WWE Hall of Famer JohnBradshaw Layfield was one of WWE's top heels in the mid-2000s when he started to portray an egotistical, wealthy businessman on Wall Street, but one of his most controversial incidents came outside of the United States. The notorious moment happened when he gave the Nazi salute during a match while WWE was touring in Germany. On a recent Q&A episode of the "Something to Wrestle" podcast, he said that it happened so many times in Germany that the crowd in the country didn't care, but he did get heat when he got back to the states.
"In hindsight, people kind of made up what happened and didn't happen," he said. "I had done the Nazi salute as a way to get heat, same as Fritz Von Erich did it, same as Baron von Raschke. I wasn't the only one that day [to do it] in the match I was in, by the way. The heels used to do that all the time. It wasn't that big a deal. People say it was illegal, it was not illegal, it was part of entertainment, so it wasn't."
JBL said that some said he was arrested and thrown out of Germany, which isn't true. He said he wished he could have gotten that kind of heat in the country, but the crowd didn't seem to care. He explained the heat came from back home because he had just signed a deal with CNBC. Despite knowing he had a contract in WWE as a bad guy, CNBC still chose to fire him after the incident, which JBL said was "probably the best thing" that happened to him.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Something to Wrestle" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
