7 WWE 25th Anniversary RAW Returns Who Couldn't Survive PG

The Acolyte Protection Agency (APA) all started one night when the Mean Street Posse hired Bradshaw and Faarooq to act as their bodyguards. From then, the tag team continued to charm the WWE Universe through vulgar and violent backstage antics as well as in-ring dominance. And while Faarooq found success prior to the APA and Bradshaw later reached new heights as JBL, the APA as a whole would never exist today. There’s also a good chance John Bradshaw Layfield might have not soared to such heights if he began today either.

Once the doors of the APA Office were open for business, most of the backstage promos involved cigar smoking (now banned), beer drinking (now banned), and gambling (now banned). There were even some more risqué skits involving Trish Stratus, which WWE wouldn’t dare propose while producing PG content. Where there wasn’t obscenity, there was destruction. There were so many ruthless backstage brawls at the time they were nearly normalized, but in PG WWE they would be cleaned up, brief, and sparse.

As for Bradshaw, the APA was a close-to-home role. He was known at the time as being a bit of a bully backstage, which translated to a positive on TV. As part of the APA, he verbally assaulted other superstars, made underhanded deals, and helped certain people achieve more success. Under WWE’s current anti-bullying stance, his real-life backstage incidences would be reprimanded (though Mauro Ranallo might disagree).