On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle With, JBL talked about why he stopped being a commentator for WWE and more. You can check out some highlights below:
On why he stopped being a commentator: “I didn’t like the travel. It wasn’t the commentary, it was the travel. I was living in Bermuda, and I was traveling two flights almost every week, sometimes all the way to the West Coast. And I just didn’t like the travel. I loved the commentary. If I could have done commentary in my house, I’d have done it forever. And you know, they move on. And now they’ve got, you know, great commentaries out there. And there’s not a spot for me, and there shouldn’t be because these guys are fantastic. But the main thing was, it was just the travel. I got tired of getting on a plane every week. I have 6.3 million miles on American Airlines alone. And I’m just sick of getting on — to this day, getting on planes wore me out.”
On Vince McMahon making talent and commentators look bad on purpose: “You know, it’s the same with talent. You say ‘they always brought in talent just to bury them.’ Vince doesn’t bring in talent to bury people. Now, there may be some isolated cases. I don’t know that for sure because I can’t read his mind, but I was there for so much of it. And I was — again, when we went and did commentary with Vince back in the day before he put everything into production and creative rooms. We got to sit there with Vince, and he would unveil everything in his mind — not everything. I’m sure he kept some stuff back in the bag, he’s bringing out later. But he would let us know his thoughts on talent about, ‘This talent’s going to get over. We got to do it this way.’ We had a long talk, which we can discuss later, about how how we dealt with The Ascension. I got all kinds of heat over that. But there was a plan for that, same as we had a plan for MVP. We had a plan for a lot of these different guys that we brought in about how we would address the commentary. And Vince doesn’t bring guys in to look dumb. It’s his product.
“Now, I don’t doubt there’s times he had a vendetta against somebody that was at a different company, and he brought them in just to bury him. Don’t blame him; I’d have done the same thing. I think basically any human being would. It’s human nature. But that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen like, ‘He wants guys to look stupid.’ He wants the fans to feel like they’re part of the show. And to feel like you’re part of the show, sometimes the announcer does do stupid things. I would sit there and go, ‘Who is that?’ I know who it is. I can see him right in front of me, but I want the fan to come to that realization first, it’s part of being part of the show, instead of being a legit commentator. And there’s a huge difference.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something To Wrestle With an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.
