During a recent edition of his “Something To Wrestle With” podcast, JBL discussed the Ironman Match featuring Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart at WrestleMania 1996, Vince McMahon’s attitude toward talents, and other topics.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the Ironman Match between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart at WrestleMania in 1996: “You know, they’re getting away from Hogan and the Warrior. And you’ve got these two guys who are unbelievable wrestlers, going to do stuff that Hogan and the Warrior couldn’t do. Now that being said, was Hogan a great worker? Everybody in the world remembers when he slammed the Giant, so he’s a pretty damn good worker. I agree with you 100% about the Ironman match. I think they’re horrible. What do you do when you’re 35 minutes in? You got 25 minutes left before you have a winner? You know that. Thank God I was never in one. For one, I didn’t want to go 60 minutes by a clock. But I just think they’re terrible, and I completely agree with you.
“I would rather Shawn and Bret go an hour and 15 minutes unannounced, and all of a sudden just turn in an hour performance then go by an hour-dictated performance by an Ironman Match. I completely agree with you, I think they’re a horrible concept. That being said, Shawn and Bret are about the only ones, a couple of ones that I think could do it. I thought Sean and Bret were great. I watched the whole thing, it was my first Wrestlemania. I remember watching Shawn rappel from the ceiling, and I was so in awe of what he did. I literally thought, ‘You know, I should go back to Japan.’ I literally thought that because I thought I didn’t belong here. This is beyond me. It was incredible to watch, and then you watch the whole spectacle of the match. I thought what they did was fantastic. I thought the stipulation was horrible.”
On Vince McMahon never asking talent to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself: “100%, yeah. I saw the Gronk thing [fall from a platform at WrestleMania 36]. I was there. Not anybody there during COVID, Vince got up and fell off, and that was it. I remember one time — you know I was an agent for like about two hours. And I came in, I had Braun Strowman was going to choke slam a guy on his belly or something like that. Or, you know, backward choke slam. I thought it was a great spot. And all Vince asked me, because I went there and told myself, ‘Hey, we want to try this different.’ Vince, he goes, ‘Would you take it?’ I thought about it and I said, ‘Yeah, I would.’ He goes, ‘Okay, fine.’ And that was it. It was just a matter of making sure I wouldn’t ask somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do. So yeah, Vince always was like that.”
