It's Good to Be the King...Sometimes
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Jerry Lawler is hailed as one of sports-entertainment's most enduring and colorful characters. His life has been filled with hilarious, never-been-told stories...until now! His reign consists of thirteen championships (one of which he's held more than forty times), three marriages, and two children. He's dominated Memphis radio and television airwaves. Starred in feature films. Recorded albums. Tolerated countless sprains, broken bones, concussions, and contusions. The way Jerry "The King" Lawler tells it, if you're good at something, do it more than once.
It's Good To Be The King...Sometimes is a no-holds-barred personal account from the "puppies"-pantin' King of one-liners, who steps out from behind the announcer's desk of WWE Raw to hold court about everything. His passion for art that first drew him to the ring of a rundown West Memphis movie theater over thirty years ago. The comic adventures and tragic bumps endured journeying down the "Music Highway" of Interstate 40 with the National Wrestling Alliance. Earning his royal personage in the Bluff City of the Mighty Mississippi against his own mentor, "Fabulous" Jackie Fargo. Grappling with mat legends Ric Flair, Lou Thesz, Jesse Ventura, Andre the Giant, Terry Funk, and Bret "Hitman" Hart. And his crowning achievements as co-ruler of the United States Wrestling Association, which contributed to the rise of future WWE Superstars Hulk Hogan, Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Rock.
It's time you lackeys pay heed as the King reveals the schemes and outrageous storylines to many of wrestling's most fantastic theatrics and all-too-real moments. Lawler tells of his legendary "feud" with Andy Kaufman, and his much-publicized confrontation with the actor portraying the late comedian on the set of Man on the Moon, and the "Karate-versus-Wrestling" match that almost occurred between Lawler and Memphis's other King. And be sure to honor his royal proclamations regarding former wives, and his mother's opinion of wrestling; why he once sued future boss Vince McMahon...and won; and the body part he truly worships on a WWE Diva.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this surprisingly listless behind-the-scenes memoir, Lawler, a veteran wrestler and a commentator for WWE Raw, delivers the standard run-down of the show business behind the "sport": matches are tightly choreographed, trash-talking interviews are scripted and simmering wrestler feuds are plotted out months in advance by the same folks who concoct the sociopathic characters the wrestlers impersonate in the ring. The premise of the wrestler tell-all genre is that the making of wild spectacle is more interesting than the spectacle itself. That may be true, but in Lawler's telling the rollicking charlatanism of the wrestling world gets bogged down in aimless anecdotes, bad one-liners ("I wanted to ask a fan, "Who did your makeup? Bozo?") and unfunny practical jokes in which he douses people with water or spikes their food with laxative. A big Memphis celebrity, Lawler dutifully plugs a local vinyl siding companies and a few eateries ("Half a slab of pork ribs with slaw and beans is " at Cozy Corner); and much of three late chapters is taken up with the Lawler's increasingly shameless post-divorce quest to scare up groupies. Wrestling fans and connoisseurs of kitsch will swoon over the many photos of big men in trunks and tights, but others may find it a chore to wade through this slackly written story.