8 Best Second Act WWE Careers Ever

The man who would eventually become a Wrestlinggggggg Gawd earned his stripes as a painfully uninteresting cowboy brawler, two full decades after that sort of thing got over. He was eventually paired with fellow college football star Ron Simmons as the Acolytes, though they only really broke out after striking out on their own as the Acolyte Protection Agency. The drunken brawlers became a fixture of the attitude era, but seemed poised to fade away with it in 2002.

Luckily, Bradshaw completed his southern stereotype evolution from cowboy to drunken redneck to deranged right-wing billionaire, and it was glorious. The JBL character was hilarious, offensive, and got real heat, especially in his legendary feud with Eddie Guerrero. JBL exceeded regular villainy and approached cartoonish supervillainy as he yelled at Eddie Guerrero's mom and picked up migrant workers in his truck and physically hurled them back across the border. JBL essentially forced WWE to give him a world title run, and he wound up holding the belt longer than anyone since Diesel nearly a decade earlier. The end of this reign would coincide with John Cena's first, forever cementing him as the Iron Sheik to Cena's Hogan. Could Bradshaw have been a Hall of Famer? Maybe, as a throwaway induction along with Faarooq. But JBL? 

It's only a question of timing.