JBL thinks Unreal is very good television and thinks WWE should not be making it, which puts him half a step away from AJ Styles rather than alongside him.
Styles said on the debut episode of his own podcast that he does not like the show because the audience has not earned the right to see what is behind it. Something To Wrestle played the clip and asked JBL for his view.
“So the show apparently is really good from an entertainment perspective. I mean, really good. So as far as that, look, they’ve hit a home run. As far as the content, I like AJ, and I don’t want to disagree with AJ, but I think I disagree with the fans deserve it or not. I don’t think fans should get it, and the reason is because I think it spoils things and it spoils your stars.”
The argument he makes is about money rather than merit.
“Conrad, I love baseball. I want to go see Barry Bonds back when he was in his prime because I can’t hit 70 home runs. I couldn’t hit seven. I couldn’t hit point seven. I want to see guys do stuff that I can’t do. I want to see Aaron Judge hit a ball 500 feet. I want to see Skenes throw a 100 mile an hour fastball. I can’t do that.”
“And in wrestling, if you start pulling the curtain back and everybody’s oh, they’re just one of us. One of us don’t draw money. Brock Lesnar draws money. AJ Styles draws money. I think when you’re doing this, it hurts the business. You want guys to be stars. You don’t want guys to realise, hey, the whole thing is manipulated.”
He was careful not to sound like a man arguing with the present day for its own sake.
“Look, we know what’s work, and I don’t want to be one of these old guys who’s against everything. So I’ve reserved judgement for it because something’s working. I was just in Minneapolis. They’re putting what, 40,000 people in back-to-back nights. That was unheard of during my day to do stuff like that. So they’re doing something right.”
“But I disagree with the Unreal. I don’t think the content out there is something that should be out there just because it’s good content as far as entertainment.”
His example was a magic act.
“I don’t want to know that the dragon on Game of Thrones is CGI. I know it is. I know it’s not real. I don’t want to know how it works. I don’t want to know how the elephant appears. When Siegfried and Roy were doing their stuff in Vegas, I went to see their show a couple of times. I asked our guy Magic, he used to work behind the scenes in WWE because he was part of that fraternity with Copperfield and all those guys. I said, how did they do the elephant? He goes, two elephants. I go, ah, s***. It just ruined it.”
Unreal launched its third season recently on Netflix. It has drawn comment from most of the industry this month, with Kevin Nash calling it by far his favourite thing WWE produces and Chelsea Green crediting a clip from the first season with turning the audience behind her.
