Stevie Richards Talks JBL and WWE’s Bullying Culture, Calls WWE’s Anti-Bullying Campaign a “PR Stunt”

During an interview this week with independent wrestler Bin Hamin, former WWE Superstar Stevie Richards talked about being bullied by JBL and the climate of locker room politics in WWE that allows it to happen.

Hamin asked Richards, “The hot button topic on the sheets is the JBL bullying story, and one of your bWo brothers (The Blue Meanie) is one of the original stories that caught some of that fire in the ring from him at the first ECW One Night Stand, do you want to stooge anything off? Did you see anything like that or were you a victim of that bullying that JBL is famous for?”

Here is Richards’ response:

“Ya there was a two-year stretch where I had the cross-hairs on me. I’m not the kind of person who looks back on stuff, it’s going to be weird for people to hear this because obviously, WWE is “the show” to people who’ve never been there… but I just thank god that I got out of there with my ethics my morals, I can look at myself in the mirror everyday. That probably kept me from going further if you notice the stop/start pushes I had throughout my run, it was probably directly related to probably my heaviest criticism of not “playing the game”. I don’t mean that as a pun, I just mean a political standpoint I just never wanted to waste my energy on that.

“When it goes back to the bullying stuff there, it starts right at the top. It’s a systemic culture there, it’s not an isolated thing with JBL doing what he’s done all along, and continues to do. It has to have some sort of approval or some sort of nod or lack of a head shake saying “you can’t do that”. So he’s a symptom of the real problem, I believe, in wrestling. I don’t speak out honestly because I don’t want to spew out anything negatively but…

“It’s such a joke… I feel the like anti-bullying thing…. (CM) Punk was right it was a 100% shoot. It’s a PR stunt to the Nth degree. It is not a genuine thing in my opinion.”