In an interview with Talk is Jericho, The Blue Meanie spoke about why he had heat with JBL and how they eventually worked things out. Here are highlights:
On being asked to lose weight by WWE during his first stint with them: “I had lost 160 pounds. WWE asked me to lose 160 pounds and then they still fired me. Yeah, they teased my release the first time. Kevin Kelly asked me to come on [WWE] Byte This!, their cyber show at the time, and he was like, ‘yeah,’ during the course of the interview, ‘I’m sorry to hear you were let go, but you’ll lose the weight next time, right?’ I was like, ‘oh, so this is all about getting me to lose weight.’ So [Jim Ross] called me and he goes, ‘there has been a reprieve from the warden. He’s going to keep you around.’ And I was like, ‘alright.’ I started losing the weight. I started going to Headbanger Mosh’s brother, who was a nutritionist over here in [New] Jersey. I dropped like 160 pounds within a good seven months.”
On his heat with JBL: “I did an interview when I left WWE. I said, ‘I had a great time in WWE. I saw the world. I got paid to see the world on Vince McMahon’s dime.’ I thanked WWE. I was like, ‘the only thing is, JBL was kind of an asshole.’” The Blue Meanie added, “during my whole tenure there [in WWE] from ’98 to 2000, it was like, I don’t want to say, like, hazing, but bullying. Whether it would be shots in a match or we’d be on a plane and you know he’s telling a story about some fat f–k and you know he’s referencing you.”
On their altercation at ECW One Night Stand: “I feel this punch right on my scar [a recent injury from wrestling] and I go, ‘what the hell?’ I turned around and there’s JBL. He starts throwing shots. He does the hockey thing, he pulls my shirt over my face [and] starts throwing live rounds. He [has] got a fistful of rings, so I was like, ‘I ain’t going to take this!’, so I snatched a headlock as much as I could on a 6’6″ man and I start throwing punches back. We kind of get pulled apart.” The Blue Meanie continued, “I go to the back and Johnny Ace meets me at the curtain and he goes, ‘what the hell was that?’ I was like, ‘what? JBL shot on me!’ No, no, he was like, ‘who told you [that] you could blade?’ I was like, ‘I didn’t!’ He was like, ‘what?’ I gave him the elevator pitch of the heat that we had. I was like, ‘hey, this, this, this’ and he was like, ‘that’s unacceptable. We don’t do that here. Blah, blah, blah.’ And I walked further into the ‘Gorilla’ position, and there’s JBL. And [he said] ‘you were talking about me on the internet.’ I was like, ‘crap, dude, was I wrong? You’re having a hard time proving me wrong!’ So long story short, WWE did the right thing. They stitched me up. They doubled my pay for that night.”
On working things out with JBL: “From that ugly incident to now, we’re Twitter buddies. Yeah, you can make friendship with somebody once you make money with them. The coup de grâce was this last year, he tried to get me in the Royal Rumble since it was in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania]. He lobbied because I had just done ECW Unreleased Volume 3 for WWE [and] what better way to announce the DVD than an ECW Original in Philadelphia coming to the ring.” The Blue Meanie added, “it came down to that Friday before and they picked Bubba [Dudley]. I love Bubba and I marked out seeing Bubba come out too!”
