WWE Unreal has been a hit for the company, drawing awards attention and a third season on Netflix. JBL will not argue with the results. He just does not want any part of the idea behind it.
Speaking on Something to Wrestle, JBL said he has not watched the new season and was upfront about his bias.
“I’m basically against Unreal. I’m an old school guy, but I’m not so set against it that I think they shouldn’t do it,” JBL said. “They’re doing something right, and so I’m not going to be the old guy who shakes his fist at the clouds and yells, get off my lawn, kids. They’re selling out football stadiums back-to-back nights. I think it’s too inside, but they’re doing something right.”
His objection is not limited to wrestling. He said he does not want the curtain pulled back on anything he watches.
“I don’t want to see the insides to Game of Thrones or anything else. How do the dragons work? How do they show the guy getting his head cut off? I don’t care. I just want to be entertained,” JBL said. “I don’t care who Jon Snow really is. I couldn’t care less about his background or where he came from. I just want to watch him on the north wall defending stuff. I want to get lost in that.”
The bigger risk, in his view, is that the show erodes the thing fans buy tickets for.
“I don’t want to be relatable when I’m a character. I don’t want to be relatable at all,” JBL said. “I went down to Nashville Stadium and I’m watching Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman bat, and I’m just like, oh my God, this is unbelievable. Mookie Betts is not relatable to me. That’s why I pay to see him, because I can’t do what he does.”
He extended the point to wrestling directly.
“If you just make it, oh, he’s just one of us, I think that’s death,” JBL said. “Do I want a character that I know through and through? No, because I’m not going to watch it. I don’t pay money to see somebody like me. I pay money to see somebody hit a 450-foot home run because I can’t do that.”
JBL said the same instinct is why certain performers stood out to him from the announce desk.
“When I used to watch Brock Lesnar, he is a freak, and there’s nobody like Brock. I would watch Brock walking into an arena when I was doing commentary, and everything would change because he’s so different and so imposing as a human being,” JBL said. “I think you lose that sometimes when guys get in the business and they don’t look that much different from the fans.”
He suspects the pressure to build a personal following is part of what is driving it.
“Guys today want to build a platform so badly that I think sometimes they give too much, and when they give too much, I think fans feel like they know you,” JBL said. “When fans feel like they know you, they’re not going to pay to see somebody they know. I’m not going to pay to see my neighbor.”
He did leave room for the other side of the argument.
“Now, can you create bigger stars out of this? Yeah, possibly. That could be the upside,” JBL said. “I think a lot of this can still be worked, and it probably is.”
WWE Unreal premiered its third season on July 21, with the first season earning an Emmy nomination.
