It Appears As Though JBL Bullied Fellow Commentator Mauro Ranallo Out Of The WWE
First things first, I know this isn’t breaking news. This story has been going around for weeks now, since before WrestleMania, and I haven’t touched it. For a while, there just wasn’t enough evidence for me to report it as anything but a WILD accusation. Oh yeah, the heel commentator who’s job is to be a mean guy on camera was too mean to Mauro! That’s why he left, right?!
Seemed crazy! But the more I look into it, the more that comes out, and the more my personal sources have reached out to me, the more I believe this theory to be true.
These rumors started making their way around the inner circles on Tuesday, March 14th, when Mauro Ranallo was absent from SmackDown Live due to “snow”. Another week went by without him, and this time, he was “sick”. On the third week, he was never even referenced, and hasn’t been since.
Dave Meltzer reported that he wasn’t at these shows because he was suffering from depression brought on by John Bradshaw Layfield. Like I said, I thought this was kind of preposterous. Mauro Ranallo was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder when he was 19 years old, and has spoken very openly about his mental illness, but it didn’t feel right to pinpoint all of the blame on one person with no proof. Especially if it was just for his on-air comments, taking jabs at Mauro’s Twitter and extensive knowledge of Japanese and Mexican wrestling. Meltzer also seemed to put a lot of the load on a comment JBL made regarding Mauro acknowledging his Wrestling Observer Newsletter Award for Best Announcer, which was a pretty tame shot.
Justin Roberts, a former WWE ring announcer, came forward with some stories of JBL being a horrible person, which is nothing new if you follow wrestling dirtsheets, but with Roberts, it was hard to tell how many of the stories were real. He generally wasn’t well liked backstage. Reddit user /u/littlebossman compiled some of of these stories:
-When they were in Japan on a tour, there was two tour buses – faces and heels. “Bradshaw had both buses pull over”. They wouldn’t move until Justin was moved from the face bus to the heel one. JBL and his cronies then bullied Justin for the entire journey. “I was very comfortable working the RAW tours. I was scared for my life to work SmackDown tours”
-“JBL would throw my bags down the street…he typically referred to me as dipshit and numbnuts despite my always trying to do a great job…every day I saw him, he asked me why I was still alive and told me to go kill myself”
-JBL was being interviewed by a high-schooler and, after the kid dropped his notes, Bradshaw asked the mother if “she had any children who weren’t mentally disabled”.
Roberts isn’t the only one who’s talked about what a shitty person Layfield is, however…
Billy Silverman, a former referee, did an interview in 2001 that is just now making it around the internet, too:
According to Silverman, Robinson is chief target of the “boys” and their “harmless ribs”, and Billy continues to go into detail about one rib in particular that disturbed him. While preparing in the arena hours before a show, some of the boys snuck up on Robinson, held him down, stripped him of all his clothing, bound him with tape and gagged his mouth. Robinson was then attached to a cart and wheeled into the middle of the arena and paraded around in front of the ring crew while everyone laughed heartily.
Silverman brings up Bradshaw next, and explains how Bradshaw threatened him with violence if he didn’t oblige to carrying large amounts of Bradshaw’s liquor across the Canadian border. Robinson suffered back injury from carrying all of Bradhsaw’s bottles and the boys forced him to serve them the alcohol as well when the plane landed. Robinson calls Bradshaw a self-appointed “chief of police” in the WWF, while I call Bradshaw a bully, extremely overrated, and a pretty fucked up human being. Robinson took this matter to a member of management who’s exact response was “Just do what Bradshaw tells you too”.
JBL’s comment on the overall situation seems to be limited to this tweet:
Jonathan Coachman of ESPN (formerly of WWE) is one of JBL’s best friends, and after he got into an argument with Meltzer on Twitter, he announced he would no longer have anything to do with ESPN’s WWE coverage. *hmm emoji*
This one from Coach has since been deleted:
“After serious sole searching have decided that I will no longer be doing Off the Top Rope or WWE related content. Will leave to the pros.”
So yeah, this whole situation fucking blows. If it turns out all of this is true, or even some of it, the WWE is going to have to fire Layfield immediately. The story is starting to break through to mainstream sources due to the call to action to get JBL fired, and it’ll be a PR disaster if it fully breaks through.
For Mauro, I wish him nothing but the best. I know a lot of people didn’t like him, but I’ve been a HUGE fan for years, have spoken with him about mental illness, and even got him to name Nikki Bella’s forearm the “Nikkisawa Forearm”. He’s a great dude, and I hope he can overcome whatever he’s going through.
As of right now it doesn’t look like he’ll finish out the remainder of his contract with WWE, so I’d say this is the end.