Baron Corbin had a variety of personas while in WWE, but his career ended recently when the company chose not to renew his contract.
One of those partnerships occurred in late 2022, when he was assigned to John Bradshaw Layfield (JBL) as his manager. However, Corbin rapidly went on a losing skid before JBL parted ways with him. Corbin had gotten over as Sad Corbin before transitioning into the Happy Corbin gimmick.
WWE abandoned the pairing in February 2023, claiming that it was not working. To get out of the storyline, WWE posted a video of JBL saying he didn’t want to be affiliated with Corbin since he was making him seem bad by losing so many matches.
“I can’t put my finger on why it struggled,” Corbin said to the TakeDown. “I think the people, and John and myself, wanted more out of it. I wanted [JBL] to be able to decapitate a few people, and it’s a process of getting him back in the ring and getting him doing that. He just became like a mouthpiece for me in the introduction thing, where he would get the crowd all riled up for me. But I think we all just wanted a little bit more from that, and it just didn’t click. I’ll take the fall for it. I’m happy to do that because JBL is one of the greatest of all time, and sometimes things just don’t click. It is what it is.”
Corbin was one of those persons for whom Vince McMahon always made time. That was not the case for Triple H, who had been in NXT before returning to the main roster previous to his departure.
