Bobby Lashley On How Angle With Lana Helped Him Grow As A Character

WWE booked Bobby Lashley and Lana in a romantic storyline that involved him stealing the Ravishing Russian from Rusev. That angle was one of the hottest stories as the company exited 2019 and embarked into 2020. Looking back, Lashley is appreciative of what that angle gave him to grow from.

Bobby Lashley recently spoke to The Wrap where he said that the storyline he had with Lana helped his character in WWE grow. It helped him “chill out” and have some fun. He was able to use that experience and build on it to help him achieve his current success.

“Look, I’ve been in the business for about 17 years. And there’s a lot of people that watch the business for years. But there’s only a few people that have been like a crucial figure in the business for a long time…I talked to people about it when I came back into wrestling and everybody knows my character. They know Bobby is tough, Bobby was in the military, Bobby has that wrestling national champion place in the world. So I’m a machine in that sense. But the one thing that I’ve never been able to do is just relax. And I think a lot of those storylines I did at the beginning were to really make me chill out and relax. This is a different day and age.”

“Even though my character is rough, still I’m able to enjoy it a lot more. Before I was so machine, so locked in. It’s like, ‘Here, let’s throw in some storylines over here to make him feel completely uncomfortable and to be able to relax and then be able to come into something.’ And when I say that, I say that because a lot of the people looking at it got pissed off about it. I was going into it and I was a little taken back. But then when I sat back and I actually realized, because I had a talk with Vince, and he told me, ‘Man, I want you to just go out there and have fun.’ And that was one thing that you have to do.”

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“A lot of times when you tell somebody to go out there and have fun, that’s not going to resonate, that’s not going to sink in. Then you have a bunch of us just beating people up even more. But to be able to loosen up, this is entertainment. We’re fighting, but it’s entertainment. So in order to have entertainment, you have got to be able to loosen up. Because the crowd can feel where you’re coming from. And even though I went into this real dastardly, mean character, people could feel it because I’m able to get in more touch with — I don’t want to say emotions and go straight into acting — but into that, just relaxing and having fun with the character. So I think everything that I did led me up to where I am now. So I think everything helped.”

A great career in WWE has several twists and turns. There are many different stories in Bobby Lashley’s future even after his reign as WWE Champion is over. Obviously, he doesn’t intend on that happening anytime soon, but you never know what can happen on the road to WrestleMania.