Board of Health. He finds Mrs Valiant (who looks about the same age as Jimmy) at the launderette and she’s washing Jimmy’s clothes. Lawler makes out that Valiant doesn’t care for his mother by making her walk three miles to the launderette to do his washing, by buying her gifts like soap on a rope for Mother’s Day (she thought it was jewellery!) and buying her dog food to eat - free trial size at that (she thinks it’s good though!).

 

Back in the studio and Dave thinks it was all a set up and that wasn’t ‘Handsome’ Jimmy’s Mum at all. A garbage can then comes flying at Lawler and he Valiant beats on ‘The King’ until he’s able to get out of there. Valiant says does Lawler think he’s the only person in Memphis that has feelings? How about these fine people that he insults week after week that come to television? How about the lady that was in that video? She’s not his mother but she’s somebodies mother. Lawler can say anything he wants about him, but never talk about his mother. His mother is no longer with him and he tells everyone watching that for Mother’s Day tomorrow, call her, go see her, buy her something, taker her for dinner because one day she may not be with you. This Monday it’s a ‘stretcher match’ one more time, no interference by that fat slob and he promises everyone that before Lawler gets on that stretcher he’s going to say ‘Handsome Jimmy I’m sorry, I’ll never talk about your mother again’.

 

Didn’t care for the vignette as it was too similar to the promos Lawler was cutting about King Cobra’s parents earlier in the year and it just seemed a rehash of those. Strong Valiant promo to close the segment, and much prefer ones like these compared to when he’s clowning around, singing and talking about Mempho Daddio! I presume Lawler getting the radio jockey on was for a bit of advertising like when he worked that Furniture company into an episode a couple of months back.

[dawho5]

Awesome Valiant promo. He needs to be a babyface manager after he (PLEASE) stops wrestling. The man has all kinds of value in the right role.