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Jerry Lawler Says Controversial Raw Joke Was Meant to Be On Him
WWE Hall-of-Famer and Monday Night Raw announcer Jerry Lawler has finally addressed the controversial comment that earner The King a twitter lashing. If you missed it, Lawler referred to a diving senton from Japanese wrestler Akira Tozawa as a "ramen noodle moonsault," something pretty much everyone on Twitter other than Jim Cornette called racist. But according to Lawler, this was just classic heel commentary, and the joke was actually meant to be on him. F4WOnline transcribed the relevant quote from Lawler's latest podcast.
I would say something like, "There's the Ramen Noodle moonsault" and he would say, "Oh, King! You know there's no such thing!" and we would just go on. I was doing it just to play devil's advocate with Mauro. If I were still doing commentary with Michael Cole or JR, we had the chemistry to where each one of those guys would have known that I was almost making a fool out of myself by claiming like I was acting like I knew what this unbelievable looking move was.
Then either Cole or JR would have said '"Oh, King! You know better than that!" With Byron and Tom, we don't have that chemistry yet. We have only been working together for a short time so when I said that, they didn't even acknowledge it so it kind of went out and they just kept talking and I kept talking. I didn't think anything about it either."
That's where me, Bobby Heenan, Jesse Ventura…all of the heel commentators do that sort of stuff and the joke is on yourself that the people out there say, "Look at that idiot. He doesn't even know what he's talking about and he thinks he does." That's where the joke was.
Jerry Lawler does have an ally in another wrestling talent from the old school, as Jim Cornette said of the backlash to Lawler's comment Tuesday, "So now people are mad at @JerryLawler for telling a joke," Cornette tweeted. "Now I understand why modern wrestling sucks because most modern wrestling fans are such whiny little pussies they don't DESERVE good wrestling. How do these people go out in public without breaking out in tears? #WHINE"