Jerry Lawler has been announced for an upcoming edition of NXT, which will be the King’s first appearance on WWE programming since suffering a stroke earlier in the year.
NXT will present the Deadline Premium Live Event on December 9th and will see the return of the Men’s and Women’s Iron Survivor Challenges. To determine the participants in each of the respective matches, qualifying matches will take place in the lead-up to the show on weekly TV.
To decide the participants for the qualifying matches, Shawn Michaels has called upon the services of multiple Hall of Famers. Mick Foley was the first Hall of Famer to appear on November 7th, selecting Dijak and Tyler Bate as his picks for the men’s match and Tiffany Stratton and Fallon Henley. On November 14th, Lita will make a guest appearance on the show to announce her picks.
Other Hall of Famers confirmed to appear will include JBL and the Memphis Legend himself. With Foley appearing via video message, it is likely that Lawler’s appearance will also be pre-recorded.
Jerry Lawler last appeared in front of WWE fans during a commercial break on an episode of Raw. As WWE were in Memphis, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn had the honour of introducing the Hall of Famer to the live crowd.
Jerry Lawler Details Stroke Recovery
The former WWE announcer recently spoke with Bill Apter to give the fans an update on his recovery after being rushed to hospital earlier back in February. When asked what the rehab currently entails, Jerry Lawler gave the following health update and detailed his rehab process:
Well, I’ve had a bunch of different things done. And I’m still going to heat rehab, three times a week. And probably the main thing that’s drawing me back now as you could probably tell as you hear me talk, my voice is not the same as it was beforehand. It’s slowly coming back. But it needed to come back a little more before I could go and do a lot of just making sense with my speech and vocabulary.
I really don’t do a lot. I just stay around the house and do 3 rehab sessions a week, where I go into hospital. And then I do some more at home here in Memphis. And that’s pretty much it. One is speech that’s my main one. That’s three times a week. And it’s just well I mean, when I’ve just started this. Right after I had the stroke, I could barely talk.
I go in and I just sit down with this rehab lady and we just talk about different things. And she had me read stuff and all of this stuff has just helped me day in and day out which will get my vocabulary better. And then I did, it’s where my right arm and my right leg and everything on my right side of my body is still; it’s not hurt me where I can’t walk around, I can still walk around. But I don’t have really good control of writing my autograph. It’s just I mean, I can write my autograph pretty good.
But you know, I’ve been so proud of my autograph and adding artistic ability to it. But that’s all sort of, it’s taken a while to come back.