Justin Roberts’ Book Reveals Lots of Bullying by JBL and Others

Former WWE ring announcer Justin Roberts released a new autobiography on April 1 called Best Seat in the House: Your Backstage Pass through My WWE Journey.

In the book, he reveals that he was relentlessly and sometimes viciously bullied during his time in WWE mainly by JBL, but also by Triple H, Chris Benoit and Jamie Noble. With the whole Mauro Ranallo situation, it sheds some light on just how big of a giant dickhead JBL could be.

According to Dave Meltzer, during WrestleMania weekend, several people had a story about a JBL bullying situation. However, the feeling was that it was somewhat encouraged “from above” (likely Vince McMahon) because it would “weed out those who couldn’t take it.”According to Meltzer, there were a lot of people who said that working for WWE was unlike working for any other company (in a negative way) with regards to the backstage bullying.

This was also mostly about 10-15+ years ago, so the culture behind the bullying is now supposedly a lot different in WWE. But with the Mauro Ranallo situation, it obviously makes you wonder, and the past stories make it very hard to give JBL the benefit of the doubt.

Over on Reddit, the user littlebossman made a post summarizing some of the bullying that Justin Roberts talks about in his book.

Firstly, the book is a terrific read. Obviously Justin has written it, so it’s his point of view, but he comes across as a nice guy who tried as hard as he possibly could to make it into the industry he loved.

After reading, I had a lot more knowledge – and therefore respect – for what announcers do and the stress they are under.

His book is available here in the US, or the UK, or Canada, etc…

But I was genuinely shocked at the lengths to which some of the wrestlers went to torture him.

For instance:

– Someone from Smackdown stole Justin’s passport from his bag on the final night of a tour to the UK. It was never returned. He had to go to the US embassy in London to get it reissued. “Stealing a passport out of someone’s bag is a pretty evil rib and not giving it back means it’s no longer a rib”.

– 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”.

– HHH had a thing about trying to pull down Justin’s pants

– Jaime Noble and Chris Benoit once tackled Justin down to the ground in the airport and put him in a double crossface. He tapped instantly but they refused to release him. He could barely walk for days afterwards.

There’s more – plenty more, especially about JBL – but I don’t want to spoil his whole book.

I’d really recommend the book…but, man, the WWE sounds like it was (is?) a hard place to work. As for JBL…