Did you like JBL WHILE he was WWE Champ?

[Aaron E. Dangerously]

I started watching full time almost immediately after Cena won the title from him, by coincidence. The mood around him at the time felt like annoyance, fed up with him winning so often through interference and heel tactics, the fact that he was a midcard suddenly promoted to champion over Eddie Guerrero, and the whole thing with his charisma-devoid Cabinet (Bashams and Orlando Jordan) and additional nobodies (Heidenreich, Mark Jindrak).

Being 15 at the time, I was so annoyed with him, and was a huge Cena mark. As time went on (and with a lot of influence from this very board, back when I had my original account), I came to hate Cena, and grew to love JBL. I appreciated his in-ring work, his promos, and his characters. Not to mention his color commentary work back when he and Maggle Cole were on Smackdown.

I know how many of you like JBL and enjoyed his reign, but was that always the case for you?

[slappy]

Yes. I was a huge fan.

[woowoowoox]

No but I was a kid and he was a heel and I thought wrestling was real, lol.

[Sparkybob]

When I was much younger, he worked me hard since I hated his guts. Looking back on it I love JBL and his title reign. Thought he was not great for business but that is another story for another time.

[Welfare Willis]

Nope, not at all. I wasn't really watching Smackdown during that period though.

I do enjoy him as a commentator now, however.

[mizerable]

I was only pissed when Angle didn't win the title at the Rumble, otherwise I enjoyed it.

[Orange]

Nope. I was a huge Cena mark, so JBL annoyed me to no end. I also hated when he trashed Cena's US title.

I've since grown to love it and him, but back then I hated everything about him.

[Kitty Shamrocks]

I hadn't watched wrestling in awhile and came back to see BRADSHAW as the champion.

BRADSHAW.

I hated it. I hated him so much.

Then, somewhere near the end of his run, I realized he had been one of the most effective heels I have ever seen.

[Emmet Russell]

it was definitely one of those 'I hate this at the time' runs mainly due to BRADSHAW being the person to defeat Eddie Guerrero and I had pure hatred for that. Looking back though it was a really well done run and Bradshaw put in a lot of hard work and effort to make it work.

[PKO]

No, I found him a tremendously dull wrestler. When he came back after his stint as a commentator and feuded with Jericho and HBK I still found him a tremendously dull wrestler.

I can appreciate his terrific mind for the business (his Facebook posts were enlightening) and I may go back and watch some of his stuff soon to see if my opinion has changed.

[blackmegaman]

Like Jesse Ventura I find him a much better commentator than wrestler.

[chazraps]

I didn't vote in the poll because I didn't enjoy him until No Mercy 2004 when they went full-Republican boogieman with him.

I thought the title reign was rushed, and from the win that June until October of that year, his matches/promos/storylines were lame and incredibly forced. They, they jumped on the sentiments that politically divided the American media at the time and ran with it, flushing out the character and making him much more entertaining.

It doesn't help that he was champ during the absolute least entertaining summer Smackdown ever had, but once the character was tweaked (which didn't happen until sadly halfway through his reign) I was on board.

[Starshine]

Yeah, towards the tail end of it.

[Djm Doesn't Find You Funny]

I have never liked him in any capacity.

[Paco]

I started liking JBL just as he was ready to lose the belt to Cena at Mania 21.
In fact, that's the first match where I cheered on JBL. Also, I was already getting sick of Cena's character after being a huge fan in 2003-2004. I just really wanted JBL to retain. After that, I always dug Jibbles

Another thing that made me dislike JBL's reign is not really his fault: Smackdown 2004 was almost unwatchable.