JBL and Vince Russo aren’t particularly friends.
The former WWE Champion has called out the former WCW/WWE writer in the past for lying, and the 58-year-old didn’t hesitate to call Russo out on the Something to Wrestle With podcast for claiming that he told the entire locker room that he could kick everybody’s ass:
“That’s 100% bullsh*t,” JBL said. “He said that for years. Nobody at that time thought that was true. Talk to Bruce, talk to Bob Holly, talk to Butterbean. No one at that time thought that was true. We had two UFC champions in our dressing room. If I’m saying I can whoop the whole world, I don’t doubt I said it. We said all kinds of crazy stuff back then. We loved to talk smack.
We loved to talk sh*t in the dressing room. Shamrock was sitting right there. There’s no way I’m meaning something like that. You got Undertaker, you got Godfather, you got the Harris boys, you got Blackman, you got Bob Holly. We didn’t know Bart could knock out the entire world. We knew Bart was a tough guy, so none of that as far as being real, no. Good Lord, no.”
For those who don’t know what Brawl for All is, it’s a shootfighting tournament that took place in 1998. Like Russo stated, the tournament was simply made because the former WWE writer wanted to see JBL knocked out. It hosted 16 participants, JBL included, with Bart Gunn ultimately winning the tournament.
Russo got his wish. JBL was indeed knocked out in the finals, but the tournament was a massive bust. Fans objectively hated it. And most of the wrestlers in the tournament were severely injured because they weren’t trained fighters.
Guys like Jim Cornette and Bruce Prichard have called this the stupidest thing that WWE has ever done, and JBL echoed that sentiment by saying Russo has come up with some of the worst ideas in wrestling.
“I think what happened is that Russo left and went to WCW. After he left WWE, WWE went through the roof, WCW went bankrupt, and he spent the next 25 years of his life in, there’s nothing else you could say, but abysmal failure. Nothing he’s touched is still around. Everything he’s touched has gone either bankrupt or gone under. He’s not welcome back at any place he has been.
My thought is that he came up with this idea of the Brawl for All like he came up with Viagra on a pole match, Judy Bagwell on a pole match, and Dave Arquette to be champion. He came up with some of the worst ideas in the history of wrestling. He’s done it consistently. Eventually he just said, ‘Oh, I’m gonna blame it all on Bradshaw. Oh, I did that just to get Bradshaw’, so that’s what I think.
Nobody at the time thought that was the case, and I don’t think anybody now really thinks that’s the case. Russo, he makes Bobby Jaggers look truthful. The guy can’t tell the truth. That to me is 100% preposterous.”
This surely won’t be the last time we hear from Russo and JBL. These two have been going back and forth for years. According to Russo, JBL stopped liking him because he was honest with JBL and Windham when the duo was a tag team.
"JBL started just before I got there, but I'm sitting down with Barry Windham and I got to be honest with these guys and look these guys in the face and tell them that creatively, I just don't think this team or this angle is going to work. Vince Russo said to Dr. Chris Featherstone.
“That's what was hard, Chris. Because it was like do I lie to these guys, do I string these guys along? Or do I tell them the truth, and then I'm going to have some heat for telling them the truth. But I told them the truth, and bro, I got to be honest with you. From that moment on JBL did not like me because I was honest with him."
At this point, it would be a miracle if this feud actually came to a peaceful end.