WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler found himself in hot water with fans after making a joke during an episode of RAW earlier this month.
Lawler was on commentary for the show that included a match that saw Austin Theory score a win over Akira Tozawa. During the match, Lawler referred to Tozawa’s senton as the “Ramen Noodle Moonsault.”
Towards the end of the latest episode of his podcast (around the 53-minute mark, Lawler addressed the joke that was controversial.
“Are we not going to talk about the elephant in the room from last week? I said the word ramen noodles on Raw. [The] next thing you know, the internet blows up and I’m a big racist. Let me go back and explain what I was doing and why being racist was the furthest thing from my mind.”
Lawler recalled a situation in 2016 where he was doing commentary with Mauro Ranallo and they were calling a match. Ranallo called a move that was like, orange crush Tiger Bomb blah blah senton.
Lawler points out despite his history in the business, he doesn’t know the names of these crazy moves being performed. At the time, he thought somebody was making up crazy names for these moves.
This is when he wrote down some names of what he thought would be funny moves to go back to Mauro when he called one of these moves. He stated that he was doing it just to play devil’s advocate with Mauro.
He also stated that if he was still doing commentary with Michael Cole or Jim Ross, they had the chemistry to where each one of those guys would have known that he was almost making a fool out of himself by claiming like he knew what the move was.
Lawler continued by noting that at that point Cole or Ross would’ve made light of the situation by saying that Lawler knew better than that. However, it’s different from working with Bryon Saxton and Tom Philips because they don’t have the chemistry of working together yet.
Thus, with them working together for a short period of time, they didn’t even acknowledge it so it kind of went out, and they just kept talking and he kept talking.
The Point
“I didn’t think anything about it either.” That’s where me, Bobby Heenan, Jesse Ventura, and all of the heel commentators do that sort of stuff. The joke is on yourself. The people out there say, look at that idiot, he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about and he thinks he does.’”
Jerry Lawler Ramen Noodle Joke On RAW Ignites Controversy
