Bobby Lashley On GFW Taking The Title Off Alberto El Patron, Concussions In Combat Sports, Ric Flair
Bobby Lashley spoke to Real Sport just ahead of his match against Matt Sydal at Destination X. Here are some of the highlights:
GFW suspending and stripping the title off Alberto El Patron:
"I don't think it says anything about the company. We're all individuals. If we go out there and do something we have to hold ourselves accountable for the things that we do. The company has to do what they have to do. It's an unfortunate situation; I don't know all of the details because I try to stay out of that. My business and my contract says for me to be a performer and do that part ? not to do any of the backstage or office stuff. The one things I do know is, who needs the title? That's me. Give me my title back. I could care less what's going on with him. I'm just here to compete and now there's an open title. That's what I'm focused on."
Ric Flair:
"I've been traveling so I don't really know what's going on with Ric but as far as what he's done in this sport ? he's a pioneer of this sport. You can't say professional wrestling and not have name like Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan and Rock, some of those names. It's sad to hear that he's going through this right now but it's the Nature Boy? the guy survived a plane crash! He's one of the toughest guys both inside and outside of the ring and he's a person everybody looks up to. We're all pulling for him and I hope everything goes well."
Concussions in combat sports and if he's ever had any:
"I've had no documented concussions. I try to take care of myself as much as possible. One thing you gotta take into consideration is that it's professional wrestling and you know it going in. There's dangers to every profession and our particular profession concussions is one thing. I can go and fight, take one punch and have a concussion and start having issues with it or I can wrestle my entire career and never have a concussion. It's just a hazard of the business. I don't think it's gonna slow down because it's too big right now. If anything I think they may think of way to safeguard it a little more but professional wrestling has been around forever and it's just what we do. If you start taking that way then you're gonna start going across the board. My ex-girlfriend was a cheerleader and they say cheerleading is the most dangerous sport out there. If you do your research, it'll say there's more cheerleading accidents than any other sport. Are we gonna stop cheerleading because there's concussions in there? Then you gotta look at rugby, and even soccer. Soccer guys are running into each other, you take one good fall on the ground and he's concussed so would you have soccer players wear helmets? These are some of the things that we can find out that there are these problems in different areas and we can do whatever we can to prevent those problems but some problems are just inevitable. It's combat sports, it's gonna happen. There's always gonna be fighting, there's always gonna be wrestling, always gonna be football, always gonna rugby, cheerleading. ...There's always gonna be all these different things. The best things we can do is look at prevention and find some ways to detect it a little bit sooner. That's the only thing we can do to lessen the big problems."
You can read the full interview by clicking here.