JBL as Main Eventer - Success or Failure?

[autisticgeordie]

Layfield, as a person, was a piece of shit and a scumbag bully, but the character of JBL, looking back in hindsight, was f***ing brilliant, his feud with Eddie is such an underrated feud and Eddie was the perfect person to debut the JBL character against. Also I like how he could be quite comical, like when he got hit with a tranqueliser dart and ended up fighting with an inflatable Godzilla and being this loud, obnoxious blowhard fat cat.

Honestly, Layfield is an example of how to make a star in a relatively short amount of time, it's how they should've done it with Jinder Mahal.

[autisticgeordie]

Jan 24, 2020 7:30:41 GMT -5 Ben Wyatt said:

A success. IMO, his reign has aged really well over the years. Dude was a great chickenshit heel champion who sold every challenger as a legit massive threat to his title.

Exactly, it didn't matter if it was Eddie Guerrero, Booker T, The Undertaker, Big Show or Cena; JBL always sold every challenger to his title like he was scared to death of them and scared to death of them, you could sense his desperation as the PPV got closer and closer and his panic increased; which just made him all that easier to hate because, for all the talk and bragging, JBL's character was nothing more than a bully who was scared shitless of facing someone that he knew he couldn't beat in a fair fight.

[Cela]

Jan 24, 2020 3:03:43 GMT -5 "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay said:

Jan 23, 2020 15:01:01 GMT -5 Cela said:

Yet another forced Midcard main eventer, that got the push of a lifetime that could get anyone over, and never had It.

People say this about a few guys but it really doesn't seem accurate. We even have another example in this very thread of Jinder.

If they kept the title on Jinder for a year, had him win in increasingly bizarre manners, and gave him the entire focus of the show. He would be looked back on nostalgically 10 years from now.

[koreycaskets]

Like the person who played the character JBL or not, the character was a great main event heel.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

Jan 24, 2020 13:51:11 GMT -5 Cela said:

Jan 24, 2020 3:03:43 GMT -5 "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay said:

People say this about a few guys but it really doesn't seem accurate. We even have another example in this very thread of Jinder.

If they kept the title on Jinder for a year, had him win in increasingly bizarre manners, and gave him the entire focus of the show. He would be looked back on nostalgically 10 years from now.

That's not getting them over though?

[Mozenrath]

Ratings went up and he did a lot to make John Cena as a main eventer.

Success. He turned malice against him as a real person, along with politics outside of wrestling, into heel heat that worked for the show. Cabinet sucked, though.

[YAKMAN is ICHIBAN]

Creatively a success, for sure.

I don't know about ratings, ticket sales, etc.

[Deleted]

Success obviously. JBL was great in that role.

[riseofsetian1981]

At first I hated it since I loved Eddie as the champion. Years later I actually see the creativity in the gimmick, the title run, and how he executed the traditional heel that generated legitimate heat. JBL is actually the last real heel champion we had. Pretty much a modern day version of what DiBiase was and he portrayed that role perfectly.

[Hit Girl]

Total failure.

[Instant Classic]

Success, even after he lost the title he was still a main eventer until 2008 or so.

[tekkenguy]

Definitely a success. His reign was one of the best heel runs of all time. He served as the perfect foil for Eddie, putting a rich conservative bigot vs. a hard-working Mexican-American hero. Also, despite the McMahon’s known conservatism it proved that the WWE was not afraid to portray the right-wingers as heels.

He was also a perfect foe to launch Cena to superstardom. What better guy for a lowbrow rapper to face than a refined, smug millionaire?

Unlike Jinder he actually made his reign work. Jinder was just a joke suggestion for champion by people fed up with the WWE establishment. Once he actually won the title, people were like “you’re right, this was a bad idea”.

[Jonathan Michaels]

JBL stands for Just Beat a Lizard.

Success

[SirLucas]

Let's not forget before JBL got the big push, he was making regular appearances on Fox News, and I believe he had written a book on investing. So there's no doubt Vince was looking to capitalize on the mainstream exposure he was receiving at the time.

[Some Guy]

Just from a retrospective thing, it works. As a challenger upper mid-card heel who could generate heat, it worked. But at the time, people are really looking through rosy glasses right now to what was primarily a wrestling show in Smackdown (the champs the brand split were Angle, Brock, and Eddie Guerrero minus one month of Big Show) to this drawn out as shit heel reign with largely terrible matches unless Eddie Guerrero was involved. That's kind of the problem with booking a brawler chickenshit heel, they have to win so their matches become slow prodding borefests.

Also Bobby Roode's TNA heel title reign was a far better example of a chickenshit heel reign that was still able to deliver good matches/finished off by creating a new star in an amazing match to close it off.

[Cela]

Jan 24, 2020 14:30:50 GMT -5 "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay said:

Jan 24, 2020 13:51:11 GMT -5 Cela said:

If they kept the title on Jinder for a year, had him win in increasingly bizarre manners, and gave him the entire focus of the show. He would be looked back on nostalgically 10 years from now.

That's not getting them over though?

If the main villain of the show remains the main villain for a year straight, they get over.

Look at The Authority. No one enjoyed The Authority, everyone was annoyed by The Authority. But they eventually were accepted as the villains they were presented as.