Who deserved a better run with the AWA Title? Stan Hansen or Jerry Lawler?

[It's...Baylariat!]

It's a simple question, but I'll give some background as to how Hansen and Lawler's title reigns came about.

Hansen was in the midst of a hiatus from Japan, where he reigned supreme as their best 'gaijin' (foreign wrestler). During that hiatus, he came over to the AWA with Verne Gagne and Gagne decided to give Hansen a run with the belt. The Lariat ended up beating Rick Martel for the belt with the Brazos Valley Backbreaker (Boston Crab) and had a reign of approximately six months. He didn't do much with the reign accept defend it against a wrestler named Leon 'Baby Bull' White. We know him as Big Van Vader. Eventually Hansen was due back in Japan to compete for Giant Baba's All Japan Pro Wrestling, and Hansen wanted to take the belt to Japan and defend it. Gagne didn't want that to happen. Baba did. So Hansen leaves with the belt, but one problem. He was supposed to drop the belt to Nick Bockwinkel at the AWA's next major event, only to instead mail the belt back to Gagne with tire tracks indented on the belt, where Hansen had ran over it. Overall... Hansen's reign was pretty weak.

Lawler has sort of a different story. See, him and Jerry Jarrett helped promote USWA wrestling based out of Memphis, Tennessee. The AWA was in it's last stand as a promotion and were eventually more intertwined with the USWA and ran cross promotional matches with AWA and USWA talent. Eventally, The USWA champion, Jerry Lawler and the AWA World Heavyweight Champion Curt Hennig met in Memphis with the AWA belt on the line. Lawler would win the title from Hennig and defend it against Hennig successfully until Hennig left the AWA and wrestled for the WWF under Mr. Perfect. Lawler would have a nice run with the belt and eventually unified the WCCW and AWA titles in a match with Kerry Von Erich, the WCCW champion. WCCW was World Class Championship Wrestling based out of Dallas, Texas and ran by Fritz Von Erich. The promotion was losing money, and Jerry Jarrett wanted to buy the promotion out and combine it with the USWA and AWA promotions, which is what ended up happening. Then, Lawler and Gagne ended up having differences and Lawler would lose the belt and moved on the WWE.

So overall, who deserved a better run with the AWA World Heavyweight Title? Stan Hansen or Jerry Lawler?

 

[DexVendetta88]

Lariat, you do provide 2 compelling background summary behind Hansen's and Lawler's AWA title reigns. To answer your question here I would have to say that Lawler deserved a better run with the title. I choose Lawler because even though he won the title in the dying days of the AWA, he had far better opponents, and he was able to wrestle with champions from other promotions to unify titles during his reign (i.e. the USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship which consisted the WCWA and AWA World Heavyweight Championships). Hansen on the other hand, like you pointed out already defended the AWA title against weak opponents with the exception of Big Van Vader who at the time wasn't a very big star to begin with at the time. I partially blame Giant Baba "God rest his soul" for making Hansen refuse dropping the AWA title before heading back to Japan because apparently he had a lineup of challengers in Japan to challenge Hansen for the belt without consulting Verne Gagne first to allow it.

 

[Tastycles]

Lawler probably deserved a better run with the title. Hansen was certainly a big name abroad, but the AWA title was never going to go out there with him, and there probably wasn't too much that he could do with it in the US due to his relative anonymity in the country. Lawler might not have been the legend that the WWE would have you believe he was, but he was certainly popular in his corner of the world. WCW managed to survive the early WWF onslaught in part due to its stronghold in the Southern states, and AWA may have been able to survive a little longer if it managed to make a little corner of the US its own.