In an interview with Talk Is Jericho (transcript credit wrestlinginc.com), Jerry Lawler spoke about working with various wrestlers who came through Memphis early in their careers, including Hulk Hogan, The Rock and more. Here are highlights:
On Sting and Ultimate Warrior working Memphis: “Oh my gosh, there were so many guys that came through [Memphis] that I didn’t think were going to make it. I mean, we had a tag team come through that literally had their first couple of matches with us here in Memphis and I went back and told Jerry [Jarrett], I said, ‘oh my gosh, these guys are so green. I mean, they’ve got good bodies and everything, but they could barely walk around in the ring, much less have a match with somebody.’ And, of course, it turned out to be Sting and The Ultimate Warrior. But when they came to us, as I think, The Blade Runners or something like that, they were awful, but just because they were so green. They were just getting started. Nobody is great when they start. And, yeah, we had a lot of that, of guys that just didn’t look like they were going to be very promising.”
On Hulk Hogan wanting his friends to get work even at the start of his career: “Hulk Hogan, he came right there and started with us. He had been playing bass guitar in a band down in Florida. Jerry Jarrett and I co-signed for his first car that he ever had when he was right there,” Lawler recalled. “He was nowhere near a polished worker yet and the thing that really held him back, I think the reason we kind of had to let him go, was because he was bound and determined for us to use this kid that he brought with him. He called him Dizzy Hogan, which I think may have turned out to be, I don’t know if it was Brutus Beefcake. And he was horrible! But that was the deal. If we used Hulk, we had to use this other kid, his best friend.”
On seeing potential for The Rock: “The Rock, Flex Kavana, yeah, that was his name. He had a haircut [and] it looked like a pineapple. It was crazy. But, yeah, we knew that he had tremendous potential, simply because he was the son of Rocky Johnson and we had Rocky here. Rocky was a huge star in our territory down here in Memphis. But the funny thing was we didn’t play on that. We didn’t play that up. He was Flex Kavana. We didn’t even mention that he was Rocky Johnson’s son at that time. They didn’t do that until he got into WWE.”
