WWE Hall of Famer Jerry “The King” Lawler was a recent guest on Cerrito Live in Memphis, Tennessee over the weekend and opened up on being removed from the WWE pre-show panel along with fellow WWE Hall of Famer Amy “Lita” Dumas.
Lawler said that he got a call last week from Kevin Dunn, who he is very friendly with and said that Dunn is one of the guys that makes decisions when it comes to television, if people were unaware. Lawler said that Dunn told him that due to WWE being a public traded company, it comes down to dollars and cents and said that having his salary being absorbed on the pre-show panel after he was taken off of SmackDown Live made it a very expensive thing to produce, so they decided to get rid of the pre-show.
Lawler noted during the interview that he is under contract to the company into January 2017 and said that they will talk about a new deal then and that he expects to make less money, which is understandable to him as he will be working less for the company and added that he has done very well financially over the years and said that he is considering signing a talent deal as well and that this may now give him the opportunity to work on a project like the history of Memphis wrestling for the WWE Network. Lawler went on to note that the day after he got the phone call from Kevin Dunn, he received a phone call from WWE Chairman Vince McMahon who told him that he is definitely not done with WWE overall and that Vince reiterated that Lawler was dropped from the pre-show panel due to cost reasons and that Vince told him that he has a job for life with the company as the WWE Hall of Fame Master of Ceremonies.
The interview is available in full at this link.