10 Best Wrestler Vs. Celebrity Feuds Of All-Time

There’s a strong argument to be made that Jerry Lawler vs. Andy Kaufman is the most influential wrestling feud of all-time. Though younger generations only know Lawler as a colour commentator, The King was considered a wrestling God in his home Memphis territory. A fantastic worker and one of the best talkers the business has ever seen, he feuded with some of the roughest customers in wrestling but his rivalry with actor/comedian Kaufman remains his finest hour.

Kaufman had taken to wrestling women during his comedy act, and had proclaimed himself the “Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World.” Adopting an over-the-top wrestling persona, Kaufman offered $1,000 to any woman who could pin him, and initially approached Vince McMahon Sr. about taking his act to the WWE. McMahon declined, but after being introduced to Lawler, Kaufman found a new home in Memphis, where he soon ran afoul of The King.

Kaufman taunted the Tennessee natives by playing videos showing them how to use soap. It was the last straw for Lawler, who already took umbrage with Kaufman’s intergender matches. The duo engaged in a series of bouts and worked a number of angles into the proceedings, including Lawler breaking Kaufman’s neck with his patented piledriver, and an on-air brawl on the David Letterman Show in 1982.

The feud was revolutionary. At the time, wrestling was about no more than the in-ring action itself, and such reality-blurring storylines were completely unheard of. People thought that Kaufman and Lawler’s heat was real, and while that’s hard to imagine in the entertainment-saturated 2016 wrestling industry, this was a groundbreaking storyline at the time.

It wasn’t revealed until long after Kaufman’s 1984 death that he and Lawler were good friends who simply enjoyed putting-on a show for the fans. While it happened a long, long time ago, Lawler vs. Kaufman paved the way for what pro-wrestling would eventually become, and set the blueprint for every major feud that followed.