Dinner With the King Recap – Monsters in Memphis, RAW’s 25th Anniversary Show, McMahon Pokes Fun at Jail Time, More!

Lawler is joined on today’s show by his co-host Glenn Moore.

Lawler was very excited to hear about WWE’s plans for the 25th anniversary of RAW. They plan on broadcasting RAW simultaneously from two buildings in New York and Lawler thinks that’s going to be great. He hasn’t heard whether he’ll be a part of that show yet but he definitely expects to receive a call. He does inform that he has been asked to work the Royal Rumble PPV which will air the week after RAW’s 25th anniversary episode.

He still finds it hard to believe that RAW has been on the air for 25 years because he can still recall the initial string of shows that they recorded back in 1993. The locker room space was so limited at the Manhattan Centre back then that talents were getting dressed in the halls and stairwells backstage wherever they could find a little bit of space.

Lawler informs that he’s going to be working at a convention this coming weekend with a number of huge stars including Shawn Michaels, Pat Patterson, and The Steiner Brothers. Lawler says Scott Steiner still works a lot of wrestling events but it’s pretty rare to see Rick Steiner make an appearance like this nowadays.

Lawler always considered Rick to be a better technical wrestler than Scott, but obviously Scott’s physique was ridiculous. Apparently Rick is a teacher nowadays and this doesn’t surprise Lawler because it always seemed that Rick was more interested in collegiate wrestling than the business of professional wrestling.

In honour of Halloween, Lawler discusses his love of horror films and monster characters, as well as how he tried to incorporate some of them into Memphis Wrestling back in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. Dr. Frank – The Frankenstein character – was a big part of Memphis television during this era and Lawler mentions that the man who portrayed that character would often have to stay in a small wooden crate throughout the duration of the wrestling show before making his big reveal towards the end of the event.

His offence against most of these monster characters would be a fireball. That was the one thing that he could use to help him get the upper hand on them believably. However, one time Lawler’s fireball went horribly wrong.

The ‘Leatherface’ costume prevented the fireball from combusting properly so Lawler came up with a formula which would help the flame sustain longer. Unfortunately, when he threw the fireball during the show Leatherface actually caught on fire. Lawler had to kick him and stomp the fire out which he’s sure confused the fans. Former WWE Superstar Mideon was actually the performer playing the role of Leatherface that night.

Lawler informs that he and Jerry Jarrett would rotate booking during their time as owners of Memphis Wrestling. Lawler says it was easy to tell when it was his time to book the shows because monsters and battle royals would show up all over the cards. When Jerry Jarrett would start booking again all those things disappeared. They simply had different booking philosophies when it came to those types of things.

Lawler informs that Memphis Wrestling’s ‘Lord Humongous’ character was inspired by the Mad Max film, and former WWE Superstar Sycho Sid actually portrayed that character for a period of time. The Kamala character which debuted in Memphis was never really supposed to be a monster according to Lawler. That character was actually inspired by the real life President of Uganda who was well known to be a cannibal at that time.

Lawler recalls working the commentary desk with Vince McMahon years ago. They would always dress up on Halloween and he recalls McMahon dressing up as a convict during the Halloween episode of RAW in 1995, right when he was in the middle of a trial which could have legitimately landed him in jail. Looking back now it’s amazing to Lawler how confident McMahon was during that entire trial.

Moore mentions that one of the most terrifying performers of all time in his opinion is Vader. He believes that Vader should be in the WWE Hall of Fame without a doubt, given his agility as a big man and all the  things he was able to accomplish around the world during his career. Lawler agrees that Vader is one of the most agile big men of all time.

That sums up today’s episode of Dinner With the King. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!