WWE Hall of Famer JBL appeared on Something To Wrestle With, where he discussed several topics, including the John Cena heel promos and how he thinks Cena has been waiting to turn heel for years.
JBL said, “As always, he’s big match John. 100%, it lived up to the hype. I think he’s been waiting to do this for years. I think he had a lot of fun out there, it looked like he was really enjoying himself. He’s so good at what he does. I saw a thing that RVD talked about when he was a heel, talking about John Cena was a heel at ECW, when they wrestled each other. When John showed the cash in ahead of time, and John was a heel, about how good he was. Cena is a brilliant — and I using that word carefully — brilliant human being. And he did a fantastic job, and I think he’s gonna do great things all the way leading up to WrestleMania and beyond, however far they go. I have no idea what they’re doing. I think it’s absolutely fantastic. But it’s something that I told everybody 20 years ago about John — and Rey Mysterio being a deadbeat dad, that I was right.”
On whether it would have been more memorable in the United States:
“100%, yeah. Yeah, of course. I mean, you’re in a place that people just want to see celebrities. They don’t see wrestling come through there but once a year at the most. And so you want to — you’d prefer that to be somewhere in a wrestling hotbed like Madison Square Garden, somewhere in the south. Atlanta, Chicago, LA; you’d prefer that to be somewhere that has a regular wrestling market. And I think the reaction would have been a lot better. But you do what you have. You play the hand that’s dealt. And I think — you know, John I guess is overseas doing a movie or something. I think that may have been one of the easy reasons that he was able to come in there easier. But yeah, 100% it would have been a lot better the crowd reaction in the States.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
