BEAR HUGS AND BULL MARKETS

When the bell rings, former WWE bad boy JBL is still ready for action, but now he grapples with IPOs, mergers, and balance sheets.

There aren’t too many Wall Street power players that can body slam opponents — which is another way of saying there’s only one John Bradshaw Layﬁeld. The six-foot-six, 290-pound Layﬁeld achieved stardom as former world champion “JBL” in Vince McMahon’s ubiquitous WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) franchise. Today, he’s a well-respected money mogul and a full-time investment banker with the renowned New York ﬁrm Northeast Securities.

A native of Sweetwater, Texas (his father was CEO of the town bank), Layﬁeld always had his eye on the big time. But a knee injury ended his dreams of gridiron fame after a single season with the Raiders and two in the World League of American Football. Injured and unemployed, Layﬁeld fell on hard times. “It was utter despair. I had enjoyed a couple of years of making a little bit of money, but I hadn’t bettered my life in any way,” he says. “I swore I’d never let that happen again.”

Layﬁeld promptly embarked upon a self-styled education in dollars and cents, reading “every single book about ﬁnances and money ever published.” Simultaneously, he began the transition to professional wrestling — he’d been an ardent fan since he was a child — and smartly blended his love for finance and wrestling. His “JBL” ring persona became a cigar-chomping tycoon that crowds loved to hate.

Then in 2003, Layﬁeld parlayed his down-home philosophies, ﬂamboyant wrestling anecdotes, and newfound ﬁnancial smarts into Have More Money Now: A Common Sense Approach to Financial Management. The book’s success led to TV appearances as a ﬁnancial analyst on several networks. Now Layﬁeld is a regular ﬁnancial commentator on Fox News Channel. (Though he isn’t wrestling these days, he does do color commentary for WWE Friday Night SmackDown.)

The larger-than-life Layﬁeld initially met with resistance from the conservatives of the bull-and-bear brigade, something he has effectively put to rest with his progressive deal-making and lucrative track record (that includes beating a wildly erratic stock market eight consecutive years). “Wall Street is all about merit. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re out fast. But if you’re good, it doesn’t matter how many tattoos you’ve got — you’ll get to stay and play,” he says. “And I am good.”

—J. Rentilly