Vince McMahon posted a bust of himself to JBL after his birthday party, along with a set of glasses, and JBL kept the box.
JBL described the party and what followed on Something To Wrestle, having attended alongside Booker T. The bust was on display at the event, and the two of them were discussing it.
“I’m sitting there. I’m looking. I’m talking to Booker. Booker’s a good friend of mine. So I’m talking to Booker about the bust. I go, man, that thing’s awesome. And he said, yeah. I said, I may steal it. And Booker said, me too.”
“So we were making plans. I don’t know if we were actually going to do it or not, but we were talking about it.”
They did not need to.
“Then they told us that Vince was going to mail it to us. So Vince mailed us that, some really nice glasses with VKM on them, and some pictures and stuff. He sent us this whole care package.”
The packaging made an impression on him.
“The box was so nice. I saved the box. It’s right there, literally right there. It’s a black box with Vince’s name on it, and it had the bust in it and all this extra stuff in it. It’s really cool.”
“What a generous dude. What a thoughtful dude. To be able to do all this stuff and send all this stuff to people.”
His verdict on the party itself was short.
“That thing was, good Lord. That was first class. I love the fact you had to check your phone at the door. That was, I thought, the best part.”
McMahon turned 81 on August 24. He left WWE in January 2024.
JBL also described McMahon socially in terms not usually attached to him.
“Vince is one of the most fun guys in the world to party with. I mean, a blast.”
He said McMahon largely stopped appearing in public with the roster around the time JBL arrived in the company.
“Right around when I came in, that’s when he first started. He quit going out in public with the guys. He’d do it on his plane or he’d do it somewhere else, but he wouldn’t go out in public. He became too big of a celebrity to be seen out in public.”
“So that’s when he kind of quit. But I’ve been out with him a few times. Vince, he’s one of the most fun guys in the world to party with. He’s just a guy who happens to be worth a ton of money.”
He also told a story about McMahon and one of his own vehicles that ended with somebody being sent to stop him.
“He got one of his own trucks one time, and they told security, go stop him. He was doing donuts with one of his own trucks, and they were like, dude, he owns the truck. It’s his truck. What do you want to do? Told him to get out of his own truck.”
JBL worked for WWE as a wrestler from 1996 to 2009 and spent years afterwards on commentary. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2020 and now works commentary for AAA.
Booker T is also a WWE Hall of Famer, inducted in 2013 and again with Harlem Heat in 2019. He hosts The Hall of Fame podcast and runs Reality of Wrestling in Texas.
McMahon has kept a low public profile since leaving WWE. He remains the subject of ongoing legal proceedings, and TKO has continued to distance the company from him publicly.
