The thing that made the Hogan/Rock match so special in Lawler’s mind, is that once the crowd started to show their appreciation for Hogan, The Rock willingly switched roles and sided more heavily in the heel role. Lawler gained a lot of respect for Rock that night due to his willingness to act on the fly and switch roles in order to make the match more memorable for everyone.
Ross and Lawler both admit that they hated attending WWE’s production meetings prior to television tapings. After some time, Lawler convinced McMahon that his commentary was better when he could react on the fly without knowing what was coming. McMahon agreed and let Lawler skip the meetings from that point on.
One of Lawler’s biggest pet peeves in the business today is that wrestling promotions have let in-ring moves become more important than storylines. Lawler says they’d never let moves become more important than the storylines back in the day because they needed to sell tickets every week. They needed captivating stories in order to keep fans invested from one week to the next, and he thinks they accomplished that in Memphis because they averaged 8,000 fans at each show over a 20-year period in Memphis.
Lawler mentions that he has a podcast now entitled, ‘Dinner With the King’. He was always hesitant about being a guest on other people’s podcasts and he never thought he’d ever have his own.
That sums up this week’s episode of The Ross Report. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya next week for another recap!
