Jerry Lawler is now trying to defend his off-color line from the April 13 Raw by saying that as a heel character, he is meant to sound like he doesn't know what he's talking about.
Back when Akira Tozawa wrestled Austin Theory on WWE Raw on April 13, Jerry Lawler called a somersault senton by Akira a “Ramen Noodle Moonsault.” Tozawa is of Japanese descent and many on social media took Lawler to task feeling like this was another case of the Hall of Famer being out of touch and using racial stereotypes in an effort to get a cheap laugh.
Jerry Lawler is now responding to this backlash. On his podcast, Jerry said that being a racist was the furthest thing from his mind when he uttered the line and this is actually a line which stems back from 2016 when he was placed as the color commentator alongside Mauro Ranallo during the initial portion of the second brand split in WWE history.
“I said the words "ramen noodles" on Raw, and next thing you know, the internet blows up and I'm a big racist. So let me go back and explain what I was doing and why it was being racist was the furthest thing from my mind,” Lawler began. “It all boils down to back in, I think 2016, there was a time when I was doing commentary with Mauro Ranallo. You know, it was new to me when they put the two of us together. I had not I've never worked with Mauro before. He's a ton of fun to work with. I mean, he's got such energy and he had done all the new Japan or the Japan wrestling stuff and everything and such a brain. I mean, this guy had such knowledge of all of these wrestling moves that came out of Japan.”
He continued, “I'm thinking in my mind, somebody is just making these crazy names up. Because like I said, I've been around forever and I never heard him call that. So I sat down back in 2016 and I wrote down some I had just made up some names of what I thought would be funny moves to go back at Mauro when he made a real name for, you know, when he called one of these moves, the real thing that whatever was supposed to be over in Japan. Then I came in and I would say something like, ‘oh, hell, there's the ramen noodle-- ramen noodle moonsault!’”
Furthermore, Jerry would say that he doesn't have the chemistry yet working with Tom Phillips and Byron Saxton but he is trying to establish that he is playing a heel character on commentary and great heel characters on commentary throughout the years have made buffoonish calls such as this.
“With Byron and with Tom, we don't have that chemistry yet. We have only been working together for a short time. So when I said that, they didn't even acknowledge it. So it just kind of went out there and they and they just kept talking and then then I kept talking. Next thing you know, I but I didn't think anything about it either,” he continued. “That's where me, Bobby Heenan, Jesse Ventura, all of the heel commentators, you do that sort of stuff and the joke is on yourself. So that the people [are] out there going, 'listen to that idiot. You didn't even know what he's talking about. He thinks he does.' I mean, that's where the joke was."
The line would eventually be edited out of the Hulu cut of Monday Night Raw.
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