AUDIO VERSION:
Next month, WWE will honor Lawrence Pfohl a.k.a. Lex Luger at its Hall of Fame ceremony which represents a remarkable reunion.
While Luger has had an association with WWE for over a decade, and was the subject of one of its A&E documentaries, this is also a performer that was essentially ex-communicated after his departure thirty years ago, and more harshly, linked to the death of Elizabeth Hulette when the company was playing faux news outlet in 2003.
At first glance, Luger was a prodigy, leaving football after ill-fated attempts in the CFL, USFL, and a brief stint with the Green Bay Packers of the NFL. He was 27 years of age when he found Hiro Matsuda, who saw dollar signs, helped train the future champion, and led him to Championship Wrestling from Florida.
His entry into the business drew immediate attention, specifically by Ric Flair, who served as a conduit for Luger to jump to Jim Crockett Promotions and, in no time, was under contract for six figures, a member of the Horsemen, and considered a star of the future.
The legacy of Luger has been written and rewritten countless times with a common acceptance that he was a victim of mistiming when his character was at its hottest.
After leaving the Horsemen, he engaged in a big program with Ric Flair in 1988 featuring a memorable beatdown of Luger at the Clash of the Champions card in Miami, setting up their Great American Bash contest.
Flair was the leader in this era, but there was much focus on the promotion’s star for the next decade, with Luger and Sting as the obvious candidates for a 1-2 punch.
From a character and bell-to-bell point of view, the Lex Luger of 1988-1990 may have been his peak, whether as a babyface or a heel, tag division or singles, U.S. Championship scene, or when flirting with the big gold belt.
In 1989, under the new Turner ownership, WCW staged one of its best years of match quality but was struggling to maintain market share and grow its audience against the powerful WWF. Flair was consumed with Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk throughout the calendar while Luger held the U.S. title for most of the year and appeared on the cusp of cracking through the ceiling in the new decade.
Timing was a blessing and a curse in the early portion of 1990 when Sting was set to be anointed NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion by besting Flair; however, a torn patella injury on a live Clash of the Champions special halted those plans by months. With just two weeks until its Wrestle War pay-per-view, Luger was turned babyface as the hot shot challenger on short notice. Despite the rapid turn and minimal build-up, Luger was incredibly over and participated in one of the best matches of his career by going thirty-eight minutes with Flair and ending with a disappointing count-out.
It was a unique political minefield as Luger had his backers and detractors. Flair, on his last legs as head booker and set to abdicate his position, argued for retaining the title and committing to its original plan of crowning Sting, once healthy. Luger represented a solid consolation prize to the injured Sting and created a natural match-up among the generational rivals once Sting returned. While Luger would not leave Greensboro with the title on February 25, 1990, the show drew an impressive number of pay-per-view buys and a feather in Luger’s cap.
Sting returned in July and captured the championship from Flair at the Great American Bash, and the company placed its bets on the 31-year-old to carry WCW into the decade with the false assumption that Flair’s run was over.
Luger remained a stalwart with the U.S. title, flipping the belt with Stan Hansen at Halloween Havoc and Starrcade.
In 1991, Luger was called upon as the emergency band-aid when its active champion, Flair, broke down contract renewal talks with Jim Herd, and left for the WWF and thus vacating the championship. Luger’s first championship win was conducted unceremoniously, beating Barry Windham at that year’s Great American Bash and breaking the lineage of the belt while fighting “We Want Flair” chants.
It was a downtime for WCW throughout 1991 after the exodus of Flair. Luger sought refuge by walking away in February 1992 with time remaining on his contract. His intentions, voiced to WCW management, were to focus on non-wrestling endeavors as a signal he wasn’t bolting for the WWF. He did not state that those non-wrestling endeavors included Vince McMahon’s World Bodybuilding Federation (WBF) and an appearance on the WrestleMania 8 broadcast.
Luger had larger issues than contract maneuvers after a June 1992 motorcycle accident that nearly forced the loss of his right arm and placed his career in grave jeopardy. Through the work of Dr. James Andrews, he recovered and would be contractually free to work for the WWF by 1993, where he entered as The Narcissist.
The gimmick was short-lived, with Luger once again called upon to fill a major void on top. After a short return, Hulk Hogan was wrapping up with the company that summer, and Vince McMahon chose Luger to wave the magic wand over and create his new All-American babyface, complete with a cross-country bus tour en route to his championship match at SummerSlam with Yokozuna.
Yet another calculated decision was made against Luger’s time to win the “big one”, going with a count-out victory for its new top babyface and pushing the climactic moment down the road to WrestleMania 10. After going with Luger and Bret Hart and the co-winners of the Royal Rumble under the guise of an informal live fan survey of its top babyface candidates, McMahon opted for Hart to dethrone Yokozuna at ‘Mania 10 and Luger in the role of best-supporting cast member.
Luger’s run in WWF had peaked throughout 1993 and fell to an upper mid-card role, feuding with Tatanka, teaming with Davey Boy Smith, and famously leaving the company without notice in September 1995.
According to Luger in his autobiography, he had not been “on paper” with the WWF since March of that year. He casually mentioned that tidbit to Sting, who relayed the news to Eric Bischoff and set the stage for the surprise reveal on the inaugural edition of Monday Nitro at the Mall of America. It gave Nitro the necessary “wow” moment to conclude its first broadcast and was objectively the right move for Luger’s career, which had stalled in the WWF and received a rebirth going back to WCW.
With a long-term story involving Sting’s absence during the rise of the New World Order, Luger ascended to top babyface status in 1997. This coincided with a business turnaround for WCW, and after turning a profit in 1996, the company hauled in $112 million in revenue the following year with Luger a major cog in the wheel.
The surge is business coincided with a “work hard, play hard” mentality that Luger was hardly shy in partaking in. The performer was open in his 2013 autobiography that his steroid usage predated wrestling and started cycles of Decadurabolin and Dianabol before his second season of play in the CFL. His eight-week cycles turned to twelve when moving to pro wrestling and his physique became one of the loudest in the industry.
But, in WCW, he went further, combating the rigors on the road with a party-filled atmosphere and seeking highs through pills mixed with alcohol and the constant need to feel “on”. It was hard to decipher someone spiraling when so many stories emerged of this era in WCW’s locker room that examples like Luger were the norm rather than an outlier.
Luger was also making exorbitant amounts of money with court filings displaying figures from his last contract in WCW, which was signed in January 1999 and would run for more than a year after WCW shut its doors. After making less than $500,000 in 1996, his salary jumped to $1.3 million in 1999 and topped out at $1.5 million in 2002 while sitting at home and collecting his guaranteed money.
In 1999, simply branded as “The Total Package” upon return from injury, he was paired with Elizabeth Hulette as his valet, a relationship that extended beyond the screen and led to an affair and a tragic end.
Throughout WCW’s final year of operations in 2000, Luger was slated as a member of The Millionaire’s Club and programmed with Shawn Stasiak and later, paired with Buff Bagwell in a team. Luger had fallen from top star status, and his in-ring work reflected a lack of spark and the star power previously associated. When WCW was purchased by the WWF in March 2001, its final broadcast included a segment involving Vince McMahon where Luger and Jeff Jarrett appeared to be singled out as talents that would not be welcome under its new ownership, and Luger would never wrestle for WWE again.
Outside of some WWA tours in Europe, a forgettable match in TNA, and several independent dates, Luger’s career largely ended after WCW’s demise, and his name was reserved for headlines in the worst possible way.
His drug use was not a secret, and he is painfully open about his life spiraling during this period, compounded by a divorce from his wife of 24 years, and a destructive lifestyle with Hulette, who exhibited her own drug dependencies.
In April 2003, officers were summoned to Luger’s townhouse over a domestic disturbance between the couple, and Hulette was observed to have bruises on her head and a cut lip. It led to Luger being charged with a misdemeanor count of battery, however, he argues in his book that he never struck her, but Hulette was attempting to take their dogs for a walk, and they wrapped the leashes around her legs, leading to a fall.
Only two days after this incident, Luger was arrested for driving under the influence after striking a vehicle from behind and driving with a suspended license.
Rock bottom was just over a week later when Hulette, lying on the couch in Luger’s townhouse, stopped breathing after a deadly mixture of hydrocodone and Xanax mixed with vodka. A frantic 911 call was made by Luger, who could not resuscitate her, and she was pronounced dead at 42. While foul play was not suspected nor Luger a suspect, a search of his home found a bag full of controlled substances, including steroids and painkillers. Luger argued that the bag containing the substances was shipped to his townhouse with his belongings from his wife, and he never unpacked them. He was hit with fourteen felony charges related to the possession and would receive five years of probation.
In the spring of 2003, WWE was dabbling in pseudo-news coverage on its magazine-style show, Confidential, and the death of Hulette led to the producers leaning in. Over two episodes, they covered the story, including the controversial decision to air the 911 call by Luger and even more so, flashing the possible causes of death on the screen and including “homicide” as a potential reason, thus painting Luger as a possible culprit to viewers.
Any argument that WWE was doing news coverage as opposed to a ratings ploy was out the window when it promoted the airing of the story throughout the May 15, 2003, edition of SmackDown and aired the piece (which has been edited out of the version on Peacock and previously on the WWE Network).
It is probably the most famous segment in Confidential’s short history and pushed the online dialogue that Luger may have killed his girlfriend. It included a sit-down interview with Vince McMahon for the story, where he pointed to WCW’s locker room environment as a probable cause for Elizabeth’s spiral downward compared to the family atmosphere she experienced at WWE. It felt cold-hearted and vindictive given the company authoring this story as a final blow to Luger for double-crossing McMahon in 1995.
Luger’s life would continue to spiral as the death of Hulette did not represent a turning point in his destructive lifestyle, including a four-month prison sentence for probation violations.
He turned to religion, where he states he was “saved” in April 2006.
While many within wrestling have looked at wrestlers leaning on religion with a skeptical eye, there have absolutely been success stories of wrestlers who seemed to be ticking time bombs for the industry’s next statistic that turned their lives around.
Luger would make appearances alongside best friend Steve Borden (Sting) and was even baptized by his colleague, miraculously regaining control of the wheel in a life that was spinning dangerously out of control.
But life had a different plan for Luger, and another massive hurdle was thrown his way in October 2007 during a weekend in San Francisco for a convention at the Cow Palace. After a workout that left his back in pain, he boarded his flight and felt a pinch in his back, which he assumed was temporary and a nuisance rather than a warning. He would experience a spinal infarction in his hotel room, unable to get up off the floor while attempting to scream for help, and eventually, his dead-bolted door was broken down with help on the way.
It was not a pinched nerve but paralysis that he was experiencing, and a life-altering event that would confine him to a wheelchair with the question of whether he would feel anything below his neck again.
It has been nearly two decades, and Luger has documented his ups and downs from learning to walk again to setbacks that took that ability away from him. He is currently in the process of trying to learn to walk for a third time with the assistance of Page Falkinburg (Diamond Dallas Page) ahead of the announcement of his Hall of Fame induction in Las Vegas next month.
His quiet reunion with WWE occurred in 2011 when he began working in the company’s wellness division. Luger has never been one of the company’s “legends” to be brought onto television specials or marketed around until its choice of subjects for its A&E specials. The Hall of Fame will represent the most public endorsement by the company, something that was unfathomable in 2003, and its handling of the Hulette death.
Today’s version of Lex Luger seems the antithesis of the cocky and arrogant reputation that so many of his past co-workers saw of the man during his wrestling days. He openly takes a level of responsibility for Hulette’s death, citing his drug use that she mirrored and acknowledging that his choices on the road led to a divorce, and currently, he has no relationship with his two children, who are now adults.
Instead of becoming the latest in a long line of ‘80s and ‘90s stars that succumbed to the deadly lifestyle, it took an act of God for Luger to believe in one. Regardless of one’s opinion toward religion, it was the only set of beliefs Luger had to cling to. When life dealt him a spinal stroke, robbing him of the ability to walk and work out and live a normal life, he attacked the setback with positivity few could exhibit in his circumstances.
The WWE Hall of Fame is not the be-all and end-all but it’s an acknowledgment from the industry leader that the talents and performers take seriously. For Luger, it’s less about a public acknowledgment rather than a signal that this maligned figure will get one final round of applause and ability to show the public that through his trials, errors, and misjudgments, he came out on the other side and got his life in order before the final chapter was written.
