John Bradshaw Layfield has been employed by the WWE for almost twenty years. It is a career that has seen him go from a cowboy/mountain man, to a barroom brawler, to a Stan Hansen wannabe, back to a barroom brawler and then, finally, to his most successful incarnation: the JBL character. It took JBL a long time to make it to the top. For the first nine years of his WWE career, he was primarily a tag teamer or an undercard singles wrestler. However, having cultivated friendships with WWE power players like The Undertaker, Triple H and Vince McMahon, he was selected for main event stardom in 2004. Although he was a midcard guy on-screen, off-screen Bradshaw had a very important, self-appointed role in the WWE locker room. Throughout the years there have been plentiful stories of JBL's backstage behaviour, including allegations of bullying, hazing and racism/xenophobia. So while he was working humdrum matches on television, in the back he was causing all sorts of controversy, leading to him being vilified on the internet and in the wrestling press. But just how much of what was written and said about JBL is actually true? Is JBL really as bad as his detractors would have you believe, or have those stories been embellished in order to discredit the man? Here, we investigate 10 notorious JBL urban legends and try to separate the fact from the fiction.
