The first thing you noticed about Brian Christopher was that grin.
Not the kind of grin that sold toothpaste in the magazines, but the cocky, squinting, Memphis-proud smirk of a man who believed the spotlight belonged to him and him alone. If the ring had a mirror, he’d have cut promos to his own reflection. He wasn’t just Brian Christopher Lawler, son of Jerry “The King” Lawler. He was “Too Sexy.” Later, he was “Grand Master Sexay,” a name so ridiculous it circled back to iconic. And for a brief, glorious run, he was part of Too Cool — the dancing, worm-dropping, hip-hop cosplay tag team that got Attitude Era crowds to explode like beer cans in a college dorm microwave.
And then, as the wrestling gods so often script it, came the downfall. Arrests. Addictions. A father-son relationship so twisted it played out on live WWE television with all the awkwardness of a Thanksgiving dinner gone wrong. And finally, the tragic coda: a jail cell in Tennessee, July 2018. Too Sexy had become too broken. He was 46.
Memphis Heat
Brian Christopher didn’t have to wrestle. He could have sold cars, bagged groceries, or played second fiddle in one of his dad’s Tennessee feuds. But like every wrestling son who grows up in the shadow of a father’s cape, crown, or cowboy boots, he wanted in.
He started young, tagging with Tony Williams in the USWA as “The Twilight Zone,” a masked duo with names like Nebula and Quasar — because nothing screams “future superstar” like dressing two Tennessee kids as rejected Star Trek extras.
When the masks came off, Brian morphed into “Too Sexy” Brian Christopher. And he lived up to the moniker in that regional way: spiky blond hair, shades too small for his face, hips that gyrated like Elvis Presley after three Red Bulls. He wasn’t the biggest or the strongest, but he was obnoxious in a way Memphis fans couldn’t ignore. He won belts by the armful — 44 in the USWA — the kind of “championships” that came with a handshake and a Polaroid but built his confidence brick by brick.
The WWF Years: Grand Master Sexay
By the late ’90s, Vince McMahon needed bodies to fill the exploding Attitude Era roster. Brian showed up in 1997, thrown into the WWF Light Heavyweight division. He was a Lawler by birth but never by storyline — Jerry would sit at commentary while his son strutted in the ring, denying to the audience that the kid was his. It was the kind of meta joke only wrestling can pull off: the loudest secret in the building denied by the very man in the headset.
Brian lost to Taka Michinoku in the finals of the Light Heavyweight Championship tournament, which meant he had “plucky loser” written all over him. But destiny — and some bad dance moves — had other plans.
With Scott Taylor (later Scotty 2 Hotty), he formed “Too Much.” Then they rebranded as “Too Cool.” Add Rikishi, a 400-pound Samoan who could dance better than either of them, and suddenly you had lightning in a bottle. The goggles, the baggy pants, the choreographed dance routines — they should have bombed. Instead, fans ate it up. They even won the Tag Team Titles in 2000, a moment that proved you didn’t need to be the Road Warriors to get over — sometimes you just needed rhythm, timing, and the audacity to make the crowd believe in a dance break mid-match.
Brian Christopher had done it. He was a champion.
The Long Fall
But wrestling is cruel. Gimmicks fade. Jokes get old. And Brian Christopher didn’t have the safety net of a “serious” character to fall back on. When Rikishi turned heel, Too Cool turned ice-cold. By 2001, Brian was gone, released after being caught smuggling pills across the Canadian border. In an era where half the locker room was chemically enhanced, you had to really screw up to get bounced. Brian managed it.
The rest of his career was a patchwork quilt: stints in TNA as part of “Next Generation,” random indy bookings, a nostalgia return here and there. He wrestled Jeff Jarrett for the WWA Title in 2002. He worked Hulk Hogan’s “Hulkamania” tour in Australia. He even popped back up in WWE for a cameo in 2014, teaming with Scotty 2 Hotty and Rikishi to take on 3MB — because if there’s one thing wrestling loves, it’s wringing one last pop from yesterday’s gimmicks.
But the downward spiral was relentless. Arrests piled up like empty beer cans. Disorderly conduct. Public intoxication. DUI. Thirty-day sentences that didn’t take. Rehab stints that didn’t stick.
The saddest return came in 2011 when WWE scripted him into a segment where he told Jerry Lawler, his real-life father, that he was ashamed to be his son. Wrestling blurs the line between reality and fiction until nobody knows what’s true anymore. But that night, you could feel the truth in Brian’s voice.
The Last Dance
Brian Christopher’s last match came in November 2017, a small-town indie show in Georgia. He beat a guy named Donnie Primetime. No pyro. No Rikishi. No Scotty. No goggles. Just a man trying to still be Too Sexy when the mirror told him otherwise.
Eight months later, after another DUI arrest, he was back in jail. On July 29, 2018, he was found hanging in his cell. He was declared brain dead. Life support was pulled later that day. The kid from Memphis, who once made Madison Square Garden dance, was gone.
Legacy of a Sexy Grandmaster
Brian Christopher’s legacy is complicated. He was never going to headline WrestleMania. He was never going to be WWF Champion. But for a hot year in 1999–2000, he and Too Cool were among the most over acts in the company. They danced with Rikishi. They made the crowd lose its collective mind. They were goofy, harmless, fun — three words rarely associated with the Attitude Era.
He wasn’t his father. He wasn’t The Rock. He wasn’t Triple H. But he didn’t need to be. He was Brian Christopher. Too Sexy. Grand Master Sexay. A man who turned bad dancing into good money, and who burned too fast to make it to the encore.
Epilogue
When Jerry Lawler buried his son, it was in a Pittsburgh Steelers–themed casket, a final middle finger to his father’s beloved Cleveland Browns. It was funny. It was sad. It was perfectly Brian Christopher: equal parts showmanship, defiance, and chaos.
And maybe that’s how he should be remembered. The grin. The goggles. The dance moves. A wrestler who knew he wasn’t destined to be the king — but for one brief, ridiculous, unforgettable run, he was the life of the party.