Former WWE Star ‘Absolutely Hated’ Tag Team Split

Published: Mar 11, 2026 by Jamie Toolan | Last Updated: Mar 11, 2026 by Jamie Toolan

Jamie has been covering the world of wrestling for four years and currently holds the position of Assistant Editor of WrestleTalk.com. During his time working for WrestleTalk.com he has written and published over 4,000 news and feature articles covering events and happenings from WWE, AEW, TNA and a variety of international and independent wrestling promotions.

WWE

A former WWE star has admitted he “absolutely hated” the decision for he and his tag team partner splitting up back in 2004.

In the Spring of 2004, fan favourite multi-time WWE Tag Team Champions the APA split up, with Bradshaw turning heel and reinventing himself as JBL and Faarooq (Ron Simmons) retiring from in-ring competition.

The split would launch JBL to main event level success almost instantly, becoming WWE Champion in June 2004 and holding the gold for 280 days, however, during an appearance on The Undertaker’s Six Feet Under podcast, JBL revealed he wasn’t a fan of the split at first.

JBL recalled:

“I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Yeah it worked out well and I knew what they had planned and so did Ron and that’s why it gave me so much heat, that’s why we didn’t do a match or anything.

“I retired pretty much the same age Ron did, five or six years later. Ron was beat up from lifting so heavy, playing football and all the physical wrestling he had done for so long and he was getting ready to retire. He wanted to throw me the bone and that’s what he did, set me up to have a good chance of success.

“Fortunately I got the right guy with Eddie Guerrero and it worked out for me but Ron’s the one that set all that up, he got me all that heat.

“We knew the best way to do it was to turn like that, just the overt bad guy turn, I’m taking the opportunity and really being a dick about it and turning on my best friend, which people knew he was my best friend and then Ron just disappeared and didn’t come back around.

“That was part of the plan too, ‘That’s the guy who got rid of his best friend, he’s not with us anymore because of him.’

“I’d have been fine if I was APA my whole career, I think that much of Ron, but I’m really happy I got the run.”

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During his appearance on Six Feet Under, JBL named Eddie Guerrero as the WWE star he “owes his whole career to” – click here for his full comments.