JBL has confirmed for the first time that the most famous line he ever delivered on WWE commentary, “That’s not Sting, that’s a picture of Sting,” came directly from Vince McMahon’s mouth into JBL’s earpiece in real time.
The reveal came in the latest episode of Something to Wrestle, where JBL reflected on his work calling Sting’s WWE matches and on the broader experience of being in commentary with McMahon as the producer.
“I never got to work with Sting much. Certainly, I never got to work with him in the ring, but I got to do commentary for him when he made his debut. When Vince fed me the line that people love to bring up, when he fed it to me, I thought that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever said, and I realized now how good it was. You know, it sometimes he feeds you stuff, and you don’t realize at the time it’s pretty good when he’s had a picture of head Sting back there, his thing wasn’t moving, and they said, that’s Sting, that’s a picture of Sting. I never said it. Vince fed me that line verbatim. And I said it, and I thought, Man, I don’t think I like that line at all. Sounds dumb. People have brought that up over the years.”
JBL acknowledged that the line is now considered one of the funnier broadcast lines from the Sting WWE era and gave full credit to McMahon.
“100% kudos to the chairman out there, because at the time, I didn’t think it was that great, and I realized now it’s a pretty freaking good line, but I got to call a lot of his matches, but never got to be in the ring with him.”
JBL then went deeper into the experience of doing commentary alongside McMahon and how the writer’s-room dynamic actually worked in his earpiece.
“Oh, when he told it to me, Conrad, it was kind of like, ah, geez, God. You know when somebody says something to you, even if it makes sense, if you’re going down a different line of thought, you think it doesn’t make sense at all because you’re going down this line here and it doesn’t fit your line of thought that you’re going on. It’s such a non sequitur. And so Vince fed me that line verbatim. ‘That’s not Sting. That’s a picture of Sting.'”
JBL also pushed back on the long-running narrative of McMahon as a yelling, abusive producer toward broadcasters. JBL specifically said the now-public stories of McMahon yelling instructions and abusing his commentators in the headset never happened in his case.
“Vince was so good that I would be one or two words right behind him, you know, I had a different relationship. You know, all these guys talk about Vince yelling at [them] and all that stuff we’ve talked about. That never happened to me. He was always great to work with. But I was one word behind him, and that was 100% Vince’s line that he said, ‘That’s not Sting. That’s a picture of Sting.'”
The Sting WWE run JBL was covering on commentary began at Survivor Series 2014, when Sting made his WWE debut after years as one of the company’s most pursued holdouts. JBL was Michael Cole and JBL on Raw and SmackDown commentary across that period, with Jerry Lawler rotating in.
If you use quotes from this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard and include a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
