10 Greatest Vince McMahon Creations
8. JBL
Perhaps more so than any other entry on this list, the John Bradshaw Layfield character was an instant creation - a fully-formed act we were expected to suddenly take seriously as a main event-level threat despite years of evidence to the contrary.
Everything was up against it. Bradshaw had toiled in the midcard for years - he was essentially stigmatised as a colourful if limited bruiser, but the dearth of star power on SmackDown left WWE with little option but to promote him. Just weeks earlier, the climax of WrestleMania XX seemed to usher in a new era of the hard-working workrate champion. JBL was the antithesis to Chris Benoit and first opponent Eddie Guerrero in that he was an entitled office favourite of a throwback hoss.
It is to the man's (and Guerrero's) credit, and the awesomeness of the act, that it got over almost as quickly as it materialised from out of nowhere. JBL used his real-life stock market nous to inform his horrendously xenophobic and domineering character, which was as regressive as it was almost postmodern. He was far from the "Wrestling God" he proclaimed himself as. That, especially considering his first opponent, was very much the point.
It was a masterclass of shortcut booking.