JBL: It's A Welcome Relief To Not Be ‘Kayfabing’ Constantly

JBL had a very controversial wrestling career, with his overly brash persona and antics landing him in hot water with friends, fans, and co-workers alike.

But the former WWE Champion claims that a lot of it was done in the name of kayfabe, and as revealed to WrestleZone’s Bill Pritchard, it’s nice to not have to stay in character as much now he is retired from the ring:

“It’s a welcome relief to not have to be kayfabing all the time,” said JBL. “My character was such an over-the-top character that I’d tend to blend that character and inflate it a little bit with the real John Layfield just to try to not have too much disparity between the two. It’s now great to be able to say, ‘you know what, that’s the character, that’s one I played, it’s fictitious and here’s me’ and now I can say that, especially being out of the ring, not just with kayfabe kind of being dead but also being out of the ring for so long, it doesn’t really matter anymore. That’s why we enjoy talking about stories that are 20 years in the past, and now wrestlers can come on and say ‘here’s what was happening backstage, here’s what happened in the ring, here’s what we were thinking of the time’ and they would never have done that then and they probably wouldn’t and maybe even shouldn’t do that now.”