For months, JBL was popping up wherever the hell he wanted, blasting people with Clotheslines From Hell and disappearing before anyone could figure out what he was actually building toward. He even teased that there was an “endgame” to the madness, and now the payoff that promoters were trying to create has finally been revealed.
Sean Ross Sapp tackled the mystery during a Fightful Select Q&A after being asked whether there was ever supposed to be an actual conclusion to JBL randomly showing up at independent promotions and wrecking people. Sapp said he went directly to someone in MLW for answers, and the company wasn’t just booking JBL to walk in, murder somebody with a clothesline and head for the parking lot.
“So I spoke to someone in MLW about this and they said WWE did authorize his presence in MLW because he was a contracted WWE talent.”
MLW apparently wanted to take JBL’s appearances and turn them into an actual long-term storyline. The company had multiple directions in mind, but the problem was getting JBL interested in doing much more than what fans were already seeing.
“We attempted to structure a long term storyline that had several paths. We pitched many to John, but ultimately he did not seem to go, like, prepared to go beyond clotheslining random people.”
There was a real payoff being kicked around, and one option would have put JBL across the ring from Satoshi Kojima. MLW was considering building everything toward a “Battle of the Lariats,” which would have made JBL’s endless Clothesline From Hell attacks suddenly make a hell of a lot more sense.
“We came close to getting him to focus on a build that would have ended with him against either Satoshi Kojima, Battle of the Lariats, or a totally different storyline with him being tied to an invasion and him playing a John Dutton Yellowstone bitter cowboy who doesn’t like what the world had become.”
The Kojima match wasn’t the only possible destination either. Another concept would have turned JBL into a bitter, Yellowstone-style cowboy who hated what wrestling had become and tied him into an invasion storyline, giving all those unexplained attacks an actual character-driven reason.
That’s a lot more ambitious than JBL storming into a building, nearly decapitating somebody and vanishing again, but the bigger storyline never got off the ground. Sapp said the people involved liked the possibilities, while JBL apparently just wasn’t looking for that kind of commitment.
“They really thought that this would have been cool, but, you know, this, it didn’t end up happening. John just kind of had the itch to do something, but not a lot of anything meaningful.”
MLW wasn’t alone in trying to squeeze an actual story out of JBL’s wrecking-ball tour. Sapp said another independent promoter told him they also wanted something more substantial, but there simply wasn’t much JBL wanted to build toward.
“But MLW especially did want to do something meaningful. Another indie promoter that I spoke to said, yeah, we really wanted to do something. It just wasn’t much.”
That finally gets to the real answer behind the mystery. JBL was willing to show up, create a huge WTF moment for a promotion and flatten somebody, but Sapp said those appearances weren’t necessarily pieces of one carefully constructed wrestling master plan.
“But beyond that, and he was willing to come in, get us some buzz, hit a clothesline, and people were like, oh my God, what’s going on? But that’s really just what it was.”
Sapp then summed up JBL’s apparent game plan in the most JBL way possible. The former WWE Champion wanted to throw the Clothesline From Hell — he just wasn’t interested in sticking around afterward to get his ass kicked.
“He wanted to hit a clothesline and not get beaten up. So that’s pretty much what that was.”
Sapp wasn’t even sure JBL was collecting a payday for every stop. His impression was that JBL enjoyed being able to pop up, help smaller promotions get attention and scratch his own itch to be involved in wrestling again.
“And I mean, listen, if you’re JBL and I don’t know if he was getting paid for this, it’s hard for me to imagine that he was. Seems like just a thing that he just was like, hey, I’ll come and do this and it’ll benefit your company.”
Whatever JBL’s motivation was, Sapp said the stunt absolutely worked for the promotions involved. They got people talking, JBL got to step back into the wrestling world, and nobody had to convince him to take a beating afterward.
“And it did. It got social media buzz for some of these places and it gave him the opportunity to get in there and do something. But he didn’t really want to do a match or anything like that.”
That explains why fans spent so long waiting for some giant reveal that never really materialized. When Ringside News covered JBL crashing TNA Turning Point and drilling Bryan Myers with another Clothesline From Hell, JBL’s earlier claim that there was an “endgame to all of this” had fans expecting those appearances to eventually connect into something much bigger.
His MLW involvement was already part of that bizarre run, with Ringside News documenting JBL bouncing between promotions while fans tried to figure out where he would show up next. The new explanation shows MLW actually did try to manufacture the payoff everyone was waiting for, but JBL apparently preferred the simpler formula: show up, crush somebody and leave them wondering what the hell just happened.
So there actually could have been a destination for all those random Clotheslines From Hell. A showdown with Kojima or a full-blown bitter-cowboy invasion angle was sitting there, but JBL never seemed interested enough in a major program to turn the chaos into the payoff promoters wanted.
Would you have rather seen JBL’s run culminate with Satoshi Kojima in a “Battle of the Lariats,” or would the Yellowstone-style invasion angle have been the better payoff? Leave your feedback in the comments and let us know what you think.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
