During a recent interview with Sporting News, Bobby Lashley commented on working with The Hurt Business on RAW, the comparisons to the Nation of Domination, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On doing The Hurt Business at this stage of his career: “It’s a blast, man. Probably one of my favorite times in my entire career because this is real. There have been angles before that people don’t believe but this one is authentic. MVP, Shelton and Cedric flew into Denver, where I’m at, just to see my suit guy. It’s freezing out here! But they wanted to come out here and hang out. Wrestlers don’t normally do this. These are my friends. I’ve known MVP for maybe 18 years now. I knew Sheldon in college when we wrestled against each other. We all see ourselves in Cedric and we have a lot of knowledge we are passing along to him. One time, Cedric came into the building and he had his suit on a hanger. MVP stopped him and asked why his suit was on a hanger. He needed to put it on because the suit is what we are about. It’s not a character we just do on TV. It’s who we are. We are professionals.”
On comparisons to the Nation of Domination: “My first thought was, “Thank you!” But that’s not who we were. Because you see a group of Black guys, some people immediately associate them with another group of Black guys. I love what The Nation did but that’s not what we’re about at all. But we are totally different. It’s not about black and white; we are about green and gold. We are thugs in suits because we have a hardcore style but want to look good doing it. We wanted to show a different representation of Black men because we haven’t seen that. We are four professional Black men who can mess you up. That’s what we’re all about.”
On the angle with Lana and Rusev: “It happened so quick. When I was introduced to it, I was told what to do and … (groans). I didn’t understand the magnitude of it. But the one thing I did know was that I was doing something different. And you can say whatever you want about Lana but she was 100 percent committed and invested in that character. I felt awkward doing it. I’m always in fight mode but it was good to pull me out of that mode. But I needed to relax and just have fun with it. I loosened up because I knew we were trying to entertain people. I understood that, even though I didn’t originally like the idea and ended up being cool with it. It’s not comfortable for me but I understood the lesson I was being taught.”
