WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield has shot down long-standing rumours that Vince McMahon considered handing over Monday Night Raw to WCW after WWE bought the company in 2001.
Speaking on the Something to Wrestle podcast, JBL told host Conrad Thompson that while McMahon had floated the idea in passing, he never believed it was a serious option.
“I always knew Vince would change his mind,” he said. “I would have bet everything I had that Vince would have changed his mind, and I’m not sure Vince did anything more than give that a little bit of lip service. I don’t believe any of that. I believe Vince said it, and I heard him talk about it.”
JBL also discussed why he thinks the WCW invasion storyline failed. The invasion angle, which ran from March to November 2001, featured former WCW stars showing up on WWE programming but struggled to meet fan expectations.
“We had Booker, we had Dallas, and we had a few of the guys that were great hands, Sean O’Hara and Palumbo; those guys were terrific workers,” he said. “But we didn’t get the NWO, we didn’t get Bret, we didn’t get any of those guys, so I just don’t think it would ever work.”
JBL pointed out that top stars like Steve Austin weren’t involved in the early invasion angles, and the lack of WCW’s biggest names made it hard for the story to succeed.
“Look at the WCW invasion angle. Who was the lead against it? Me and Ron. We weren’t your main event guys either,” he said. “Because of that, you could look at it and say, ‘It’s not going to work.’”
Many of WCW’s biggest stars did not sign with WWE, choosing to sit out their Time Warner contracts instead.
Which Legendary Wrestling Match Type Did JBL Say Is “Terrible”?
JBL spoke very critically of the iconic wrestling match type, the Iron Man match. He said that he thinks the matches are “horrible”, and in particular, he spoke about the legendary WrestleMania 12 match between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart, stating that he would have preferred if the match went over an hour organically rather than being forced to by a time limit.
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