JBL says the promo that got him the WWE Championship was the one he cut in Chicago after being fired from CNBC, and that The Undertaker was standing next to Vince McMahon when the decision was made.
JBL appeared on Insight with Chris Van Vliet alongside Ron Simmons, his APA partner. He won the WWE Championship from Eddie Guerrero at The Great American Bash in June 2004, seven weeks after the Chicago show, and held it for 280 days.
He described the title win as something he had not expected to get.
“It was a dream come true. I’d always wanted to be the guy. I’d always dreamed of it, and I’d been the man in smaller territories and things like that. I just didn’t know if I’d ever get a chance, and fortunately Ron helped boost me into that position, and a lot of mentoring that Ron had obviously helped me as well.”
The CNBC job came first. JBL had been working as a financial commentator for the network and lost the position after performing a Nazi salute and goose-stepping during a match in Germany, which drew widespread criticism. Rather than apologize for it on television, he went the other way.
“Taker’s told the story in Chicago when I got fired from CNBC, and I cut the promo instead of going out there and begging for mercy and saying I’m sorry. I went the opposite way and said anybody who doubts me as a great American would be like calling Mother Teresa a whore.”
“It was about as strong as it could be. I don’t think you could say that now. You couldn’t say anything I said back then now.”
Mark Calaway, The Undertaker, has given his own account of what happened backstage while the promo was going out.
“Undertaker was standing back there with Vince, and Vince said, ‘ Am I going to put the title on him? Taker says, you think? And that was what did it, was that promo in Chicago. I knew that was sink-or-swim night. And then I got the right guy with Eddie Guerrero.”
JBL said he was receiving death threats afterward and working with extra security.
“I go in the ring one night, and a fan jumped the rail and tried to get to me, and Eddie goes after me.”
They were in San Bernardino at the time, and JBL’s objection concerned the booking.
“I said, I don’t think the fans that are 99 percent Hispanic understand the Hispanic superstar going after and beating up the fan as a babyface. I said, would you please let me do my job as a heel?”
He then handled the fan himself, and followed it with a challenge to the rest of the arena.
“I’ve got the microphone, and I said, listen, ain’t no security out here. If any of you may seem to want to jump that rail, I’ll beat everybody in this building if it takes five minutes.”
Guerrero and referee Earl Hebner reacted differently.
“Eddie’s sitting there going, good heat, ese, good heat, ese. And little Earl looks at me and goes, we’re the only white guys in here. Just stop.”
JBL and Guerrero worked together for most of 2004, including a Texas Bullrope match at The Great American Bash and a cage match at SummerSlam. He credits Guerrero for a substantial amount of the material that made the character work, saying Guerrero would ring him at two in the morning with lines and came up with the idea of throwing a man back across the border.
JBL held the WWE Championship until WrestleMania 21 in April 2005, when John Cena beat him for it. The reign remains the longest in SmackDown’s history.
He and Simmons were a tag team as the Acolytes, and then as the APA, from 1998, and both are WWE Hall of Famers. Simmons was inducted in 2012 and JBL in 2020.
