Each Time it Gets a Little Harder, Lawler Feels the Pain, and He'll Try Again

Jerry Lawler vs. Romeo Roselli, NEW 6/1/06 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Boy, this match. You know Roselli from his failed WWE run, where he was the HeartThrob who didn't get a giant goose egg on his forehead from Regal. Roselli was the other one. Neither were very good. This isn't too long after his release, and to the shock of many, he still is not good. Lawler and Roselli riff for seemingly ever on the mic pre-match, Lawler getting called a has-been in a variety of ways, Roselli flexing, Roselli's valet rubs his muscles and then hilariously wipes her now overly oiled hand off on the apron was incredible. That spot was clearly not planned, and to their credit I would have laughed if the spot was actually planned. But the valet did not have the acting chops to pull off the genuinely disgusted face she made while wiping off her oily hand. Match gets underway and I have seen the Lawler formula work on a variety of bad opponents. If Lawler is Lawler, it has to work, right? Well, Lawler worked about as well as Lawler normally works, but Roselli was such an absolute void of anything entertaining that the formula just had nothing to bounce off. They worked some amusing spots (Lawler going to punch Roselli in the face, Roselli begging not in the face, so Lawler punches his body) but mainly a lot of Roselli chinlockery, botched interference from Roselli's valet, a spot where Lawler has to threaten to punch the valet but ends up kissing her that went WAY too long because Roselli was way late with the save, all the match build focusing on the Lawler Stunner spot which sadly popped the crowd bigger than anything else. In maybe the worst spot of any Lawler match I've ever seen, he actually got on the mic to pop the crowd by saying he was going to hit a Stone Cold Stunner. I wept. This just didn't add up to anything good, and it took a long time to get there. Roselli had a nice elbow drop (I was taught to end on a positive note).


Jerry Lawler vs. Romeo Roselli, NEW 10/14/06 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Hey, remember the previous match these two had? Same fed, 4 months before, written about directly above this match? Well here they are with almost the exact same, identical match. They did almost all the same spots, in almost the exact same order. For whatever reason, this one was better. Roselli didn't dick around as much and the match felt tighter for that reason, the (new) valet was better and knew her spots better, Lawler didn't get on the mic announcing he was gonna hit a Stone Cold Stunner, etc. So things were better. They weren't great though.


COMPLETE & ACCURATE LAWLER