JBL has reflected on the late PAC’s time in WWE as Neville, revealing details about Vince McMahon’s creative vision for the ex NXT Title holder and the impressive response he generated from fans.
Speaking on the Something to Wrestle podcast, JBL recalled being part of WWE’s production and creative meetings when Neville arrived on the main roster.
“Neville, I was there when he came into WWE, and it's worth noting that i was in all the creative meetings. Furthermore, we’d have the creative meetings before the shows, with the production meetings, so you’d hear the creative plans and everybody would be on the same page, with the announcers being in there.
Before that, Michael Cole and I got notes directly from Vince McMahon, which was pretty cool, because we’d go in there — just the two of us, and Vince would tell us things that he wouldn’t tell the production meeting because he knew we weren’t stooges. There’s always some stooge in the production meeting that was reporting things online. We always tried to find them, and I don’t think we ever found one.
On the flip side when Neville came in, man, he was unbelievable. I mean, just unreal. You know, Vince loved Mighty Mouse, and he wanted Neville to be Mighty Mouse, but he already had one in Rey Mysterio.
You know, one thing with the themes for Rey was that the moment was based upon what Vince thought Mighty Mouse would have. You know, that’s how much Vince loved that character.
And I remember several times in the meetings, wanting to position Neville more as Mighty Mouse, which obviously he’s perfect for. You know, the situation was something that he could have done. Interestingly enough, that superhero, the superhero that could do things. He was perfect for that. It's worth noting that and he was that.
I was sitting there one day, and they talked about how many impressions he was getting. He was getting double the impressions of everybody else when he came in, because when social media first came in — we launched into getting the social media reports and the impression reports about who was getting what.
Vince says, ‘We’ve got our test audience out there, right out there.’ And that was the audience. Which was impressive, however Neville always got twice as much as everybody else.
Neville was a world-class talent and a commendable guy. Neville was always so pleasant to talk to.”
PAC performed for WWE under the Neville name from 2012 until his departure in 2018. He became the inaugural NXT Partnership Titleholder alongside Oliver Grey before later capturing the NXT Crown and WWE Cruiserweight Championship.
JBL’s comments offer additional insight into how highly Neville was viewed during his early main-list of performers run, both from a creative standpoint and through the audience engagement data WWE was receiving at the time.