Vince McMahon was very unhappy about the JBL and Joey Styles story leaking. He had hoped that the people on the tour would not say anything, since Styles didn’t want to and JBL certainly didn’t either.
It all began with JBL himself being ribbed by some of the guys about getting old and how his weight wasn’t really going down, which it has, so he began drinking on the flight over to Germany, where they changed en route to Iraq. There is a rule that nobody was supposed to go to sleep on this flight from Washington, D.C., yet Lilian Garcia did go to sleep and so JBL poured ice water on her. He kept drinking and made Styles into his target. Tempers flared and they tangled with one another, falling to the floor. Several people pulled JBL away, trying to protect Styles, but Styles threw a punch at JBL that JBL didn’t see coming. He was not knocked down but was cut and bleeding quite badly.
There were a number of top company executives on the trip, including Vince, Kevin Dunn, John Gaburick and others. A number of people involved noted that if Styles had launched a lawsuit then WWE would not have had a leg to stand on, especially considering JBL’s history for bullying his co-workers. JBL still does not appear to have been punished for the incident.
Credit: Wrestling Observer Newsletter, 17 December 2008 (subscribe here)
