Mouth Of The South (eBook)

Something to Talk About Monday morning, November 20, 2000. I leave my home in Tampa, Florida, and catch an early plane to Augusta, Georgia, where World Championship Wrestling is running a show. In some ways, it's the same thing I've been doing for the past 20-plus years - leaving my family at home for a few days of non-stop action. All to give professional wrestling fans something to talk about. I'm traveling by plane, and WCW will have a nice new rental car for me and a room of my own at the Hilton or the Marriott. Things certainly have changed since my early days in Memphis Wrestling. Back hen, I'd find myself crammed into some beaten contraption with at least three other wrestlers, everyone chipping in for enough gas to cover the four- or five-hour drive. When it was all said and done we'd check into a Red Roof Inn or a Days Inn, often sharing rooms, or having somebody 'heel in,' to save a few bucks. Today I'll get to the Richmond County Civic Center before noon and start getting ready for tonight's show. In the old days we'd arrive at a local high school gym no more than an hour-and-a-half before match time. Still, it's basically the same routine - a lot of hard work to give the people what they want. And what the people want is to see Jimmy Hart, 'The Mouth of the South,' the World's Greatest Wrestling Manager, the former Southern Handicap Champion, get his butt kicked. That much hasn't changed a bit. I won the first match I ever wrestled in, back in 1978, when Jerry 'The King' Lawler stood in my corner and helped me beat a Memphis 'jobber' (a wrestler who seems like he was born just to lose wrestling matches) named Pat Hutchinson. As a grappler, I can count on one hand the matches I've won since. As a manager, though, I've been on the winning side with some of the greatest names in professional wrestling Lawler, Bret Hart, the Honky Tonk Man, the Rougeau Brothers, Hulk Hogan . . . the list goes on and on. And it backs up my claim: I really am the greatest manager in the history of professional wrestling. I even made a winner out of a wimpy comedian named Andy Kaufman. But tonight I'm on my own, and I have a chance to win oneof my first matches in more than 20 years. I'm wrestling awoman from Augusta - not a woman wrestler but a womandeejay - named Montana Taylor. Maybe Andy Kaufman really was that far ahead of his time. In the beginning, Andy would only wrestle women. He was the Inter-Gender Champion (like me, he invented his own championship) when he came to Memphis in 1982 and learned about the real world of professional wrestling from Jerry Lawler and Jimmy Hart. 'The King' taught Andy how dangerous professional wrestling can be by jamming his head into the mat with a couple of piledrivers - a move so dangerous that Memphis Wrestling, at the time, had banned its use. I taught Andy how to break the rules without getting caught, the proper way to gang up on someone and the fine art of the doublecross - how-to distract your opponent while your partner attacks him from behind, how to do anything and everything you can, inside and outside the ring, to get your revenge. The only thing neither one of us could ever teach the Hollywood star was how to pick up the check in a restaurant. Andy's legendary, if brief, wrestling career has become well documented by biographers, commentators and filmmakers. At the time, however, the only Kaufman matches that aired on TV were local Saturday morning 'promos' - brief spots to build up 'heat' or controversy for the regular Monday night wrestling card at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis or other matches scheduled for later that week in the Mid-South region.