During a recent appearance on the “Something To Wrestle” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer JBL discussed working with The Undertaker and the American Badass gimmick.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On working with The Undertaker: “I’ll tell you one thing I greatly appreciated and I loved about him, and it’s something I did pick up from him. But it wasn’t being in the ring with him, it was watching him in the ring. You watch him when he has an opponent that’s not very good, and he’ll work with the referee. He’ll work with the timekeeper. He’ll find a way to make the match good without having to work with whoever’s across from him. And I got that from him. I picked that up, and thank goodness when I was out there with him, he never had to work the referee. Or at least he did it to keep my self-confidence intact. But you watch him. He figures out ways to make things work.”
On The Undertaker’s American Badass gimmick: “I could not have loved it any more. You know, him and Godfather are bikers. I mean, they love riding bikes. You know, Mideon famously wrecked his bike on the day he was going to sell it. You talk about sacrificing Mideon, it was probably because Mideon wrecked his bike on the day he had it sold. [laughs] Mideon took it out for a little spin and wrecked his bike. And just, you gotta hear Mideon tell the stories, he was almost in tears because of what he did. But Taker was a biker. I mean, this is Undertaker. You know, he was good friends with Chuck Seto, the former president of Hell’s Angels. And you know, a lot of times we’d have the Angels, some of the boys come around. Chuck always came around, wonderful guy. And Taker knew all these guys. This was very normal to him.
“And also, you gotta remember during the time that we’re doing this, you had all kinds of crazy characters when I came in in ’95. And those characters all went away. Well, one of the craziest people who actually worked was The Undertaker. And now you’re getting to this reality-based thing, mainly because of Stone Cold and DX that we’re getting into. I think it was a natural progression. I think it’s also very good progression. I mean, the Kid Rock song had just come out at the same time. That American Badass was over, man. When he came out as American Badass, it was so different. But it was him also. He didn’t have to buy into it. This was him, and I thought it worked tremendously. And it also shows you how smart he is, having to go from one character to different iterations, to a completely different character, then you see him come back to that character later.”
