WWE Hall of Famer John "Bradshaw" Layfield recently took to an episode of his Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw podcast, where he discussed ECW invading the WWE at their 1996 In Your House: Mind Games PPV Event and how the WWE locker room nearly started a riot because of it.
JBL said:
“We almost had a riot when ECW invaded us in Philadelphia. With the boys, not the crowd!”
“It was me and Savio Vega in a Caribbean Strap Match.” “Bruce smartened up Savio to what was going to happen. That Sandman was going to spit the beer on Savio, and he said, ‘The one thing you do is grab the cowboy and don’t let him get over the rail,’ because Bruce knew me.”
“But right before I went out, [Blackjack] Lanza didn’t want to take the risk of not smarting me up. He turns to me and says, ‘If anything happens, don’t go over the rail’. And I said, ‘Jack, you wouldn’t tell me if anything happens, if something isn’t going to happen’. And he said, ‘Well, I’m just telling you something could happen in the one corner with Savio, and if it does happen, just understand it’s part of the show’.”
“So when we went out of the ring, Savio went over there and we went on the wrong side, and he said, ‘No, we have to be over here’. And right then, I realized this is where the spot’s got to be about to happen. So when it happened, Savio put the rope around me. He didn’t know Lanza had smartened me up. And he said, ‘Just stay here with me, stay here with me. Let’s go back into the ring’. But by then, I knew it was all a part of the show. But the boys in the back had gone up to gorilla [position] and were just about to head out.”
JBL then talked about what the atmosphere was like in the WWE locker room after the incident occurred and how the Superstars in the locker room felt.
JBL said:
“As soon as we got back, Lanza had smartened the guys up when they came up.” “Because by then, nobody was going to stooge off what was going to happen because it already happened. So, [The Undertaker] and the boys apparently were coming out of the dressing room. I was in the ring with Savio, and Lanza says, ‘Guys, it’s a work’. And right away, the guys were pretty pissed they weren’t smartened up to it. But at that point, it’s not Tommy Dreamer, Bubba, and those guys, and Paul E. It’s a part of the show.”
You can check out JBL's comments in the video below:
