FSM Rewind - Bobby Lashley Interview
We go into the time machine to when I interviewed Bobby Lashley in Sepetember 2016
Bobby Lashley shocked Scotland by retaining his world title against Drew McIntyre, so cementing his status as the key headliner on Monday Night RAW. I thought it would be a good time to give everyone a chance to read the interview for Fighting Spirit Magazine I conducted with Lashley almost five years. Enjoy!
In a year that Donald Trump is going closer to becoming President of the United States than anyone thought possible, the man whose corner he was in at Wrestlemania 33 has had a similarly strong year. While to many WWE fans Bobby Lashley will always be the stilted successor to Brock Lesnar in the affections of Vince McMahon, those who watch Impact Wrestling know differently. Lashley has been on fire throughout 2016. He has dominated the TNA title scene, not only spending most of the year as heavyweight champion but briefly completing a unique grand slam by adding the X-Division and King of the Mountain titles.
His performances has lived up to the push, with Lashley carrying himself as a superstar like never before. The man himself recognises the improvement in his performance. “I do feel like I've hit a new level. One of the big things is that when I first got in, I was dropped into a big role so quick. It takes years to learn wrestling; its fighting and acting together. If you take someone who has never acted before and you throw them on the big screen in a major motion picture, its going to be hard to do. It was the same with me and all the different things I did early on. I think I did okay but I was not close to where I am today. Right now I have a maturity; I understand wrestling and am comfortable out there”.
In an industry that is plagued with miscasting, Lashley was born to play his current role. Everything he does is very simple but executed perfectly. He is the type of monster champion that no other North American promotion is willing to build its storylines around. He is constantly proclaiming himself the best, issuing threats to future opponents, mocking the rest of the company and destroying all those put in front of him. A great example of how strong his character is at the moment was when he had to give up his X-Division and King of the Mountain Titles in the face of pressure from TNA management to defend them more. Dismantling his triple-crown could easily have neutered him but he rationalised his decision with such passion and verve, that the promo actually put him over stronger. “I set the bar so high in professional wrestling that it is really cool”, Lashley tells FSM. “I am the only real, credible champion in wrestling right now. You look at everyone else who is holding a wrestling title right now – I'm the only one that is credible, who has legit credentials”.
Packs A Real Punch
Lashley combat sports achievements are undoubtedly impressive. He was an amateur wrestling champion in both high-school and college, with only an injury preventing him from competing at Olympic level. Since leaving WWE in 2008 he has competed in Mixed Martial Arts, amassing a 14-2 record. He currently fights with Bellator MMA. “It's cool. The thing I love about Bellator is they give me the opportunity to fight whilst still doing pro-wrestling. Now if I was doing more pro-wrestling we'd have to discuss things, but as my wrestling schedule is so much lighter, I have more free time in which I can fight. Bellator understands that and allows me to do what I want to do”.
Many industry observers believe that it is next to impossible for someone to do both pro-wrestling and mixed martial arts at the same time due to the two disciplines demanding different reactions to the same situations. And indeed, there's a strong argument that Lashley's previous attempts to maintain the uber-bodybuilder physique that won him such fame in the WWE ring undermined him as a fighter by reducing his stamina.
Lashley, however, disagrees. “The people who say you can't do both aren't the people who do pro-wrestling and fighting. You can definitively do it, I've been doing it for five years now”. A crucial factor that allows him to do both is the flexibility that TNA's reduced schedule gives him. “What people don't understand is that I don't have a 9-5 job. Right now I'm off. I don't have to do anything with TNA [until next month]. Sure when I wrestle I may have to do that all week, but then I'm off for as long as two months. That time off is time to recover and to do hard training. So I definitively have time to do anything that I want to do”. In this he is similar to pro-wrestlers such as Christian or Kurt Angle who, in the past, use their time between TNA appearances to launch their acting career.
Lashley's time with Bellator has been an undoubted success. Not only has he finished all four of his opponents but his fights have frequently seen spikes in viewership due to his pro-wrestling fame. As we speak Lashley is preparing for his fight at Bellator 162 against Josh Appelt, which will be broadcast in both America and Britain on Spike Television. “It's actually going really good. As things progress, I feel better and better. I actually have been doing training sessions at my home, and as I'm training people, I feel sharper and sharper. I'm not physically ready to fight just yet...but mentally I'm ready”.
Lashley believes his exploits inside the MMA cage makes him a better pro-wrestler. “What I say is not a lie. That's what I like about what's going on with me right now. I'm not going out and giving scripted promos – I'm saying real stuff”. It's a lesson he feels the wider industry needs to learn. “Look at what's going on with MMA and reality television – why are we in a wrestling business that has fallen so far away from that?”. Blending reality into pro-wrestling is something that has become a trait of Lashley's storylines, whether it be his rivalry against the X-Division built around his thinly veiled disdain for 'gymnasts' or the frequent references to his MMA career.
Make Wrestling Great Again
When talking about TNA to FSM, Bobby Lashley volunteers that he's excited at the possibilities presented by the new TNA Grand Championship, something that he believes to be a 'cool championship'. The new division will replace the standard pro-wrestling format with a MMA-themed rule-set built around three-minute rounds. He believes it should give the promotion greater scope to incorporate legitimate grappling manoeuvrers into matches. “I spent time in Japan. In Japan its more that shoot-wrestling/catch-wrestling style. That's what we could have. One of the good things about TNA is that we're willing to separate ourselves from the competition. The fact that we're doing that, that it's going to be more of this catch-wrestling style, means we will have new opportunities”.
Lashley believes one of these opportunities is to make pro-wrestling less complex for real-life fighters. “I've got a lot of friends in MMA who would love to do pro-wrestling but they can't spend years training to be a pro-wrestler. But this new style we're doing, you could quickly put them on the show”. He cites the example of King Mo, a “big pro-wrestling fan” who was signed before to TNA. Whilst Mo never managed to complete his training to the point where he could regular perform normal pro-wrestling matches, Lashley believes that “if you want to do this different style, he could probably do it now”.
Another person who Lashley believes could thrive in pro-wrestling is his training partner and former UFC champion, Josh Barnett. “I wrestled Josh before in Japan and had a great match; probably as good if not better than the ones I have with the guys here. Josh is worker, Josh has been wrestling for several years. Josh has no problem with coming into pro-wrestling then going back to fighting. I would love for him to do pro-wrestling in America. I would also love for myself to bring in this squad of MMA fighters, and match them with pro-wrestlers”.
Away from his desire to better incorporate mixed martial arts into pro-wrestling, Lashley has the traditional views about pro-wrestling that you may expect from somebody strongly pushed by Vince McMahon due to embodying what promoters looked for in the 1980s. He believes that the titles have not been properly protected. “This is where the business has fallen down; throwing anybody out there, throwing the title on anyone and the people aren't believing in them”. He also thinks that champions need to look the part. “You get it in airports, where people see these guys, and go “You? You're a wrestler!?!” They're comparing them to people like The Rock and Hulk Hogan, and wonder why the business is full of gymnasts”. It's a broader shift that Lashley has noticed. “Wrestling is changing into indie-wrestling. And that isn't a bad thing – a lot of independent wrestlers have spent years working and now they get a chance to showcase what they do on the big screen”.
Fundamentally, he believes the focus of the industry is in the wrong place. “We're trying to make it fun, trying to make it a show instead of understanding that wrestling is still a sport”. Not for nothing, does he pick Drew Galloway as one of his favourite TNA opponents due to his toughness. “I have that old-school mentality where I want the people I'm against in the ring to be the same people I'd want to have my back in the streets. Because while people can learn all the moves, you need to have that “I don't take shit from anybody” look in your eyes, and Drew is one of those guys. He can make it look like a fight”.
[Crosshead] Back to the Future [/Crosshead]
2016 has seen Bobby Lashley have matches against competitors such as Galloway and Ethan Carter III that were well-received by fans and industry commentators. However to Lashley the highlight of his year was facing Kurt Angle. “It would have to be one of the best experiences I've had in pro-wrestling. There's Wrestle manias and loads of great matches, but I can honestly say that being in the ring with the Kurt had a different feeling for me, was more special than anything else. Because I had looked up to Kurt for so many years, and now I was looking right at him across the ring. It was an incredible experience”.
Lashley had followed Angle's career long before either man had even thought of becoming a pro-wrestler. “Kurt was the one who brought me into pro-wrestling. I watched Kurt win nationals when I was high-school. When I was in college, winning the national championship, I watched Kurt win the Olympics. Afterwards, I saw him when I was training, Kurt was like 'man you've got a great look, you should consider pro-wrestling'”. Remarkably despite this natural relationship, the two men never faced each other in the ring until 2015. “All this time in the same arena, he and I barely touched, which was mind-blowing to me. I always tried to get it together. And, right before his retirement, Kurt wanted to past the torch to me, because he had watched what I had been doing and the progression I had made. He said 'This is the time'”.
Since then, Bobby Lashley has not looked back. TNA has built its title picture around him, and have been richly rewarded for the faith they placed in him. He may not be the workrate king that the likes of AJ Styles or Shinsuke Nakamura are, but as an all round package, he is a very credible candidate for Wrestler of the Year. “It's a fun time for me right now. When you're breaking you have to work as hard as you can – build your name, keep appearing, learn to work the crowd, lots of different things. But right now, I'm at the point where you could take anybody from any place or time, and I would have a great match with them”. Not content with maintaining his strong performance in the pro-wrestling ring, he has further ambitions in mixed martial arts. “I really want to make a hard push in Bellator. Right now there's no heavyweight champion. I'm going to hold that belt or title – that's what I'm going for”.