Andy Kaufman Is Being Inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame

Legendary comedian Andy Kaufman is being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, Variety reported today, over 40 years after his infamous wrestling feud with Jerry “The King” Lawler in Memphis’s Continental Wrestling Association.

Best known for his role on the sitcom Taxi and his appearances on Saturday Night Live, Kaufman started to incorporate pro wrestling into his live comedy performances in 1979. He regularly wrestled women and proclaimed himself the Women’s Wrestling Champion of the World, and later introduced the World Intergender Wrestling Championship. (One of his regular opponents in the early days of this act was avant-garde musician and artist Laurie Anderson.) In his wrestling matches Kaufman portrayed a swaggering, misogynist Alpha Male type that was heavily at odds with his out-of-shape, unathletic appearance, embracing the role of the “heel” in pursuit of the kind of tension and discomfort he often aimed for with his comedy.

After honing his wrestling act at his live shows, Kaufman pitched Vincent J. McMahon, the wrestling promoter who owned what was then known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), on bringing his heel character into the company, but McMahon refused. Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett, owners of Continental Wrestling in Memphis, were interested in working with the comedian, though, and from 1981 to 1983 Kaufman and Lawler had a wrestling feud that captured mainstream attention.

Kaufman probably would’ve gotten over as a heel in any territory, given how good he was at trolling audiences, but he fit perfectly in Memphis, where he would routinely insult the Southern crowd for being dumb backwoods hicks while playing up his own Hollywood celebrity status. Lawler would stick up for Memphis and the fans, at one point “breaking” Kaufman’s neck with a piledriver in a worked wrestling angle. The two had a notorious exchange on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982, with a “fight” breaking out on air while they were being interviewed with Letterman. It was all clearly a work to any wrestling fans clued into the business, but the media generally treated it as if it was legitimate, in a testament to Lawler and Kaufman’s ability to work an angle.

The Kaufman / Lawler wrestling angle has remained a cult favorite of both comedy and wrestling fans in the years since, with the 1989 documentary I’m from Hollywood offering a kayfabe look at the whole feud. (It’s often released together with My Breakfast with Blassie, Kaufman’s parody of My Dinner with Andre featuring former wrestler and wrestling manager “Classy” Freddie Blassie.) 10 years later Miloš Forman’s Kaufman biopic The Man in the Moon revived public interest in the feud at the height of pro wrestling’s late ’90s popularity, with Lawler portraying himself and Jim Carrey playing Kaufman.

Kaufman is the third 2023 inductee for the WWE Hall of Fame to be officially announced, alongside wrestlers Rey Mysterio and Keiji “The Great Muta” Mutoh. Two of the three, Kaufman and Mutoh, never actually wrestled for WWE or WWF, but the company has long tried to present itself as the custodian of all of pro wrestling history, despite routinely ignoring or distorting any parts of wrestling history that don’t fit the company’s narrative. In the case of Mutoh, WWE at least owns his most significant American wrestling footage, which mostly occurred in Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling in 1989, with sporadic appearances until the company was sold to WWE in 2001. The rights to the Memphis tape library are infamously tangled, and it’s unclear who currently owns Kaufman’s Memphis footage.

The WWE Hall of Fame exists only in concept. There’s no physical Hall of Fame, and induction has always been entirely at the whim of Vincent K. McMahon, who has owned the company since 1982. Induction often seems less related to how successful a wrestler was during their career, and more dependent on their current relationship with the company and the McMahon family. McMahon stepped down from the company last summer after the Wall Street Journal revealed an alleged series of payouts to multiple women who had accused him of sexual misconduct and harassment; he then returned to the WWE’s Board of Directors in January, where he was promptly voted Chairman of the Board and ousted multiple board members who opposed his return. McMahon currently remains the Chairman of the Board despite multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and subsequent payouts.

The WWE Hall of Fame’s 2023 ceremony will air on Peacock and the WWE Network at 10 p.m. ET on Friday, March 31, 2023.