Scott Bowden presents Kentucky Fried Rasslin

School of Hard Knocks

With the exception of the infamous “They shoot horses, don’t they?” comment, the Jimmy Hart one-liner that legitimately irked the King in the early ’80s was when the nefarious leader of the First Family constantly referred to various Memphis jobbers (Freezer Thompson, Pat Hutchinson, Ric McCord, etc.) as “graduates of the Jerry Lawler of Rasslin’.”

As Lawler explained to me years ago, “Man, I had people constantly stopping me on the street asking me how to enroll in my wrestling school [which, of course, didn’t exist]. It didn’t help that Jimmy came out each week and said it over and over during Saturday morning TV.”

Two such supposed graduates, hapless jobbers Robert Reed and Ken Raper, had the last (but maybe not the loudest) laugh on Hart when the two upstarts received an impromptu CWA World tag trophy match on live Memphis TV. (Yes, the champions of the world had to lug a trophy-believed to be one of promoter Eddie Marlin’s old bowling awards-“all over the globe” for title defenses.)

I cannot confirm if Lawler went on to train such fine upstanding Christian athletes as The Twilight Zone (Brian Lawler and Tony Williams) and The Yellowjacket (Kevin Lawler), but I do know the King spent countless hours exchanging a variety of holds-some possibly illegal in a few states-with protege/future wife Stacy Carter, who went on to win the WWF(E) Ladies Championship. (Likewise, I have to think that my battles with Ms. Texas prepared Jacqueline for her opportunity to win Ladies gold in the Former Fed as well.)