Bill Dundee. Image via: Memphis Wrestling/ YouTube
Dundee held the AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship nine times and the CWA International Heavyweight Championship four times, and alongside Lawler, he won the AWA World Tag Team Championship twice, including a run that began in October 1987. Their most famous feud, in 1977, carried hair stipulations and even Lawler’s Cadillac as a wager. He was inducted into the Memphis Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2017, sharing the stage with Lawler, Jimmy Hart, and Koko B. Dundee kept wrestling well past his prime years, taking his final match in December 2019, nearly 45 years after he first landed in Memphis.
That kind of timing doesn’t happen by design, but it’s exactly how Memphis wrestling said goodbye to one of its own. Memphis became his home base, and his career there became inseparable from Jerry “The King” Lawler. WWE released a statement Sunday afternoon, writing that it was “saddened to learn that Memphis wrestling legend Bill Dundee has passed away,” and extended condolences to his family and fans.
Bill Dundee spent more than half a century inside wrestling rings across three continents, and somehow his final on-camera moment landed just one day before his death. The two spent years shifting between fierce rivals and championship-winning partners, and their matches, built around elaborate stipulations and personal feuds, turned into some of the most memorable moments in Memphis wrestling history. Current roster members lined up to shake his hand as announcer Dustin Starr recalled his championship battles with Lawler. Ware. He also spent time in WCW under the name Sir William, managing Steven Regal.
Just a day earlier, Memphis Wrestling aired what turned out to be Dundee’s final televised appearance, recorded before it aired Saturday on WMC.