Bobby Lashley On How His WWE Return Came About, Wanting To Face Brock Lesnar
After feuding with Sami Zayn as his first feud since returning to WWE, Bobby Lashley has moved on to Roman Reigns. Lashley will be facing Reigns this Sunday at Extreme Rules. He recently spoke to Boston's 98.5 The Sports Hub about his upcoming encounter with The Big Dog where he talked about how much he's training for this match and how he wants to translate it into a chance to face Brock Lesnar.
"This is like everything to me right now," Lashley said. "To have an opportunity to go against [Roman Reigns] and he is kinda the face of the company and he has been for some time. So the fact I get to wrestle him so soon I mean the preparation is like preparing for a fight.
"You have to be prepared. I know it's sports entertainment but we have to go out there we have to be physically ready and have to have everything in tune to have a great match and that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking to have a great match with him. Not necessarily using him as a stepping stone to get to Brock, but I know that's the guy I have to beat to get to Brock so I wanna have a great match and I want to show that I'm better."
Lashley also went into some detail about his return to WWE. His contract with Impact Wrestling ran out and he was a free agent. It wasn't long before he returned after ten years away from the company. Bobby jokingly said "it was basically me on my hands and knees begging," before explaining how his WWE return actually came about.
"When I was with WWE before I was a big guy throwing people around, power moves then after that when I left WWE I was like 'I still enjoy professional wrestling,' but some of the smaller guys look up at me and say I don't wanna wrestle him I don't wanna get thrown around by that guy.
"When I went to Impact it was me proving myself on a daily basis to a lot of different people. I mean I had matches with Austin Aries, matches with Jeff Hardy, Bobby Roode, Drew McIntyre, I mean I wrestled everyone. During that time I wasn't just sitting back saying, 'man I hope WWE picks me up, I hope they see me, I hope to get back.'"
Lashley credited his hard work and the fact he didn't lose focus along the way to what helped him become a WWE Superstar once again. The 41-year-old said since he never left the public eye and continued working, all WWE needed to do was look him up to see what he was doing which really helped the deal come together.
"It was: I'm gonna prove myself across the board. I'm gonna go out there and fight. I'm gonna show everybody I have the balls to get in the cage and fight at some of the highest levels. I want to show them what I can do in professional wrestling that I'm not just a guy who picks people up and throws them down. I'm a guy who can go in there and have great matches with a lot of different people.
"So I was showing these things every day for the past ten years and on top of that keeping myself in peak physical shape. I'm not covering up. I don't need a t-shirt on to go wrestle. I don't need to cover myself up, because I'm in shape, I bust my ass. The results of what I'm doing are on TV you can just look at me.
"They just had to look, 'what has Bobby been doing this whole time?' — 'Look at this.' So after the interest was there on both sides, it was basically a handshake after that, 'let's make this happen.'"
If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit 98.5 The Sports Hub with a H/T to Wrestling Inc for the transcription