10 Wrestlers You Didn't Know Were HUGELY Influential
3. Jerry Lawler
You may think that Jerry Lawler's influence over the business has receded somewhat.
There's an obvious counter-argument joke here, in that it's still swarming with creeps, but artistically, few borrow from Lawler's in-ring. He was a master at the worked punch, a move that has been almost entirely abandoned as most modern wrestlers throw strikes - chops, forearms, kicks - informed by the Japanese scene's vast influence over the 21st century.
Stylistically, Lawler's DNA is not hard-coded into modern wrestling - but his stunning interloper gimmick in ECW still drives some of the cooler moments in today's landscape. The idea of an entitled, smug outsider who doesn't belong was a blindingly effective form of heel heat, and his "...'cause there's nothing in it but sh*t!" line was one of the better soundbites in a '90s scene teeming with great unscripted promo work.
Matt Cardona tweaked the interloper bit to career-reviving effect; as the through-and-trough WWE guy being "hardcore" in GCW, almost frightened to tap Nick Gage with a light tube, he was priceless. In a less specific way, even something like the Jericho Appreciation Society, a group of sports entertainers threatening to ruin the sanctity of the wrestling promotion, was rooted in the idea of an unwanted presence lording their apparent superiority over a more "real graps" entity.
Lawler's collaboration with the WWF in '93, 'McMemphis', was an earlier inter-promotional rivalry than the seismic events that redefined wrestling a couple of years later.