JBL says the worst thing he ever did in wrestling was working in Japan as a fake Undertaker, and that he only found out that was the plan after he had already agreed to go.
The gimmick was Death Mask, and he worked it during a spell for WAR, the promotion Genichiro Tenryu founded in 1992 after leaving All Japan.
“The one gimmick I would have traded, which I’m the most embarrassed about, is Death Mask in Japan. They had me as a fake Undertaker. That was one of the most embarrassing things I ever did in my life.”
He went over believing he had signed for something else.
“They brought me in. I thought I had got this big new deal to go work for Tenryu, and they brought me in as a fake Undertaker, which I didn’t know they were doing. And I needed the job, and I did it.”
“Oh my God, I hated every second of that. I thought it was horrible, a horrible idea.”
The reason he stayed with it was a promise about what came next.
“They promised me that if I come over there and do that, then they would bring me back in the John Hawk character, which was my character at the time, the cowboy character. So that’s why I did it. But I agreed to come over there, and then all of a sudden they tell me I’m in this horrible ass gimmick.”
He has not softened on it.
“God, man, that was, I hated every second of that, and still do. I still hate everything about it. So I’d trade that for anything.”
He named the gimmick he would rather have had.
“The one thing I’ve always wanted to be a part of was the West Texas Rednecks. They’d sing Rap Is Crap with Windham and Duncum and all the guys and Curt. God, I’m like, that was the greatest gimmick ever. When I saw that, I thought, oh my God, I’d go to WCW right now to be the fifth West Texas Redneck.”
The West Texas Rednecks were Curt Hennig, Barry Windham, Bobby Duncum Jr., and Kendall Windham, formed in 1999 as a country act positioned against Master P and the No Limit Soldiers. Master P had been brought in on a reported million-dollar deal, and the angle was built to get his side over. The angle was designed to make the Rednecks the heels. Crowds cheered them instead, and Rap Is Crap became one of the more popular things on WCW television that year. Duncum died in 2000 and Hennig in 2003.
JBL worked in Japan during that period and has said he went over there dozens of times, sometimes for a month at a stretch. The Death Mask run came before the John Bradshaw Layfield character that made his name, and long before the cowboy gimmick he refers to had developed into the version WWE eventually used. The Undertaker character he was made to imitate was seven or eight years old at that point and had already been through several versions of its own.
He spent the early part of his WWE run in gimmicks that did not last, including the New Blackjacks with Barry Windham. The Acolytes, and then the APA with Ron Simmons, are what got him established.
The JBL character debuted in 204, ahe held the WWE Championship for 280 days over two years, the longest reign in SmackDown’s history. He retired in 2009 and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2020. He now works commentary for AAA.
