Jeff Cobb shares WWE name suggestions, including Drew McIntyre's 'Jafar Smash

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Solo Sikoa and MFT's Tonga Loa, Talla Tonga and JC Mateo look on during SmackDown at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on July 25, 2025 in Cleveland, Ohio. | Photo by Craig Melvin/WWE via Getty Images) Now back in New Japan after a year in WWE as JC Mateo, Jeff Cobb sat down with Chris Van Vliet to talk about that experience. When he debuted at Backlash last May, Michael Cole introduced the former Lucha Underground star as Jeff Cobb. Van Vliet asked if Cobb was originally going to keep his own name (also his real name), and Cobb said he’d hoped to, but started getting calls about picking his WWE name shortly after signing. “JC Mateo” wasn’t one that he came up with; it was on a two-page list of options he was given when he showed up in St. Louis for Backlash. “The day that I flew into St. Louis, well, actually the day of the PLE, Backlash, I went backstage and met everybody, met the writers, and then they gave me two pages of names. I haven’t released them yet — but I think it’s pretty funny. “At that time I was like, ‘What the hell?’ … The first page, I’ll say it was maybe 60 names on there. I was like, ‘Okay, this is pretty cool, pretty cool.’ They’re trying to go into my background with Guam, my background in Hawaii. I was like, ‘Okay, okay’. “Second page, I don’t know what happened. They just started doing random names. I was like, ‘How are they choosing this?’ “One that stuck out made me giggle because it was all caps, JONAH {Van Vliet says, ”that’s already been done”] Yeah, by Bronson Reed, the guy that’s in your company… I was like, ‘Wait a minute, are you guys even trying now?’ “This is why I really like Drew [McIntyre] — after I narrowed it down, I chose the name out of the sheets, I was like, ‘Hey, can I have a copy of this?’ They’re like, ‘Why?’ I was like, ‘Well, I just want to keep it for mementos’, because I like collecting random, silly things. “So I brought the list back to the locker room, and Drew was like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ “‘Oh, this is my list of names.’ He’s like, ‘Can I see this?’ ‘Yeah, sure.’ He looked at them, he’s on the second page. He saw one. He’s like, ‘I like this one.’ “I was like, ‘Well, we’re not using that.’ He signed it, so it’s a Drew McIntyre authentic signature — which I’m not gonna sell because it’s funny. But it was Jafar Smash. I said, ‘What?’ “So every time I saw Drew without hesitation I was like, ‘What’s up, Drew?’ He’s like, ‘What’s up, Jafar?’ … I was like wait, Jafar is neither a Polynesian name, a Hawaiian name,a Guam name… I don’t know where that came from…. but Drew loved that one.” That’s our Big D. A man of impeccible taste.