For 430 episodes of the classic TV western Bonanza, rustling cattle ’round the pine-filled Ponderosa Ranch was a part of longhorn life for the Cartwright family. On the 242nd edition of broadcast TV’s only sports-entertainment program, John Bradshaw Layfield made steering Mexicans back over America’s borders his duty. At least, he did on April 8, 2004, in what WWE.com hails as its No. 9 Most Memorable SmackDown Moment.

With a segment that proved shocking, offensive and uncomfortably amusing, the former APA brawler from Sweetwater, Texas, literally redefined himself as a self-made millionaire with a Central Park address, and a self-deputized American hero. In this instance, the new “JBL” had been lobbying for a “Great American Award,” an eagle-topped trophy that also granted No. 1 Contender status for Eddie Guerrero’s WWE Championship. Rather than win over the fan balloters of a WWE.com poll—who overwhelmingly voted that the award go to then-U.S. Champion John Cena—he revealed video footage of himself with his ironically white 10-gallon hat, a pair of binoculars and a need to patrol the “unprotected” American side of the Texas-Mexico border.

The footage was hardly JBL’s shining moment as a flag-waving diplomat; while ranting about “lazy” Mexicans taking advantage of U.S. healthcare and welfare systems, he took offensively reformative action on a poor group of people he deemed as illegal border-crossers. Kicking one understandably frightened man in his keister, JBL urged the fleeing immigrants, “You tell everybody South of the border that they better stay South of the border, because on this side of the border, John Bradshaw Layfield will be waiting!”

Call it an American injustice, but JBL’s distasteful diatribe actually succeeded in robbing the “Dr. of Thuganomics” of the “Great American Award” that night. Eddie Guerrero, in turn, would rob the self-made millionaire of his trophy (actually, he claimed to have found it in the parking lot), replacing it with an eyesore of an effigy that was decorated with tiny fuzzy dice and a picture of Latino Heat himself (framed, of course). Using the real award as his lowrider’s hood ornament before smashing it to pieces, Eddie sent a message that JBL’s “Mexican brand-off” would not go unanswered. For John Bradshaw Layfield, however, the footage was instrumental toward his ultimate campaign platform: earning a No. 1 Contender spot which enabled him to unseat Guerrero as WWE Champion at The Great American Bash, and cement his WWE legacy as a “wrestling god.”