Al Snow Reveals How The Idea For The JOB Squad Came To Him
Between his time inside the ring and behind the scenes as an executive, Al Snow's DNA has been intertwined in the pro wrestling industry for the past few decades. While his recent work as Ohio Valley Wrestling's owner has garnered him strong attention, Snow is arguably most known for his time heading up a certain faction, no pun intended.
Speaking with Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman on the Wrestling Inc. Daily, Snow revealed how the concept for the JOB Squad came to him out of frustrations with the WWF locker room at the time.
"That was kind of the idea," Snow said. "The JOB Squad started out as me just being a smart aleck. In catering one day, I was with Jim Cornette and a bunch of the guys. It was during the time when they were all having gangs. Undertaker had a gang. Everybody had a gang. It got to the point where real life basically copied art, in that in the locker room guys started dividing themselves into groups. You had the Kliq at that time, and everybody was very resentful and jealous of the Kliq because they pretty much ran WWF at that time.
"There were some people that kind of lost touch with the business, in that when they won they felt like they really won. You kind of forgot the etiquette and respect that's in the wrestling business. The real reason behind why we shake each other's hands. They thought that when they won, they really won, and I just found that absurd. I was so frustrated with it."
Those frustrations eventually boiled over, Snow detailed, as he told Cornette his plan to form a gang of his own.
"Sitting there with Cornette, you know, I proclaimed I was going to form my own gang," Snow said. "Aldo Montoya (Justin Credible), Chris Candido, Barry Horowitz, myself. It was like five or six guys. He was like, 'That's ridiculous.' And I said, 'Yeah, I know, and we're going to call ourselves the JOB Squad.'"
Knowing they didn't have the star power of groups like the Kliq or the Bone Street Krew, Snow emphasized the stable embraced their spot on the card.
"If Undertaker goes out and tombstones Barry Horowitz, and Barry stands up and dusts off his hair and walks out of the ring, who had the power in that match?" Snow said. "A lot of people take that for granted, so I'm going to remind them."
The group may have been taking consistent L's inside the ring, but the JOB Squad was winning big time in merchandising. Once the stable developed their signature shirt, Snow mentioned the demand and popularity increased tenfold.
"It started out like that, but then the guys in ECW, when I had quit WWE and went to ECW as a loaner, meaning loaned to ECW not a loner by myself, the guys there thought it was great. They kept insisting, 'Oh, you got to make t-shirts. You got to make t-shirts,'" Snow said. "I wanted to be the antithesis of the most popular thing at the time, what was getting pushed the most, which was the nWo. I made the very opposite of what you think would sell: a white t-shirt and made the JOB Squad logo similar to the nWo, and then put 1-2-3 4-Life on the back, 'pin me, pay me' with a chalk outline. It went crazy. All the boys wanted one. At the ECW events, this was in the infancy of the internet, thanks to Jeff Jones who was an amazing guy. Jeff set me up with an internet website and stickers and all this stuff so people could order. It just went crazy. I sold probably more than three thousand shirts from May to October of that year, for 25 bucks a shirt back then.
"Road Dogg really helped when he wore a 'Property of JOB Squad' t-shirt out on RAW. He somehow wore it out there. People saw it and it went even crazier. It was a fun and great time. I was very blessed it went the way that it did."
You can follow Al on Twitter @TheRealAlSnow. You can find the full audio and video from Al's interview via the embedded The Wrestling Inc. Daily audio player below: