A group of former WWE talent hit free agency this week as their 90-day non-competes lapsed, and the immediate question around every name is where they sign next. JBL thinks that is the wrong question.
Speaking on Something to Wrestle, he ran through the list, which includes Kairi Sane, Aleister Black, Nikki Cross, Dexter Lumis, Joe Gacy, Santos Escobar, the Motor City Machine Guns and the rest of the Wyatt Sicks, and said he knows and likes most of them.
“I’ve got one of my hats up here from Dexter Lumis. He chopped it in half with an axe,” JBL said. “I like Dexter. Dexter is a good guy. All these people are good guys.”
Asked what he would do in their position, JBL drew a line between two kinds of wrestlers.
“Some guys want to be underneath the tent and be protected and be adopted essentially, and you’ll find out pretty quick which ones are like that. They want to have a contract,” JBL said. “Some guys are like, you know what, screw you, I’m going to make a name for myself and you’re going to pay me to go somewhere. That’s what I would do, at least would try to do.”
His prescription is to go everywhere before going anywhere.
“I think they should go out and start working as many different places as they can. Go to Japan. Go to Mexico. Go to Europe. Work all these independents. Try to create a name for yourself,” JBL said. “Create something different. Some new iteration of you, whatever that is. Go out there and draw some money, create a name for yourself, and then all of a sudden there’s demand for you.”
He pointed to two obvious models.
“Everybody uses Cody Rhodes as the example, but that’s obviously a terrific example. So was Brock. You leave and turn down guaranteed money,” JBL said, noting the difference that this group was cut rather than leaving by choice. “Same thing works. Don’t try to go right away somewhere else. Create a name for yourself, and then you can start putting out feelers to see where you want to go.”
The math, as he sees it, favors anyone who can actually draw.
“There are very few top guys in the world today or at any time that can draw money, and if you can go out there and draw money, you are one of one in a lot of places, and you’re going to be picked up because that’s rare,” JBL said. “And they need new talent. You look at WWE, they’ve got so much content they’ve got to put in. If you go out there and create a name for yourself, they’re going to come calling you.”
Asked how someone knows when it is time to give up on wrestling entirely, JBL pushed hard in the other direction, reaching back to his own start. He wrestled for $100 a night in Abilene, Texas, and spent two years in Germany living in a trailer without air conditioning.
“I lived in a 16 foot by six foot trailer, pretty small, without air conditioning. We had a little heater, but I’d still get ice on the inside of the walls during the cold northern German winter, and I wrestled every single night, double shots on the weekend,” JBL said. “It was a tough lifestyle. A lot of people would not want to do that, and I did that for two years because I knew where I wanted to go.”
His message to anyone weighing whether to keep going was to keep going.
“If this is your dream, it’s worth following, because I promise you, if you take off now and you decide 10 or 15 years from now that you’d like to give that a try again, you won’t be able to,” JBL said. “If it really is your dream, find out. Go all in. Put all your chips on the table and see if you can make it. And if you can’t, so what? You tried. You will regret it the rest of your life if you walk away now when you still have the opportunity to make it.”
