10 Embarrassing Times Wrestlers Tried To Be Badass
1. Jeff Jarrett Doesn't Think About What He's Saying
Jeff Jarrett was so close to getting it.
By 1998, after playing a bit of a moaning bastard upon his return to the Fed, he was smart enough to know what was getting over, but he simply didn't have the aura - nor security - to apply it. In WCW, he was pushed as a badass heel, and in the WWF, you were not to piss him off under any circumstances.
But it was in TNA that Jarrett really thought he was hot sh*t.
He had the look, or something close to it. He wore a leather jacket and shades in an attempt to embody the badass persona. He even grasped that the badass babyface is inherently fair with his clichéd "Easy way or hard way..." spiel. And he knew that the power of the threat resided in what to do with his rival's "ass," the key nomenclature of the day. But he didn't quite get it.
Kick it? Beat it? Smoke it?
No: he threatened to go out to that ring and take the NWA World Title out of Larry Zbysko's ass. This sounded much cooler in his head. The belt was not in fact inside of Larry Zbysko, whose incredulous response was priceless.
"Out of my ass?" he said. "Not my hand?"
Jarrett "got it" years later as the priceless "MMA enthusiast," but by then, he'd established himself in message board folklore as 'Triple J'.