Triple H’s line on WWE Unreal that the challenge for Bron Breakker is “don’t become just the next Steiner” set off a debate about whether it was a shot at Rick and Scott Steiner. JBL does not read it that way at all.
Speaking on Something to Wrestle, he addressed the reaction directly.
“I don’t see it as a slight to Rick and Scott at all,” JBL said.
He then spent a while making the case for them.
“Rick and Scott were the best tag team in the world in the early ’90s, and nobody was close. Man, those guys were so freaking good. People don’t understand how great Rick and Scott were,” JBL said. “All this stuff that a lot of these guys are doing today came from Scott. Scott used to do all that crazy stuff because he was so freaking strong. He was also safe, by the way. Now these guys are inventing all this stuff. A lot of that started with Scott. Scott would just pick guys up and create things because he was so freaking strong.”
The point Triple H was making, in JBL’s view, has nothing to do with the quality of the name and everything to do with the weight of it.
“You don’t want to be the next anything. Nobody wants to be the next anything, and the next anything’s never as good,” JBL said. “You don’t want to be the next Hogan. You don’t want to be the next Stone Cold. We always talk about that, we need the next this. There’s never a next. Everybody that comes and makes it to the top is different from what preceded them.”
He said the two most cited counterexamples, Charlotte Flair and Cody Rhodes, actually prove how hard the path is.
“I think Charlotte Flair, that’s hard to be Ric Flair’s daughter. She’s done it. Cody Rhodes, that’s hard to be Dusty Rhodes’ kid. He’s done it, and he’s done a great job of it,” JBL said. “I think it’s an easier path to not have that last name of a legend like the Steiners, and then you don’t have to worry about overcoming it. You just create your own path.”
That, he said, is why the name change worked in Breakker’s favor without hiding anything.
“People know he’s a Steiner. They’re not hiding it, it just has a different name, and I don’t think that’s an issue,” JBL said. “I think what Triple H said is 100 percent correct. You want to have him forge his own path, and one of the ways to do it certainly is to change the name.”
JBL also noted WWE has taken the opposite approach before, with mixed results.
“I remember when Jimmy Snuka’s kid debuted, and Vince didn’t want us to mention it at all,” JBL said. “Later we tried, because he was trying to give him some type of boost.”
Breakker is the son of WWE Hall of Famer Rick Steiner and the nephew of Scott Steiner.
