Real Reason For WWE Legend’s Retirement Revealed

A WWE Hall of Famer knew it was time to walk away.

Through the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the APA made up of Faarooq (Ron Simmons) and Bradshaw (JBL) were one of the most popular tag teams in WWE.

While the duo only won the World Tag Team Championship on three occasions, their hard-hitting style and regular backstage comedy spots endeared them to audiences like very few teams during that period.

However, in March 2004, Simmons was fired (in storyline) and the team was broken up. As Simmons retired, JBL quickly reivented himself and went on to become World Champion.

WWE Legend Ron Simmons Was Just “Beat Up”

Speaking on the latest episode of Something To Wrestle, JBL looked back on the final break-up of the APA and his quick switch into the character of a suit-wearing businessman that took him to the World Championship.

When asked if the pair ever pitched a grudge match as if often the case with tag team partners, JBL said that the subject never even came up. He went on to explain that by the time 2004 rolled around, Simmons body had taken so much of a beating thanks to football and wrestling, he just wanted to walk away.

“No, never discussed… We didn’t have a desire really at the end to wrestle each other in an angle. Not that we minded wrestling each other, we’d done it enough times, that was not a big deal.

Ron’s I think six years older than me, so I retired a little bit earlier than he did age-wise. He was beat up. He played in the NFL, nose tackle, he played college football, he’s in every college football Hall of Fame there is as a nose tackle, and they just destroyed those guys’ knees, hips, everything. He’s got a fake hip now.

Ron was pretty beat up. He wrestled probably longer than he should have, and one of the reasons was because we were good friends and we were having so much fun. So it wasn’t a huge desire of Ron to continue wrestling.

He did the best thing for me, which I’m so appreciative, he’s my best friend and it was really cool what he did for me. He made me before he left and gave me all that equity that he had in himself.

I don’t know, we just never really thought it was that good of an idea. Maybe if we had done that in the mid 90s, it’d have been different.

But at this point, I’ve got to go almost straight to Eddie Guerrero and some other things, and Ron’s kind of ready to get out of the ring completely.”

During the same episode, JBL claimed that his heel character that followed the break-up of the APA could have easily been a babyface. However, he said that he never had any intention of being anything other than a dastardly heel.

H/t to Wrestle Talk