WWE Hall of Famer JBL appeared on Something To Wrestle With, where he discussed several topics, including his Death Mask gimmick in the WAR promotion.
JBL said, “I got the opportunity to go to WAR, and it was pretty cool. Dick Murdoch was very excited for me to go to Japan. You know, Dick would never say anything. Dick and I were tag team partners. The night before I went, I was in — I think Abilene. I think it’s the night before, a few days before I went. A guy threw me a hip toss and threw me right on my head, and Dick thought I got hurt. Dick piled in and beat that guy half to death. And that’s the first time I thought, ‘Hey, Dick actually likes me.’ So, people were very excited for me to go. And I was thrilled. You know, I knew this was a step up. This was closer to getting to work for either Inoki or Baba. I wanted to go to Baba because of Stan (Hansen), but I didn’t mind going to Inoki either. You know, I wanted to go work for a big company. My goal in my career was to make it in WWE for two or three years and then go to Japan and finish like Stan and Doc and those guys did. That’s what I thought would happen, because heels didn’t hang around that long back then in WWE. So when I got the gig, I was very excited. Then they tell me about this s**t gimmick they’re putting me in. And I said, ‘Guys, this is a rip off of The Undertaker.’ They go, ‘No, no, no, it’s different. It’s a cowboy.’ And I go, ‘Guys, this is horrible. I do not want to do this.’ And they go, ‘Well, we can’t bring you in straight away from NOW to WAR with the same gimmick because we don’t do that in Japan.’ ‘Well, guys–‘ I did not want to do it. I hated it, but Tenryu promised me himself that if I did it, they would take me out of it after a tour or two, and I needed the job. I hated it at the time. I hate it now. I hated everything about it. Now I say I hate everything about the gimmick. I loved the work. I loved working with Tenryu. I loved being over there with Kim Duk and all the guys. And that was wonderful. It was my first big step up in Japan, first big step up in competition. The gimmick was just absolutely horrendous. So, I absolutely hated it.”
On The Missing Link wrestler:
“Link was awesome. You know, Link was the nicest guy. A little bit crazy, you know, he got hit in the head with a million freaking chairs. But Link was just the nicest guy, man. He got that yellow chair every single night on the head. I mean, just crushed. You talk about a tough guy. But Link was a super nice guy. I tried to get him a job with Crockett, and apparently there was some heat there. And Crockett just looked at me when I was mentioning his name. So, I’m not sure what the heat was, but it was — there was something there. I’m not sure what it was. But Dewey was a really nice guy. You know, when he was younger, he was a really good-looking guy because you see him older -— which he looked that way on purpose, plus he had a million scars from getting hit over the head with so many chairs. But Dewey was a really good-looking young guy.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
