JBL Backs Adam Pearce After WWE General Manager Faces Criticism Wrestling News Source – Latest WWE, AEW, Pro Wrestling News, AEW All In: London 2026 Results

WWE Hall of Famer JBL has defended Adam Pearce over his admission that he does not spend his free time watching other wrestling promotions.

Pearce recently attracted some criticism online after revealing that he does not regularly watch wrestling outside WWE. However, JBL believes there is nothing unusual about that, especially considering the amount of content WWE produces every week.

Speaking on Something To Wrestle, JBL explained that Pearce already has plenty to keep up with.

“The company that pays him has about 100 hours a week of television, so there’s not really a lot more you can watch. They have so much content now. I don’t know how you keep up with all of it, just in the one company. So I don’t know how you’d be able to watch other stuff.”

JBL can also relate to Pearce from his own experience. Despite being part of WWE during the famous Monday Night Wars, he admitted that he was not regularly sitting down to watch WCW.

“I didn’t watch WCW when I was working with WWE, even though we had this huge war going on, because we didn’t have time. We were traveling every night. And it wasn’t just that I was loyal to the company that paid me. I would have loved to watch some of their stuff. I just didn’t have time to do it.”

Things have not changed much for JBL today. He keeps up with the promotions he works with, including WWE and AAA, but much of his WWE viewing now comes through clips on social media.

“I keep up with AAA obviously, because that’s the commentary that I do, and I keep up with WWE enough to know the product. I watch more through social media clips than I do the show itself, but I do keep up with it.”

With so much wrestling available, JBL said there simply are not enough hours in the day for him to follow AEW, TNA and every other promotion.

“I don’t have any time in the world to keep up with AEW or TNA or anybody else. No offense to those groups. It’s just there’s only so many hours in the day, and there’s so much wrestling on. I can’t believe how much wrestling is on right now, and the ratings these guys are still doing with all this product on TV.”

JBL did point to one person who has always been different in that regard, longtime WWE producer Jamie Noble.

“Jamie Noble is one of the biggest wrestling bugs I’ve ever seen. He would watch stuff all the time. That’s all he did. He’d watch videos. Probably one of the reasons he’s such a great producer right now.”

“But most guys don’t do that. Most guys are busy living whatever life they had. For Jamie, that was his hobby. That’s what he loved doing.”

JBL also pushed back against the suggestion that Pearce not watching rival promotions means he is somehow less passionate about professional wrestling.

“I know some people would argue, oh, that must mean he doesn’t really love it. I kind of disagree on that.”

“I’m completely with Adam Pearce here. People can have their own opinion. They make up their mind what they want to have issues with. But I don’t see a real rationale to get upset with him about saying that.”

There is one subject where JBL and Pearce do not agree.

Pearce has previously suggested that fans probably do not want to see him return to the ring. JBL thinks otherwise and believes the current Raw General Manager could still deliver if given the opportunity.

“I disagree with him about whether people want to see him or not. I think people would enjoy seeing him, just like they enjoyed seeing Nick Aldis. I think they would enjoy seeing him. He’s a really good worker, and I’m sure he still is.”

Nick Aldis recently stepped away from his SmackDown General Manager duties to wrestle GUNTHER at SummerSlam Night One. It was Aldis’ first WWE match and his first match anywhere since 2023. After losing the contest, Aldis was reinstated as SmackDown General Manager.

When JBL was asked about the last wrestling match he watched outside WWE, his answer went much further back than AEW or TNA.

“The last match I watched that was outside of WWE was Jim Londos and Primo Carnera. Somebody had sent it to me. He’s a great match. You realize how good a worker Jim Londos was. He put it together. The big man Primo Carnera was a big dude.”

JBL has also been watching footage involving Bronko Nagurski and believes he deserves to be mentioned among the greatest football players to successfully make the move into professional wrestling.

“That’s about the greatest football player that turned into a wrestler. It had to be Bronko Nagurski, I would think, or Wahoo.”

Despite not watching every wrestling show available, JBL made it clear that his love for the business remains as strong as ever.

“I still love wrestling, and I love matches. When somebody sends me some stuff, I happily watch them. But I’m not going to watch an entire show, because I just have other stuff that I’m doing, and the wrestling that I watch is pretty much part of what I do.”

“There’s a finite number of hours in the day, and I’m a huge wrestling fan.”

Pearce certainly has plenty of experience inside the ring himself. The five-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion joined WWE as a producer in 2015 before becoming a regular on-screen authority figure in 2020. He currently serves as the General Manager of Raw.