JBL Thinks Rikishi’s 2000 Heel Turn Looked Good On Paper

On the latest episode of Something To Wrestle With, JBL talked about Rikishi’s heel turn. Rikishi was revealed in October of 2000 as the person who attacked Steve Austin, an act which wrote Austin off TV due to neck surgery. Rikishi eventually admitted it, saying that he “did it for The Rock.” You can check out some highlights below:

On the heel turn:

“On paper, I think this worked. I think it worked really well. You want to turn a hot babyface heel. You don’t want to turn a stagnant babyface heel. He’s not over. You know, you want to turn a hot babyface heel, and Rikishi was a beloved character. This whole thing made perfect sense. Now, whether it works or not? That’s different. But on paper, this thing was a pretty good home run.”

On why it worked on paper:

“You have a hot babyface [that] you’re turning heel. You have a reason for him doing it. The thought behind it is pretty good. He’s of the Samoan dynasty, the Polynesian dynasty. And he did it for The Rock. The whole thing to me made sense. The people not buying it, that’s one thing that you can’t control. You know, you put it out there, you think, ‘This looks really good up on the blackboard.’ And sometimes you put it out there, and it doesn’t work.”

On fans not wanting to see Rikishi as a heel:

“I think it was [hard to buy him as a heel due to his popularity]. The one thing — the oldest thing in wrestling is, turn your hot babyface that you don’t think you can turn heel, turn him heel. And that’s what we did with Rikishi. And Rikishi, by the way, great worker. One of the greatest of all time. Rikishi was a terrific worker. He was a great heel; he was a great babyface. And for some reason, this storyline, when it came through, people just didn’t buy it like we thought they would. It didn’t get as over as we thought they would. And that has nothing to do with Rikishi, the talent of Rikishi. He was a great heel, great babyface. Everything he did, he was terrific at.”

On fans not buying it because he had been a comedy figure:

“Yeah, I agree with that. And they were a lot of fun. Everybody danced with Rikishi. Me and Ron did it one segment. I remember, they thought it was a rib. They thought me and Ron wouldn’t dance. And they end up saying, ‘Guys, you’ve got to quit, we have to go to commercial.’ We don’t care. We’re going to have fun, especially out there with Rikishi.”

On having fun with 2 Cool:

“We had a lot of fun with — everybody did. Everybody danced with these guys. You put on the glasses and you became cool. Eddie did it, we did it. The Dudleys did, everybody did it. And people enjoyed Rikishi being out there, because he got guys to be out of character. And he got guys to do things that were a lot of fun. He got guys to dance with the crowd. Maybe people just didn’t want that to be taken from him. You know, sometimes when you take it from him that makes them a really hot heel. In Rikishi’s case, I think they just loved him so much they just didn’t want him to be a heel. They just wanted him to be with the same guys in the dancing troupe, getting guys out there out of character, and dancing and having fun.”

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.