Beginning with an unannounced appearance for AAA last August, WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield kicked off a mysterious angle that led to him showing up in several U.S.-based promotions over the next few months. Three of those appearances were at TNA events, and around the company’s World title scene.
But the Wrestling God hasn’t been back to TNA since a pair of January appearances, and on the latest Something To Wrestle podcast, JBL explained what happened to the storyline while revealing
he was originally supposed to be at Sunday’s Slammiversary PPV as part of it:
“Somebody sent me a note on social media and they said, ‘I hope they finish this storyline with so and so, unlike what they did with JBL.’ I want to tell people that night at the show [Slammiversary] I was supposed to be there initially and I was originally supposed to have —really a part that people wouldn’t have believed how big it was. That did not work out. The reason that got ended in TNA, it wasn’t because of me... Maybe it was, maybe it was because I’m not any good, but it was a decision made by someone that was no longer there.
“I’ll tell the basic story. I love Tommy [Dreamer, who is an agent/producer for TNA and a leader of the creative team]. Tommy was not the one who made the decision.
“I was supposed to have a real escalation of what we were doing in TNA. We had the whole thing planned out — I don’t want to take any fun away from what these guys are doing now because it’s not about me. Those guys did a great job last night. Very happy for all of them. [Mike] Santana, Trick Williams, the Hardys, these guys are rockstars and I think they’re going to do incredibly well. I really loved being part of it, and I was supposed to be a part of it going forward. All of a sudden, I agreed to what I was going to do, and there was a huge escalation that was happening — a ll that stuff was going somewhere.
“I told everybody it was and it was, it was going somewhere and I thought it was. I was very, very excited about it. I was training for it, I got in really good shape for it. I was ready to go and then they called me one day and said, ‘Hey, we’re changing our mind.’ And that’s their prerogative… It was not Tommy and Carlos [Silva, TNA’s president]. Those guys are fantastic... the person that said it is no longer there and what they changed to it never happened… I never got brought back into it after that. There is a reason it all kind of got put on, not on the backburner, taken off the burner completely.”
Layfield’s podcast co-host Conrad Thompson shared some negative online reviews of Slammiversary’s ending, and wondered if the scrapped angle wouldn’t have gone over better. JBL replied:
“I hope it would have been because it involved me. I would have been there throughout the rest of the year. It would have done something that I thought would’ve left the business and left things on people that I thought would have drawn money and done a good job for the company. I would have been there throughout the rest of the year. I’m not going to leave without putting somebody over and make somebody. Mike Santana was probably the guy. I don’t know that for sure. I think he’s the guy. It’s just a matter of when he becomes the guy.”
We’ll see if Santana becomes the guy without JBL, and if any other promotion continues on with Layfield’s storyline (AAA seems unlikely to given recent developments) now that TNA’s moved on from their piece of it.
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