Dinner with the King Recap – “Thank You Lance Russell”: Greatest Commentator of All Time, More!

Lawler is joined on today’s show by his co-host Glenn Moore. On this episode Lawler will pay tribute to his long-time friend, Lance Russell.

Russell passed away this week days after taking a fall at his son’s home. Russell was in a lot of pain and had to be heavily sedated. Lawler informs that Russell failed to ever truly emerge from his heavily-sedated state. In some ways Lawler feels that this may have been God’s way of sparing Russell the suffering of having to go through his daughter’s death, because his daughter had been battling cancer for a long time and passed away the exact same day that Russell was hospitalized.

Lawler informs that if it wasn’t for Lance Russell, there would have never been a ‘King Jerry Lawler’. Lawler was a tremendous artist growing up and had actually been offered a scholarship to attend art school. He had dreams of becoming a professional artist, and wanted to work for either DC or Marvel comics as a comic artist.

Lawler had always been a big professional wrestling fan and always watched Memphis Wrestling, hosted by Lance Russell. He recalls being asked to draw some of the professional wrestlers for the promotion’s use, and he’ll never forget the day that Lance Russell held up several pieces of his artwork live on the air. From there Russell led the charge in getting Lawler an opportunity to start learning the in-ring side of the business.