It's July 1st And JBL Is Still Employed

Following Mauro Ranallo's absence from the Smackdown broadcast booth - and the alleged reasons behind it - the Paddy Power Sportsbook installed a market in April where customers could bet whether or not John 'Bradshaw' Layfield would still be employed by World Wrestling Entertainment on July 1st.

The date has arrived. JBL is still contracted to WWE, so anyone who took the 'Yes' should be paid out soon.

For those of you who missed it, the market opened with the 'Yes' at 4/6 while the option to wager on him not being contracted to WWE by today was 11/10.

You can see in the image below that, for the six days the market was available, the punters were confident Layfield would still be in a job.

A few days after the market closed, Newsweek published a story noting that WWE and Ranallo had parted company. The piece contained a comment from the former Smackdown announcer stating that the departure had 'nothing to do with JBL.' This was despite two of Ranallo's close friends - Bas Rutten and Pat Miletich - having choice comments against JBL in the days before Newsweek ran with the story they were told.

In the post where I wrote about the article, I closed by writing 'if this is the end of the story, the punters who took the 'Yes' will have a winner.' Ironically, it wasn't the end of the story, but the 'Yes' still won. Ranallo has since re-signed with WWE and is now the lead announcer for NXT.

View Paddy Power's WWE Odds