Lawler On Being on WWE’s ‘No Touch List,’ Being Told He’d Be a Liability If He Wrestled
On the latest Jerry Lawler Show, Lawler discussed his not being allowed to wrestle for WWE due to his heart attack in 2012. Lawler’s on-air heart attack is the stuff of legend at this point, and while he has competed for indy companies since WWE won’t let him be in physical angles or matches.
Lawler said that it was hard for him to not be allowed to do so, but that he understands due to liability concerns. Highlights are below:
On the Authors of Pain down attacking Samoa Joe: “When they come over and confronted him, I just felt like — of course, they’ve got me on what you call the ‘No touch list’ or something like that. I guess they think that I’ll have a — you know, die on the air again or something if I have any kind of physicality with anybody … I wanted to tell those guys, the AOP guys when they were coming over to the table, or when Brock Lesnar was coming over the table. I just wanna say, ‘Guys. I beat death. I’m not afraid of you.’”
On trying to get back to work after his cardiac arrest: “But, yeah, coming back from the heart attack was — I don’t like to say heart attack. Coming back from the cardiac arrest, I mean, it was difficult [because] I just kept trying to convince everybody that I was okay and ready to come back. And still to this day, you know, the people in the WWE still feel like that’s not the case, they worry about me. They keep me on the, you know, ‘No touch list’ and all of that kind of thing.”
On being told that he would be a liability to WWE if he got in the ring: “We’ve talked about this before. You know, the doctors told [his girlfriend] Lauren, ‘Oh, we can’t clear him to go back into the ring, because he’s like a liability to the company.’ Whereas I — and I told Lauren, ‘Well, you gotta understand. Here’s a guy, you know, here I am. I had a cardiac arrest, I died on nationwide network TV. Once I’m back and ready to go again, if they grant my request and they just say, ‘Okay, we’ll let you decide what you think is best,’ and they let me go out there and wrestle again. If something did, God forbid, something did happen again? It would be like a PR disaster for the company. Twitter would blow up. ‘Oh, you know, this company. What a bunch of money-hungry people to put a poor guy that has a heart condition or something back into the ring.’ Even though I’m the one that’s making that decision. Even though I’m the one that wants to do it.”
