4) JBL On Vince Messing With Him The First Time That They Met:
JBL has gone on to have a lot of success in WWE working for Vince McMahon. He is a former World Champion and was also a part of the legendary tag team: The APA.
JBL told the story about first meeting Vince McMahon. Vince decided to mess with him, saying that he was going to give him a ballerina gimmick:
“I had to go up to Stamford to meet Vince for the first time. I walked in the room and it was JJ Dillon, [Human Resources executive] Lisa Wolfe and Vince. He sat me down, and with a complete straight face he said, ‘We’re going to make you a bad guy ballerina.’ I’d always been a cowboy and I’d already told WCW I wasn’t coming. I looked at him and thought, ‘Oh god, I’ve made the worst decision of my life.’ I said to him, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, it’ll be great. You’re going to be a ballerina that’s a real bad guy.’ Then he started laughing and said, ‘No, I like the cowboy. We’ll do that. That sounds good.’
He continued:
“He threw this contract out there for virtually no guaranteed money and said to me, ‘That contract’s not worth the paper it’s written on. All I can guarantee you is the handshake behind it.’ And that’s all I needed. I could live with that.
5) Shinsuke Nakamura On Vince Watching His First Match
Shinsuke Nakamura first met Vince briefly when he signed his contract at WWE Headquarters.
On an episode of Talk is Jericho, he shared his and Vince’s first real interaction, after his debut match against Sami Zayn:
“Ah, so when contracted with WWE at the headquarters in Connecticut, I met him. I was surprised, after my debut with Sami Zayn at TakeOver: Dallas, after the match I just came back from the ramp, then, first guy I shake hands [with] was Vince. ‘Oh, oh, you watched my match?'”
Looks like Vince was a fan from day one.
6) Luke Harper On His First Real Interaction Backstage With Vince
Luke Harper shared the story of his first real interaction with Vince McMahon on Talk Is Jericho. This came during the Wyatt Family and the Usos feud from early in their run.
Here is what Harper said:
“My first real one was, we started doing the Uso feud like maybe a year into our thing. And I don’t know if it was the two out of three falls match or the one before at the Money In The Bank [pay-per-view], where we killed it and we came to the back and he stood up and he hugged each one of us and he goes, ‘you go to that locker room and you tell these motherf–kers to follow that!'”
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