Bobby Lashley: Vince McMahon Wanted Me To Show Different Layers

During his time in WWE, Bobby Lashley was involved in many different storylines ranging from hitting people with his favorite pose, getting involved in a relationship with a married woman, and aligning with Donald Trump to feud with Vince McMahon. 

Lashley had an extended feud with McMahon over the ECW Championship, which included Vince wearing a durag. 

“I was like, ‘that’s heat.’ He’s like, ‘Check this out.’ He gets it. He gets it,” Lashley said about McMahon while speaking to Chris Van Vliet on Insight. “That’s why I never really questioned anything he does. He put me through some crazy storylines, some very cringey storylines and everything, but I kind of tried to find out why. Sometimes, you go and ask him. ‘Vince, you want me to beat up these three guys dressed as girls called my sisters?’ You tell him that and he goes, ‘Ah. It’s great.’ ‘Are you sure?’ I came in [his office] after they put me with Lio (Rush) and they were doing different things with me. ‘Can you explain to me why we’re doing this?’ He said, ‘Bobby, you are so strict and regimented. You are a super nice guy who everybody loves, but you’re so strict on yourself and so hard on yourself. I want to see different layers of you. I want them to see different layers of you. I’ve seen different layers of you, but we can’t get it on TV because you’re so military. One way of going about that is humility. Sometimes, you have to go and do things that are completely out of your character to be able to get you to different places. I want to see different layers of you.’ ‘I’m going to try.’ Although I couldn’t pull certain things off, I tried. Moving forward, I’ve been working with acting coaches. He said, ‘That’s the greatest thing you can do. You want to be very vulnerable in front of your crowd to be able to gravitate to who you are.’ At that point, yes, I do have a limit to certain thing I would do, but I was very open to a lot.”

Lashley was a multi-time WWE Champion while Vince was in charge of creative. 

Elsewhere during the interview, Lashley explained why he’ll always be grateful to McMahon. You can find his full comments by clicking here. 

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