What if Andy Kaufman had lived?

[TMC]

If Andy Kaufman never gotten lung cancer and was still alive as of 2022, what do you think he would have done?

[SarahBellum]

Many though Kaufman faked his death and would eventually re-emerge after a while. It would have been a sick joke, but he was doing some bizarre stuff at that point. Since he has not yet come back, I guess he really is dead.

But to answer your question, I think people would have eventually grown tired of his act and he would have faded into oblivion.

[Yong Fang]

I think Andy Kaufman would have gotten more involved with professional wrestling and would have ended up a character on Vince McMahon’s WWE. I am from Memphis and Kaufman joined the Memphis promotion for about a year before his death and he loved it. He played a “Heel”, a bad guy. He would insult the audience, insult Memphis and had a “fued” with Jerry Lawler. Probably many of you have seen Kaufman and Lawler on Letterman when Lawler decked Kaufman to the floor with Kaufman after the break hurling obscenities.

Kaufman loved professional wrestling since childhood and when he wanted to break into that business tried to join the McMahon WWF outfit, but McMahon turned him down. Undaunted, he tried other avenues and someone who saw what a talent he could be turned Kaufman to the Memphis/Jeff Jarrett/Jerry Lawler promotion.

In the Memphis promotion, Kaufman was paid but never once cashed any of his paychecks. He did the whole act for free, and he stayed with the wrestling promotion for over a year even traveling to other cities.

I honestly think if he was still alive, he would have turned his energies toward wrestling, and turned away from his comedy. I think it might have been a wise thing for him to do, perhaps although contemporaries on Hollywood was wondering if Kaufman has lost his mind and what in the hell was he doing.

I didn’t much care for the film “Man on the Moon” ( can’t stand Jim Carrey plus it didn’t really do his wrestling career justice) but it is shown what happened.