YouTube Finds: Royal pain in the arse! “Handsome” Jimmy Valiant infringes upon Jerry Lawler’s “King” gimmick
After Jerry Lawler returned from a broken leg in 1981, Memphis promoter Jerry Jarrett no longer needed the services of “Handsome” Jimmy Valiant full time. For close to a year, Valiant had picked up the babyface slack in the King’s absence, drawing several crowds of 6,000-plus at the Mid-South Coliseum. For months, Valiant wore the King’s crown, figuratively and literally, the latter of which Lawler legitimately did not like. It seems the King took it personally when Jarrett instructed Hart to dump Lawler on TV, culminating with a feud between the manager’s new wrestler, Paul Ellering, and Valiant over the Southern title and a crown to decide Memphis rasslin’s royalty. (Around this time, my mother, Carole, bumped into Handsome at the Memphis airport and shyly approached him for an autograph, explaining that it was “for my son.” According to my mom, Valiant smiled slyly and said, “Sure it is, momma. Sure it is.”)
Lawler’s all-too-real angst is evident in the promo below months before his return in December 1980. (Lawler made good on his promise to Hart, breaking his jaw with an “errant” punch in Evansville, Indiana, weeks after his return. Lawler claims it was an accident; Jarrett believes it was payback for Hart’s comments when unceremoniously dumping the King on live TV: “If you have a prized racehorse, a champion, and he breaks his leg, what do you do to him? You shoot him, right?”)
With Lawler due back as a babyface, Valiant turned heel toward the end of 1980, as Jarrett saw dollar signs in bouts between the two. After drawing several good houses throughout the territory with Lawler, Valiant was shipped to the Carolinas to work for Jim Crockett Promotions in mid-1981. Ole Anderson, who had just started booking for JCP, didn’t really know what to do with Valiant initially, so Handsome debuted as a heel with manager Lord Alfred Hayes, again carrying one of Lawler’s crowns. The solemn, regal “King” James Valiant was a departure from his usual outrageous self, and the gimmick didn’t fit well.
A few months later, in August, Jarrett asked Crockett for a Monday night date on Valiant, who would triumphantly return to Mempho as Lawler’s babyface partner. (Three months is an eternity in Memphis wrestling.) The tag showdown drew an overflow sellout crowd of 11,600 with Lawler and Valiant battling to a no-contest with the Dream Machine and Bugsy McGraw.
The next morning, Jarrett requested another date on Valiant, informing Crockett and Anderson of the sellout. Their curiosity piqued about Valiant’s drawing power as a babyface, Anderson and Crockett called a meeting with King James, who recalled the story years later in an interview with the Mid-Atlantic Gateway. “When I came back from Memphis on that Tuesday, Crockett said he wanted to do something like that with me here. But they wanted to change my name and everything, because you know I had been wrestling for a few weeks here as a heel.” Valiant returned to Memphis for close to a month while Lawler worked a few weeks in Florida with Terry Funk. Following a convoluted series of loser-leaves-town matches in Memphis, Valiant reemerged in the Mid-Atlantic territory as a bearded babyface: King James was dead…long live the Boogie Woogie Man.
Valiant went on to have his greatest career success with Crockett in the ’80s, returning occasionally to pop the houses in Memphis. In 1984, he returned for full-time duty with Jarrett and Lawler, who bought him a house in Bartlett as part of the deal. Less than three months later, he was gone, leaving the keys behind in Jarrett’s mailbox. The Boogie Woogie Man had to fly.
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