Evan Luebbe

Lashley’s run could culminate with a WWE Championship victory in the near future. Bobby Lashley is more determined than ever to do everything in his power to turn 2021 into his year. “I know that my finish line is soon. I won’t be here for another 10 or 15 years like Ricochet or Cedric. I’m running to the finish line, and I’m hitting it hard. This is the year for me.” At 44 years old, Lashley knows every night he has in the ring could legitimately be his last, so he is looking to take advantage of the fact that his good friend MVP has helped him as well as the rest of The Hurt Business become top draws in WWE.

15 years ago, Lashley made a promise to himself that he would become WWE Champion. Now in 2021, that appears very possible and realistic. Bobby is currently the United States Champion and is set to defend his title on February 21 at Elimination Chamber in a triple threat match against Keith Lee and Riddle.

Prior to that, Lashley returned to WWE on Monday Night Raw the night after WrestleMania 34 in April 2018 after having been gone from the company for 10 years. While he was away, he significantly improved in terms of wrestling – most notably in TNA/Impact – as well as MMA fighting in Bellator. Lashley finally feels ready to have the responsibility of carrying the company on his shoulders.

The time Bobby spent with Lio Rush in late 2018 – early 2019, being presented in somewhat of a comedic form (becoming a two-time Intercontinental Champion in the process) did wonders in terms of reacquainting him with the WWE universe after a decade away. People started to remember who Bobby Lashley was.

“The world title, that’s been my priority since I came back. That has not changed. When I returned to WWE, I came in and paid respect to the guys who were here.” That’s a good attitude – pay your dues, even if you have been with the company previously. “Ever since, I have been focused on taking steps to show I am the guy.”

A scenario could be easily envisioned for Lashley to become a contender for the WWE Championship following the Elimination Chamber Pay-Per-View heading into WrestleMania 37 (even if this were to happen, Roman Reigns would still be the main event, presumably with Royal Rumble winner Edge as his challenger). In this hypothetical scenario, Lashley would drop the United States Championship to either Riddle or Keith Lee (without being pinned) and put one of them over. This would free Lashley of a title so he could go after whoever comes out of the Elimination Chamber as WWE Champion.

Lashley is interested in a potential showdown with Drew McIntyre because he believes McIntyre has an “old-school” mentality. The two men have had matches together before and were also tag team partners for a short time. Their mentalities also differ. McIntyre was “The Chosen One,” while Lashley takes a more workmen-like approach towards life in general. Brock Lesnar could be a great possibility to make this potential Mania match a triple threat. Brock is always a possibility until the last minute because he has been inserted at the last minute before.

For right now, Bobby is taking his run as United States Champion (which has already lasted five months) seriously. WWE is working to continue to present him in a realistic manner so that his work is viewed as authentic. He is currently set to defend his title against two superstars in Lee and Riddle who have both been on the main roster in WWE for less than a year. “I thought the United States title was perceived for a long time as just another title, but it has so many great names behind it. I am legit as it gets, and I have a lot of pride in defending this title, especially against guys like Riddle and Lee. Riddle’s ideal for a Fight Pit, and I would love to do something like that for the US title.” A little backstory: Riddle’s last match in NXT came in June last year against Timothy Thatcher in the Fight Pit. Thatcher has had another match in the structure since then.

Lashley offered a unique perspective when asked by Sports Illustrated about The Undertaker saying on the Joe Rogen Experience podcast that the current WWE product is “a little soft.” Bobby somewhat agreed (so do I for that matter) saying, “Years ago when I was on the roster and we were on the road, if you ran into trouble, you knew the people with you would scrap and fight for you. This roster, you don’t know. We hardly even travel anymore. Back in the day, we used to always get tested on the road. It was so different back then. If you didn’t toughen up, you were out. I don’t think this roster would allow that to happen. It’s a different time now. That’s why what we are doing with The Hurt Business is so unique. We wanted to be different, and we were determined to capture that ground-and-pound, old-school fights style. There is no one else like us.”

Lashley and MVP, who are longtime friends from their days in WWE together from 2005 – 2008, began planting the seeds for the inception of The Hurt Business back at the 2020 Royal Rumble. MVP made his return to the company originally for a one-off appearance so his son could see him wrestle.

He and Bobby Lashley started talking backstage about ideas and angles they could do together for television, and that led to MVP appearing on Monday Night Raw the following night so his son could see his father Bobby Lashley in a match with his favorite wrestler – Rey Mysterio. It turned into a full – length contract with WWE. It’s hard to get the business completely out of your life once you get a taste of the feeling of being immersed in the energy of so many other people – who are just reflections of yourself.

Here is what Bobby Lashley had to say about MVP: “We have been friends for a long time. That extends beyond wrestling. We worked together outside of WWE, and he would come to some of my fights in Bellator. That’s the kind of friend he is. It was great that he came back to WWE (Rumble 2020), and he wanted to do a one-off at the Rumble so his son could see him wrestle. After that, we started talking. I thought he had so much more left. I said to him, ‘Let’s do something together,’ and that’s how it all started,” Bobby (the formation of The Hurt Business).

Bobby Lashley’s career is flourishing since the creation of The Hurt Business, with MVP as the mouthpiece, Shelton Benjamin as Bobby contemporary right around the same age, and Cedric Alexander as the young upstart who could one day be the face of WWE. However, Lashley would be ignorant not to recognize the fact that his career is much closer to the end than the beginning. He is using his old-school mentality to get the absolute most out of his final stretch in WWE by becoming a world champion.

Braun Strowman left WWE immediately following Survivor Series in November 2020 take time to heal from a knee injury (according to kayfabe Adam Pearce suspended The Monster Among Men for putting his hands on a WWE official). Strowman made his return to WWE programming at Royal Rumble 2021 – entering the Royal Rumble match at number 30 and eliminating three superstars before being eliminated himself – but has not appeared on TV since.

It has recently come to light that the reason for Braun’s absence since the Rumble has been because of an infection which spread to his bloodstream, but fortunately he has taken antibiotics and gotten the infection under control. The infection did, however, cause The Monster to lose about 15 pounds in five days. I know this feeling myself because I had a staph infection in my back when I was 15 years old. Not fun at all.

It will be interesting to see where Braun Strowman lands on the WrestleMania 37 card after becoming Universal Champion for the first time last year (as a substitute for Roman Reigns). One would wholeheartedly assume that he might be a major part of the event on April 10 and 11^th at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa (same venue as Super Bowl LV) considering what he did last year. However, before winning the Universal Title as a replacement last year, Strowman did not have a very prominent role at Mania the previous three years. His biggest WrestleMania moment up until last year was winning the RAW Tag Team Championship with a 10-year-old kid named Nicholas.

Colby Lopez was trained by Danny Daniels and made his professional wrestling debut in 2005 at age 19 in the Iowa independent scene under the ring name Gixx but that was changed after just a few months to Tyler Black. The first major promotion he joined was NWA Midwest, where he won the tag team championship, and also made a one-off appearance in TNA in 2006. 2008 was the year when Black’s wrestling career legitimately got off the ground. In 2007, he began performing for Full Impact Pro (FIP) and won the promotion’s World Heavyweight Championship in December 2008, while also capturing the Pro Wrestling Guerrilla Tag Team Championship with Jimmy Jacobs.

Tyler Black was best known for his time with independent promotion Ring of Honor (ROH) before signing with WWE in 2010. He came to ROH in 2007 as part of the Age of the Fall stable, and their segment at ROH’s pay-Per-View in September 2007 was so controversial that the footage was removed from the event before it aired (the segment involved the hanging of Jay Briscoe with a “noose”).

Black and Jimmy Jacobs won the ROH World Tag Team Championship twice and spent much of 2008 with the titles. After getting several opportunities at the ROH World Championship in 2008 and 2009, Black won the 2009 Survival of the Fittest Tournament, thus giving him one more match for the title. At Final Battle 2009 – ROH’s first live Pay-Per-View – Tyler Black wrestled Austin Aries to a 60-minute time limit draw. Because of this, the commissioner at the time Jim Cornette booked a rematch between the two men, then another in which Black finally captured the ROH World Championship in early 2010.

He was champion for 210 days until he left ROH for WWE and posted seven successful title defenses. Black signed with WWE in August 2010 and debuted the following month as Seth Rollins. His first major feud with Dean Ambrose was orchestrated in 2011, which planted some early seeds for the formation of The Shield about a year later. Rollins entered the Gold Rush Tournament to determine the first NXT Champion after FCW was rebranded to NXT in August 2012 (led by Jim Ross among others). He defeated Jinder Mahal in the finals of the tournament on August 29, 2012 to become the first ever NXT Champion. What was perhaps most impressive about that title reign was that Rollins was able to continue to defend the title even while simultaneously making a name for himself on the main roster with The Shield. He finally dropped the NXT title to Big E Langston in January 2013.

Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, and Roman Reigns made their debut on the WWE main roster in November 2012 at Survivor Series. What is so ironic is that Ambrose was originally the leader, yet he is the only one not with the company presently. The Shield had their first match on the main roster at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2012 in a victory over Daniel Bryan and Kane (Team Hell No) and Ryback. Each member of The Shield won titles while the group was together and they won both WrestleMania matches as a stable. Their most significant rivalry came during their final months together as a group when they engaged in a rivalry with the recently reformed Evolution (Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista).

In fairness, a few months before that there was also a fantastic six-man tag match between The Shield and The Wyatt Family. Rollins turned on his Shield brothers on the June 2, 2014 episode of Monday Night Raw and won the Money in the Bank ladder match shortly after that with assistance from Kane. In October 2014 Rollins delivered a memorable performance with Dean Ambrose inside (and outside) Hell in a Cell; Seth delivered another incredible performance at Royal Rumble 2015 in a triple threat WWE World Heavyweight Championship match against Brock Lesnar and John Cena. A few months later in March 2015 at WrestleMania 31, Rollins became the first man to ever cash-in the Money in the Bank contract when he used it during the match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar to turn it into a triple threat match and win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship (after Rollins had already participated in a match against Randy Orton earlier in the night).

Seth Rollins held the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for over seven months until he suffered a gruesome knee injury in which he pretty much blew out his entire knee at a house show for WWE in Dublin, Ireland on November 4, 2015 in a title match against Kane. He attended a sunset left into a buckle bomb which he has done religiously for years. Even though the title reign was cut short, it still did its job of ensuring that Rollins would be a pivotal part of the future of WWE. He headlined SummerSlam with John Cena and in the process became the first WWE superstar to hold the United States Championship and the WWE Championship simultaneously.

Rollins was treated well by the company in terms of booking on his return in 2016 and was the first overall pick in the 2016 WWE draft in July of that year. At SummerSlam in August, he was put in a match with the debuting Finn Balor to determine the first Universal Champion but was defeated in the match. A rivalry throughout the remainder of 2016 with Kevin Owens/Chris Jericho kept Rollins busy until a feud with Triple H was kickstarted to keep both men occupied through WrestleMania 33. Rollins defeated Triple H at Mania in 2017, which served as the payoff to the long history between both men as Triple H served as a mentor to Rollins since This Shield originally split in 2014.

The Shield reunited temporarily in 2017, and in February 2018 Rollins lasted over an hour in a gauntlet match on Monday Night Raw, earning him the longest performance in a match by any wrestler in the history of the program (since 1993). This was the official start of the Monday Night Rollins gimmick and he also pinned the top two superstars in WWE in Roman Reigns and John Cena. This gimmick lasted until January 2019 when Rollins won the Royal Rumble and set his sights on Brock Lesnar and the Universal Championship. 2018 for Rollins was good for multiple reigns with the Intercontinental Championship, however. He captured the Universal Championship from Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 35.

The Beastslayter delivered a phenomenal match with AJ Styles at Money in the Bank in May 2019 before defeating Lesnar again at SummerSlam 2019 in August in Toronto, Canada. His next notable appearance came at Hell in a Cell in October against The Fiend in a match that was received very poorly. However, The Fiend managed to capture the Universal Championship a few weeks later at the Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia. After this losing of the title for Rollins, WWE recognized that the WWE universe was becoming disillusioned with his character, so the company decided to lean into it and present him in unlikable fashion after Survivor Series 2019. Seth Rollins began to call himself “The Monday Night Messiah” and formed a stable with AOP and Murphy.

Rollins and Murphy won the RAW Tag Team Championship (Rollins’ record sixth time holding the titles) in 2020 and the Monday Night Messiah engaged in a very personal rivalry with Kevin Owens which culminated at WrestleMania 36. The most memorable match he participated in during 2020 was a physical encounter with Drew McIntyre at Money in the Bank in May for the WWE Championship in which Rollins was unsuccessful. He took a hiatus in November after Survivor Series (in which he sacrificed himself “for the greater good”) to go on paternity leave with his fiancée Becky Lynch. Their first child, Roux, was born in December and The Messiah has just returned to SmackDown, where he was drafted in October 2020.

Starting in the summer 2020, Adam Pearce was promoted by WWE to be an on-screen authority figure. In that role, the single biggest storyline he has been a part of is one starting in January 2021 with Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman which is still playing out to a certain degree. Pearce has made a few other sporadic on-screen appearances for WWE since 2018 and has served as a trainer/producer with the company since 2013.

He first worked as a guest coach and trainer for WWE in December 2013. Pearce made several more appearances for WWE in the same role throughout 2014 and worked as a producer on WWE’s NXT Takeover: R Evolution event in December of that year, making him the first unsigned independent contractor to produce live WWE programming. This marked a major shift for the company in terms of its willingness to get involved with other talent not necessarily contracted with WWE. Pearce began working with the company in 2013 but was not hired as a full-time trainer/producer until 2015.

Prior to WWE, Adam Pearce carved out a fantastic 18-year career for himself in professional wrestling from 1996 – 2014. He made appearances for promotion all throughout the world, including in TNA and Mexico, but most notably won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship five times with the National Wrestling Alliance between 2006 and 2014. Pearce also won the NWA British Commonwealth Heavyweight Championship as well as the NWA Heritage Championship from Sean Waltman (X-Pac) on two different occasions in 2006 – 2007. He was also inducted into the NWA Hall of Fame in 2015, a crowning achievement.

He served as the head booker for Ring of Honor (ROH) for a couple years when he was signed to the company from 2005 – 2010. This experience gave Pearce a wealth of experience that has served him very well – he also gained the largest amount of exposure from a television perspective to an extremely wide audience, so his time in ROH was valuable. Pearce additionally made his New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) in 2005 and made an appearance in the Tokyo Dome.

One final major independent promotion Adam Pearce made a significant impact for is Pro Wrestling Guerilla (PWG). He became their second ever world champion, winning the title in February 2004 from Frankie Kazarian and losing the title to the same man that same year in July. He also made several appearances for the WWF between 1997 – 1999 as an enhancement talent being noticed by Terry Taylor.

Unfortunately, Taylor moved to WCW shortly after that and Pearce was contacted by Paul Orndorff. After attending the WCW Power Plant several times for tryouts and being offered a developmental deal with WCW, Pearce declined claiming that it was not a viable option for him to move to Atlanta. This may have been true but he also claimed later that the management and booking strategy within WCW seemed “disorganized and chaotic”– which may be somewhat true as many others have said the exact same thing, not that it matters anymore because that company has not existed for 20 years.

He also worked for Bert Kapitzke’s Alternative Wrestling Show (AWS) in Southern California. He became the head booker of the promotion and this was the first time Pearce was awarded the opportunity to book matches for any promotion, even before ROH. AWS improved dramatically as far as attendance was concerned, and a large part of that was due to the booking decisions made during that period by Pearce.

Looking back, it’s a miracle that Pearce was able to forge a career in professional wrestling at all, because even though he was a standout baseball and football player in high school, he suffered from Acute Muscular Compartment Syndrome in both of his lower legs and underwent surgery. As a result he had to “pretty much learn how to walk all over again” and stopped playing sports. During his time not playing sports he met Sonny Rogers and Randy Ricci, who ended up training Pearce in professional wrestling. In hindsight, this syndrome for Pearce back in the day might be looked at as the best thing that ever happened to him because it spelled out that baseball nor football was the right career path, and professional wrestling was. It simply showed Adam the right career path.

John “Bradshaw” Layfield grew up in Sweetwater, Texas, and was a pretty damn good football player at Abilene Christian University in the same state as well as becoming a coach for the football team at Trinity Valley community college. For a brief period, Layfield attempted to pursue an NFL career by signing with the Los Angeles Raiders before the 1990s season but was released before the regular season started. He began pursuing a career in professional wrestling in 1992 and made it to WWF in 1995.

Bradshaw’s partner Ron Simmons (Faarooq) played college football at Florida State from 1977 – 1980 as a nose guard on the defensive line under Bobby Bowden (the greatest coach in program history). Simmons was considered at the time to be a huge victory in 1977 in the recruiting process. The Seminoles won back-to-back Orange Bowls in both Simmons’ junior and senior seasons at Florida State University.

Florida State posted a record of 39 – 8 in Simmons’ four seasons. Simmons also described Bobby Bowden as “a second father.” He finished in the top 10 in the voting for the Heisman Trophy in 1979 (Junior year) and his jersey number was retired by FSU in 1988. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2008 and is in my mind easily one of the 3 – 5 greatest players in Florida State history, albeit I was not alive for it.

Ron Simmons had a brief career in the NFL, being selected by the Cleveland Browns in the sixth round of the 1981 NFL draft. He was affiliated with the Browns in 1981 and 1982 but never actually dressed for regular season games. Simmons also played for the Ottawa Rough Riders in 1981. He subsequently left for the USFL’s Tampa Bay for three seasons from 1983 – 1985. During this time, Lex Luger was on the roster and seriously contemplating going into wrestling, and this planted a seed in Simmons’ mind. When his five-year football career was finished, he decided to follow Luger’s trail and legitimately try to get into wrestling as well.

Simmons started his professional wrestling career in 1986 in Jim Crockett Promotions/WCW, and the biggest moment of his entire career there was on August 2, 1992 when he won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship from Big Van Vader and became the first African-American world champion in professional wrestling history (the tag team Doom with Butch Reed, who recently passed away, a few years before that was also pretty popular).

Ron Simmons made it to the WWF in 1996 and was given the name Faarooq, which he was skeptical at first but made it work. He was assigned to The Nation of Domination as the leader, but the role of the leader of the group quickly was turned over to The Rock (who was Rocky Maivia before being assigned to the group by WWE creative). The Nation of Domination storyline was a thing until 1998 and the idea for the group was based largely on the Nation of Islam as well as the Black Panther Party which was popularized during the Vietnam War.

Being kicked out of The Nation of Domination in favor of The Rock as the leader was ironically the greatest thing that ever happened to Farooq as he was paired with John “Bradshaw” Layfield. The two men developed incredible chemistry together as the APA lasted as a tag team until 2004. Each man developed legitimate love and caring for the other which is a beautiful thing. Farooq was nearing the end of his career at 46 years old by the time the team split in ‘04, but JBL went on to win the WWE Championship in 2004 and hold the title for 280 days, which was a SmackDown record at the time (that has since been broken by AJ Styles).

The mutual love and respect Ron Simmons and JBL have for one another is reminiscent of the relationship The New Day members have currently. Both teams worked together for six years, and both teams are best friends in real life. Fans legitimately can feel intuitively/energetically how the members of a tag team feel about each other and whether they have mutual respect between one another, and these two teams do.

There are generational differences – for example, the APA were part of an era that wholeheartedly embraced the idea of men being rugged/rough around the edges, and they were the perfect example of that image. The New Day is part of a generation that is a little softer in terms of this – it’s not necessarily bad, just very different. One similarity, however, is the amount of love and respect between the two teams which is ultimately the intangible glue that is never going to go out of style no matter the values that are embraced across different generations.

Owens has also won championships in other promotions such as IWS in Canada and All American Wrestling (AAW).

Kevin Steen was born in 1984 and grew up in Marieville, Québec, Canada. He was trained by Terry Taylor as his primary trainer as well as a few other people like Jacques Rougeau. He made his professional wrestling debut in 2000 on his 16^th birthday. Kevin’s first language was French, and the way he learned English was by mimicking everything he heard on Monday Night Raw. He was inspired by the WrestleMania XI match between Shawn Michaels and Diesel for the WWF (at the time) Championship, and that is what finally caused the epiphany in his mind and the realization of “I want to do this for a living.” This is the story according to Kevin.

Steen wrestled for Jacques Rougeau’s wrestling promotion for the first several years of his career until he started to get his career off the ground. When he (sort of) graduated from his trainer’s promotion, he signed with IWS (International Wrestling Syndicate) based out of Montréal in 2003 and stayed there until 2009, establishing his footing within the industry. There were also stints in Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) from 2004 – 2006, 2008, and 2014.

Kevin Steen achieved most of his success in wrestling pre-WWE in Ring of Honor (ROH) from 2007 – 2014 and in Pro Wrestling Guerilla (PWG, Excalibur of AEW is one of the founders). He held the ROH World Championship for the better part of 2012 as well as held the ROH World Tag Team Championship on one occasion throughout his seven-year tenure with the company. Steen has held the PWG world championship a record three times as well as the PWG World Tag Team Championship three times. Based on these metrics, Kevin experienced more success in PWG across two separate stints from 2005 – 2008 and 2010 – 2014.

For his entire career until signing with WWE in 2014, he wrestled under his biological name – Kevin Steen – before changing the name to Kevin Owens for WWE. His son was named Owen after the late Owen Hart. Owens has experienced great success in WWE as a former NXT Champion in 2015, a former Universal Champion in 2016 – 17, a two-time Intercontinental Champion as well as a three-time United States Champion. Kevin’s most prominent WWE storyline came in 2016 – 17 when he was Universal Champion, but more importantly than that the storyline with Chris Jericho and their friendship caught fire.

“The List” became the most talked about phenomenon in the company, as Jericho appeared on ESPN and was asked about it constantly. Owens told a deeper story that resonated with the WWE universe again in 2020 leading to WrestleMania with Seth Rollins by incorporating each man’s history in the WWE Performance Center. The Messiah does not have a whole lot because he got started in WWE for the most part before the PC was built in 2013 as he debuted on the main roster in 2012.

The WWE universe is aware that Kevin Owens is not afraid of heights and he has no second thought when it comes to jumping off any surface no matter how high. The most recent example of this was at Royal Rumble 2021 in which he jumped off a forklift onto Roman Reigns. Another example occurred at WrestleMania 36 when he jumped off the WrestleMania sign onto Seth through the announce table.

Kevin was thinking about jumping off the pirate ship at Raymond James Stadium when he heard Mania would take place there last year, but it got moved to the WWE Performance Center. Now that WrestleMania 37 is set to emanate from the stadium in 2021, Owens will have the opportunity to make good on his promise by jumping off the pirate ship in the venue.