Ever since Brock Lesnar came back to the WWE, there’s really only one thing I couldn’t ever get around. Not the fact that he still can’t cut a promo to save his life, not that he’s obviously using the WWE again for his personal agenda, and not the fact that he doesn’t actually perform in anything other than pay-per-views, but the fact that he has been a walking advertisement for Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches.
I’m guessing that Lesnar has had some sort of pre-existing sponsorship contract with the company that had been grandfathered in and strategically maneuvered into his current WWE deal, because no individual has really pimped a product out like this since X-Pac pimped some energy drink but he had pull with the company then, but the point remains is that it’s unusual for any wrestlers to have sponsorship. The company as a whole, is a different story, but typically you just don’t see individuals having such types of deals, let alone wearing fucking company logos on their apparel, three times larger than their own personal branding.
One of my favorite jokes I have with the friends of mine I watch wrestling with is 1998 Halloween Havoc. It was one of the greatest pay-per-views of all time, for a myriad of reasons. It actually had a really good card, featuring matches like Wrath vs. Meng, Disco Inferno wrestling twice, Rick Stiener wrestling twice and taking like seven nut-shots, Hogan vs. Warrior II and the disaster it became, and the surprisingly decent DDP vs. Goldberg main event. The show itself was so long, my friends and I ran out to pick up pizzas and it was still in the midst of the Steiner Brothers feud. And apparently the show was such a cable company nightmare, many homes dropped the show, mid-broadcast and WCW had to broadcast the main event for free on Nitro the next night and issue countless refunds, further exemplifying the laughable management in the company that led to the eventual demise.
But the biggest, most memorable thing about the show was the fact that throughout the whole show, we couldn’t get past just how large the fucking Snickers logo was on the mat artwork. The evening went from calling Halloween Havoc to “Halloween Havoc Snickers” to eventually “Halloween Havoc presents SNICKERS.” To this day, 1998 Halloween Havoc Snickers has set the benchmark for shoddy product placement in the world of wrestling.
Anyway, that’s kind of how I feel when I see Brock Lesnar come out, and I see that humongous Jimmy John’s logo staring right at me. I can’t really take him seriously, because of it. So he assaults John Cena, or drags Shawn Michaels out of a car. Can’t get beyond the logo. He comes out to his trademark booming music, storms the ring to blindside Triple H. Two bigass J’s staring right at me.
My initial when I understood that he was going to be around for a few months was “Does the WWE honestly think they can sell Jimmy John’s billboards for $37 a pop?” Because ultimately just about everyone on the roster has a shirt available, and unless you’re going to live events, $37 is kind of what it costs to purchase and ship a shirt online.
Fortunately for Lesnar’s sake, his commercially available t-shirts do not have the Jimmy John’s logos on them. Not that I would get either of the two lame designs, but it’s nice to know that anyone out there who does, does not have to worry about buying the Jimmy John’s shirt, and can settle for the Brock Lesnar one instead.
