JBL says Neville’s social media numbers stood apart from the rest of the WWE roster from the moment he arrived.
Speaking on Something To Wrestle with Conrad Thompson, the WWE Hall of Famer, who sat in WWE’s creative and production meetings during his years as a commentator, said the company had just started receiving social media impression reports when Neville came up from NXT.
“They talked about how much impressions he was getting. He was getting double the impressions of everybody else when he came in, because when social media first came in, we started getting the social media reports,” JBL said. “Neville always got twice as much as everybody else, which was impressive. Neville was a world-class talent, and a good guy.”
JBL said Vince McMahon saw Neville as a superhero character, but the role McMahon had in mind was already filled.
“Vince loved Mighty Mouse, and he wanted Neville to be Mighty Mouse, but he already had one in Rey Mysterio,” JBL said. “One thing with the themes for Rey was it was based upon what Vince thought Mighty Mouse would have. Vince loved that character, and I remember several times in the meetings wanting to position Neville more as Mighty Mouse, which obviously he’s perfect for that.”
Neville, whose real name was Benjamin Satterley and who wrestled in AEW as PAC, died on September 27 at the age of 40, one day after facing Andrade at AEW All Out in Chicago. He signed with WWE in 2012 and held the NXT Championship and the WWE Cruiserweight Championship before leaving the company in 2018 after sitting out for several months.
His top-rope offense set him apart: Thompson noted that when WWE’s video game partners used stand-in performers for motion capture, Neville’s Black Arrow (Red Arrow in WWE) finisher could not be replicated by anyone else, so he had to be brought in to perform it himself. AEW held a tribute edition of Dynamite in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
JBL also described what a tribute show is like for the wrestlers on it. He said WWE has a template for them because the company has run so many.
“The show was pretty much cookie cutter. You just kind of put babyfaces over. You don’t advance storylines, things like that. Unfortunately, you’ve got a template for it because we’ve had so many deaths,” JBL said. “You do these tribute shows, and you really don’t want to be there. You want to do something good for these guys because you love them. They’re your friend, and it means something for their legacy, for their family. That’s why you do it. But you also just kind of want to go home.”
He recalled the SmackDown tribute to Eddie Guerrero, taped November 13, 2005, and aired five days later, when he was booked against Chavo Guerrero. JBL said there was talk of him winning the match and he refused.
“At first they had the match, and there was a talk of me going over. Not a chance in the world I’m going over. Not one in a million,” JBL said. “I said, I want to work with Chavo, and I want him to beat me with a frog splash, and that’s what we did. I was glad that I got to work with Chavo, and I was glad Chavo made it through.”
JBL said Corey Graves paid tribute to Neville on the Worlds Collide broadcast WWE produced with AAA, which JBL also called, and that he added his own remarks. “Corey did a really wonderful job,” he said. “I thought it was very appropriate that Corey did that.”
Thompson recommended Neville’s match with Sami Zayn from NXT TakeOver: R Evolution in December 2014, in which Zayn won the NXT Championship, as the match to watch to remember him.
The full episode is available below.
