JBL Recalls Jeff Jarrett Allegedly ‘Holding Up’ Vince McMahon for Money Before WWE No Mercy 1999

On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle With, JBL talked about the infamous incident at WWE No Mercy 1999, where Jeff Jarrett allegedly “held up” Vince McMahon for a large sum of money before his final match. Jarrett, who was the reigning Intercontinental Champion, performed in the match against Chyna without a contract after McMahon agreed to his financial demands. You can check out some highlights below:

On the way the wrestlers looked at it:

“We certainly knew that day, and I’m not sure when exactly we found out. We certainly knew that day, and we knew that Jeff was holding up Vince, and we couldn’t believe it. I talked to Jeff about. I’d be interested to hear your take on what Bruce and JR both said, because I have not heard what they’ve said, but I’ve heard Jeff explain it. Man, it’s one of the best stories in wrestling. You know, they owed him a certain amount of pay-per-views, you know, they’re behind, because we, we were always behind, you know, two or three months of pay-per-views. And what Jeff wanted was to get the money that was owed him and get the money that he was going to get that night. So it wasn’t just a matter of holding him up for a certain amount of money. That was extra. He wanted to make sure he got all his money in the past. So it’s a little bit different than what I had heard at the time. What I heard at the time was Jeff was just holding him up, which I still thought was pretty wild. Just guys, you understand. To each his own, we’re not mad at that. The boys are not mad at that. You know, we can’t believe that somebody let his contract expire, and all of a sudden, you’ve got a guy who hadn’t dropped the title that’s going to a different company. That’s where the problem lies, not with the fact that Jeff held somebody up.”

On wrestlers agreeing with what Jarrett did:

“Yes, absolutely, yeah. And Jeff used it, you know, we understand, sometimes you’re burning a bridge. Sometimes you blow a bridge up. But when you leave, so what? You don’t normally leave on amicable terms. You know, it’s like, I’m getting a divorce. Oh, the divorce is amicable. That doesn’t happen, but once in a million times. You know, when guys leave, especially during a competition that was so big, like we had with WCW, you’re not leaving on great terms. You’re leaving because you couldn’t get a deal done, and you’re going to the competition. So it’s not like you’re going, Oh, and we’re all kumbaya and shake hands. You want to get everything you can when you walk out the door and the boys, believe me, we were not mad. In fact, we thought this is actually pretty cool that Jeff’s holding up the boss here, and it looks like it’s going to work, and it did. We were big fans of Jeff for doing this.”

On how the word got around:

“It got around. I believe we had heard this before, this from somebody. I’m not sure how we heard it. Maybe we didn’t. Maybe we heard it on the day off. I don’t want to put my stake in the ground and say, Definitely, this is exactly what we heard. I just remember knowing about it because being there, and I’m not sure when we exactly found out, but you know, Jeff, our point about this was, Jeff is doing all the right things. You know, Jeff is not taking the title with him. He’s not telling Eric Bischoff, Hey, if you’ll give me an extra $500,000, I’ll bring the title down with me. He was going to drop the title, drop the title to a woman, too. You’re going to drop the title to Chyna. And so Jeff was doing everything right. He just wanted to get paid. We didn’t have any issue with this, the fact that he was, you know, wanting to get all of his money from pay-per-views that had been, you know, he was going to get the next few months when he had no leverage. Jeff knew this. We didn’t know that at the time. We thought Jeff was just holding him up for more money. But we didn’t have a problem with that either. Because Jeff was doing the right thing by us, because he was doing the right thing by us, he was going to drop the title before he left. He never said, I’m gonna take the title with me. He said, I’ll drop the title. You just got to pay me. We had no issue with that whatsoever. We actually thought it was pretty cool.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something To Wrestle With an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.