Talk about it here.

Lawler tells the other side of the story about King of the Ring. He says the reason he attacked Bret was that when the WWF was at The Pyramid, Jeff Jarrett challenged Bret and he never accepted, proving that Bret wasn't a man of his word. He says he was very clear in advance that he didn't like the idea of the tournament and said he would do exactly what he did. He said he doesn't go around calling himself "Hitman" or "Macho Man" Jerry Lawler, so he does resent someone else going around calling themselves King. It's awesome how Lawler was able to do this.

And here we go! Jarrett has made previous challenges to Bret Hat which went unanswered. Lawler is ready to make that challenge himself. Jerry is the real King of wrestling. I just love how they totally ignored WWF TV where Lawler attacked Bret from behind.

Lawler calls out Bret for never responding to Jeff Jarrett's initial challenge, then for having the audacity to call himself the "King." I love the shot of Lawler heaving the throne down on Bret in the context of the USWA bumper music.

This was so effective. Lawler saying he never called himself the Macho Man is just the type of warped logic that actually makes sense and was critical for the angle to work like it did. Genius work here by the King.

This was a whole lot better than I ever thought it would be. To Lawler's credit, he didn't claim that we were seeing things or that he never meant to hurt Bret; he came right out and said what he said at the tournament, that he was the real King and would show Bret just how real he was. When you hear something like this, it really does make Bret sound ineffectual and weak, with his best response to Lawler's anger being the "Burger King" nickname. Has anyone ever tried to use that in Memphis?

 

I don't think anyone was ignoring the fact that Lawler backjumped Bret; he covered that whn he talked about once again becoming the "old King", the one who would take any shortcut he could to gain the advantage over his rivals. I'm actually surprised that the USWA showed Lawler throwing the throne at Bret, since that's what apparently hurt Bret for real.

 

I just wish that Vince had allowed Lawler to cut a similar promo for the WWF audience. The only thing Jerry would have had to do was put his own name in Jeff's place, since Jeff wasn't coming in. Of course, Vince's faces are never supposed to back down from a challenge, so maybe he didn't want it known that Bret in essence blew off another worthy wrestler. Besides, Lawler's WWF character was already such a cartoon that turning him serious all of a sudden without warning would probably have just confused everyone.

 

I'm actually looking forward to seeing Lawler in a WWF ring to know how he adapted to the style. If it's anything like what he did in Dallas I'll probably regret that statement to my dying day, but hopefully he at least stashed his Memphis working boots somewhere safe for easy reach when it came to the big matches.