WWE Hall of Famer JBL appeared on Something To Wrestle With, where he discussed several topics, including illegally working for a Mexican promotion early in his career.
JBL said, “So I was one of the few Americans that went and worked in Mexico illegally. I think they were talking about building a wall, and having the Texans pay for it—is what they’re talking about at the time. But yes, I was one of the few Americans who went down to Mexico and worked there illegally. But what they did was, that’s how they kept you in control. So if you go down to work for them, you know you had to hit — and I saw Chris Jericho’s book that you had to hit the button. It was a green or red. And if it was green, you went straight through. If it was red, you had to get searched and all this stuff. It wasn’t really that bad, even when you got searched, just minor questions, but it was potluck. But yes, we were down there on false pretenses. But I would be in the dressing room sometimes, and the ‘brown shirts’ would come in, the customs guys. They spoke English. I spoke a little bit of Spanish, but it’s all a game. They’d come in and tell me, ‘Do you have papers?’ And I’d go, ‘Talk to Mr. Elizondo.’ They’d go talk to Elizondo.’ Elizondo would pay them, and that was their way to get a little payoff. But if you ever tried to go to a different company, that’s when Elizondo would turn you into the feds. So that’s how they would keep you at the company, they’d never give you work papers.”
On the terms of working for them:
“Oh, yeah, 100% [it was sketchy]. They would do stuff like, they would pick you up at the airport but they wouldn’t pick you up to take you back just to save money. I mean, they’re always nickel and diming you, it was always bad. Now they paid you the money that said they’re going to pay you, but they try to get out of everything they could get out of. It was pretty bad. They’d put you in pretty rotten hotels. And the deal was, you had to stay in nicer hotels. So you always had to fight them on everything. Elizondo was — you know, he had the restaurant. You got to eat there for free. And you know, you got paid. And the problem was also that was before the peso was devalued. So you get, like, 3000 to one, or something like that. So if you get $700, you’d have 2,100,000 pesos. Now imagine having $2,100,000 dollars. That’s the stack of money you would get. You know, it’s huge. You didn’t know anybody. I would tape it to my boots, in my boots when I wrestle the last match because I didn’t want to leave it in the dressing room. I didn’t know anybody. And I’d come through customs with stacks of wadded up, sweaty money. And you know, nobody ever said anything. I’d came back from Mexico to Dallas, nobody really cared either whether I was working or not. Going down there, nobody really cared unless they wanted to get a payoff.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
