10 INSANE WWE International Incidents
7. Classic JBL
John “Bradshaw” Layfield wasn’t a super worker. He wasn’t an imaginative worker.
He knew this. So, short of an expansive set of skills, JBL screamed bile in our faces and brutalised his opponents with a limited but stupidly stiff power game. And, by God, it was effective. Improbably so.
The stock market whizz defied market expectations in the mid-2000s in a strange and sudden promotion that nonetheless yielded dividends. JBL reached the main event by using the cheapest of cheap heat tactics—rivers of literal blood, and rivers of verbal, racially-charged blood the likes of which Enoch Powell would have been proud. In the US, JBL blasted Mexicans on border patrol in his definitive, star-making feud with Eddie Guerrero.
In Germany, what could a heel wrestler do to generate the desired reaction?
JBL goose-stepped across the ring apron and raised his hand in a Nazi salute, drawing the ire of both the German fans and an international crowd that had tired of residual World War II sentiment by about, oh, 1960 or so.
In retrospect, the shocking scene represented in micro JBL’s macro narrative: he was a man out of time, but he still had the ability to make present-day headlines.