Finally another WWE commentator has come to the defense of his bullied co-worker. WWE Hall-of-Famer, and RAW commentator for the next six weeks, Booker T took to his Heated Conversations radio show to address Smackdown Live commentator Mauro Ranallo allegedly leaving the WWE due to bullying by fellow commentator John Bradshaw Layfield.
In line with WWE’s Be A Star anti-bullying program, Booker T has had enough of the bullying. Not the bullying of exiled commentator, Ranallo, mind you, but of his own WWE co-worker, JBL … by the internet.
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Booker T brought up the topic on his show:
“Mauro Ranallo, absent, what three weeks before Wrestlemania and then missed Wrestlemania due to certain reasons and whatnot, but right now on social media, the backlash toward a friend of mine, a colleague, JBL, John Bradshaw Layfield, a guy that I have been knowing for more than 25 years,” Booker T said. “Man, it’s crazy. I don’t know if you saw Smackdown last week. The chants were ‘Fire JBL.’ That right there is a flash mob takeover. The fans are sometimes getting into the business side because of social media and everybody knows everything.”
As with other former pro-wrestlers, Booker T cited how “different” the wrestlign business is as validation for whatever transcribed between JBL and Ranallo.
“A lot of people really truly like Ranallo and what he does as a journalist, what he does as a commentator for New Japan, Showtime Boxing, Strikeforce,” Booker T continued. “He’s done it all. This guy’s been around for a long time, and like I said a lot of people love him. But the business, the wrestling business, is different from any other entity that you’re gonna encounter on this Earth. I can actually truly say that because I’ve been in it for 26 years and I’ve figured out how to make it pretty much because I lived before I came to professional wrestling. This was relatively easy compared to my past life.
Booker T attributed JBL’s behavior toward Ranallo to JBL playing a “heel” character on television.
“I think with Mauro, like I said, again, I like Mauro even though he blocked me, unfollowed me on Twitter,” he said. “I didn’t do anything. We talk boxing all the time. But Mauro obviously had a problem with JBL and the way that he did their work. Now JBL was called a heel commentator, and that’s just something that we do. That’s something that’s been done since the beginning of time, and it’s gonna go on throughout the history of professional wrestling. One guy’s gonna be for the good guy and one guy’s gonna be for the bad guy. It’s just part of the game.”
According to Booker T, bullying isn’t a term that should be applied to anything past high school.
“We’ve got guys coming out right now talking JBL and JBL bullying,” Booker T explained. “You know, this is the way I look at this right here. I’m gonna be straight up as far as this bullying term. Let’s take that bullying term and put it back in pre school, in our junior high schools, in our high schools. When you get out of high school, I think the bullying rule stops. I think the bullying rule pretty much goes away when you’re a grown man and you’re able to take up for yourself and throw hands, go and talk to someone and say, hey, I don’t feel like I’m being treated right with this commentator here. Maybe you need to move me somewhere else or there might be problems or ramifications. But I don’t think the bullying rule should fall under grown men having an issue with each other. I don’t know. You tell me.”
A fan who was carrying a “JBL bullied me” sign was ejected from Smackdown Live last week in Boston. You can see how the fans and WWE respond to the situation tomorrow night on USA Network live at 8am ET.
Ranallo returned to commentating this past weekend, as he called the Rizin FF 5: Sakura MMA event in Yokohama, Japan. During the bout, Mauro took a veiled shot at WWE during as Jazzy Gabert made her way to the cage.
“Professional wrestler – and boy does it feel good to be able to use that term again – turned mixed martial artist, the Alpha Female Jazzy Gabert!”
Professional wrestler is, of course, on the WWE’s list of banned terms.
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