Corey Graves welcomed Bobby Lashley to this week’s episode of the “After The Bell” podcast.
Before the main interview, Wade Barrett talked about doing commentary every week:
“I love it. I’ve said it time and time again. I’m enjoying my time as a commentator more than I ever enjoyed my time in the ring, You’re really fortunate to get one career in this industry. I’m aware my in-ring run lasted a long time, had a lot of fun, scratched a lot of the itches I had, and achieved the majority of the things I wanted to achieve. But I would say this, you’re super, super lucky if you get a second bite of the cherry and get a chance to have another run, another career in this industry and be around this crazy wild circus that we have, you’re incredibly lucky.”
“At this time I just have so much fun being completely in control of me. I’m not waiting for somebody in management to say, ‘Okay, wait, tonight you get to take on this guy.’ I’m not waiting for those opportunities that guys are constantly scrambling for. I know what my role is. I know every week I’m going to be sat next to Michael Cole. I’m going to be calling the action. Occasionally I get to sit next to Kevin Patrick too which was a real treat. I like knowing what my role is. I also like the fact that I have no one to blame but myself. If I have a good night, you know what? I prepped really well. I thought about my angles and I nailed it tonight. If I have a bad night, once again, it’s my fault. I’m not blaming someone in management. I’m not saying, ‘Why do they keep making me compete against that guy? Why do they keep, you know, not giving me the prime opportunity?’ So it’s all on me now and I feel like sink or swim and with my personality type, I handle that a lot better than relying on other people to give me opportunities.”
Bobby Lashley on aligning himself with the Street Profits:
“I saw myself in them. That was the first part. The second part is every time when I talk with them, it was always a good conversation, that phone conversation, and I was like, you guys doing the same thing that I did. You’re having a good time. You love being here. Everything about you is the same thing that I was going through. I was like, man, if we’re going to start making some waves around here, I need some good allies, and those guys seem like good allies. I think there’s a few other guys that can probably look to step their game up a little bit, but I think those guys have a little privilege that maybe the Profits don’t.”
On Angelo Dawkins:
“He’s kind of a sleeper. I had a talk with him last week and I was like, ‘Bro, do you realize what you have?’ He’s six-five. He’s a big dude. He makes everybody in our group look small, but he wrestles smaller. I’m like, ‘Nah, man. I understand that you want to go out there and have good matches and fun matches and show people different things, but I think at the end of the day, you need to just start killing people and crushing people.'”
“There’s a level and there’s a way a big guy wrestles a little bit different than some of the smaller guys. I think the smaller guys go after the bigger guys saying that they’re not great workers because they can’t do moonsault and dives and everything like that. There’s a need for everybody in the business. If everybody was doing that, if you have guys at the current Cruiserweight division doing choke slams, then that makes no sense. I’m not saying that Dawkins has to be out there choke slamming and powerbombing people, but he’s a big dude. He should be able to put a lot more thump onto people and it should be harder for people to knock him down. There’s not a need for him to do certain things in there, I don’t think. I think for him just to grab a hold of somebody and throw him down and then go on from there and be him as opposed to try to be someone else just to have a quote unquote, cool match with someone, and I think he’s already there. I I think everything that he has is very solid and I think that there are certain things that I’m having him kind of tweak here and tweak there, but I think he’s going to be that kind of monster that we need for the group.”
On why he wears suits:
“We’re stars. We get paid a lot of money. If you go to an NBA game and you see these guys, they’re like walking down the carpet. They’re like walking down the runway. You know, these guys are dressed to the nine and everything like that. I was like, we should be the same way. When we walk through the airport, it shouldn’t be the guys with the basketball shorts on a ripped up T-shirt. I was like, ‘Oh, those are pro wrestlers.’ No, bro, that’s not it. We need to hold ourselves with a level of respect because our company is big and we’re global and I want people to look at us in a certain way. I love sweats better than anyone else, but when you see me in public places, or you see me in a place walking to the building, walking from the building, going through the airports, everything like that, somebody that if they never watched wrestling before, they’re gonna say, ‘He’s gotta be somebody. Who is that’, and that in turn brings more people into watching or finding out or coming up to you and it’s like, oh, you’re a professional wrestler. Oh, you’re on Friday nights. Oh man, I’m gonna tune in to see that. You know, we’re thinking about growing the company and building this company so we have to look the part also.”
What goals he still wants to accomplish:
“The thing that I do want is to win the WWE Championship again. I’d like to be able to win a tag title. The tag title gives me the Triple Crown.”
On how much longer he will be wrestling:
“I tell my sparring partners, I tell my training partners, and I tell anybody that works out with me, when you see that I’m missing a step or slowing down a little bit, just tell me. I mean, because you see a lot of times those guys that are fighting in the UFC or boxing or something, and they take that one fight too many. It’s almost sad. Or you see those guys get in the ring and they just can’t move the same, it’s sad. He kind of loses that a little bit. I don’t want to be that guy. It’s like when Superman gets that kryptonite, you see Superman kind of falling apart and becoming weak. I don’t need that. I put myself financially in a very, very good position that it’s not for the money. It’s for my enjoyment. I mean, I truly love going out there and being in front of the crowd and being in front of fans and stuff like that really gets me up and I really like some of the guys that I work with.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit After The Bell with Corey Graves with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
