Jerry Lawler explains ‘Ramen Noodle Moonsault’ comment on Raw

A couple weeks ago, Jerry Lawler came under fire for a bit of commentary during a match featuring Akira Tozawa. During said match, Tozawa performed a senton and Lawler referred to it as a “Ramen Noodle Moonsault.” This was quickly called out for being both stereotypical and racist.

WWE edited the line out of future Raw rebroadcasts.

Now, Lawler has addressed the situation on his podcast (via Wrestling Observer). He explained he once heard Mauro Ranallo call moves he thought sounded made up, so he tried to think up names for moves that would be funny so that Ranallo could play off him by chiding him for it.

“I would say something like, ‘There’s the Ramen Noodle moonsault’ and he would say, ‘Oh, King! You know there’s no such thing!’ And we would just go on. I was doing it just to play devil’s advocate with Mauro. If I were still doing commentary with Michael Cole or JR, we had the chemistry to where each one of those guys would have known that I was almost making a fool out of myself by claiming like I was acting like I knew what this unbelievable looking move was.

“Then either Cole or JR would have said ‘Oh, King! You know better than that!’ With Byron and Tom, we don’t have that chemistry yet. We have only been working together for a short time so when I said that, they didn’t even acknowledge it so it kind of went out and they just kept talking and I kept talking. I didn’t think anything about it either.”

I’m not sure using “my partners on commentary didn’t call me out for it, so it didn’t work out” is much of a defense but it’s also entirely unsurprising that this is what Lawler went with. For what it’s worth, he never apologized for the remark and doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with it.