Bobby Lashley Says There’s A Lot Of Competition, But He Doesn’t Think WWE Has ‘Serious’ Competition

In an interview with DAZN), Bobby Lashley spoke about WWE’s competition in the wrestling world and while he sees a lot of it, he doesn’t see that competition as a serious threat. Here are highlights:

On the overall landscape in wrestling: “I think it’s great right now. I think there’s a lot of competition. I think we’re doing some big things, and we’re moving into a big season for us, with some big news coming around. I think that it’s a good time to be a wrestling fan, and it’s a good time for a wrestler with a good time to step up for everyone. Everybody always says competition is good. I don’t think really we have any serious competition. But the fans like it, the fans like the fact that there are other things going on that forces us to step up.”

On having two African-American men competing for the WWE Championship during his match with Big E: “I think it was phenomenally. It’s what I try to say when people ask me about the race thing. The biggest thing for me is I like to make sure that it’s a norm. I want to make all these things the norm. Like when I won the title, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re the third African-American, you’re the third black champion, and then Big E was the fourth’. I’m like, ‘We don’t need to put that next to it anymore. It’s just the norm’. I want it to get to the norm with anyone. We don’t want to say, ‘You’re the second African-American, you’re the second Mexican, you’re the second this’. It’s not even about that anymore. I think it’s just making it a norm. Everybody gets the opportunity to win that title. We put in the work. You do the things you have to do. You hustle, and you have the opportunity to win it, and it’s no asterisk by your name. It’s just here’s the guy. Here’s the guy who it is now. I’m glad that we broke those barriers and started to make this a norm. But ultimately, I just wanted to be, ‘Here’s your champion, period’.”

On the lack of black WWE champions until recently: “I think what it does is it gives an opportunity moving forward for there to be more. Everybody has that same opportunity. I think some of the other guys are gonna be excited because they have that opportunity to step up and win that title. And when they do, it’s just gonna keep adding on. So I’m not disappointed. Because if you look at our roster, right now, we have a lot of African-American or black guys on the roster that can step up and potentially win a world title. So when they have the opportunity to do what they need to do and get to where they need to get, they’ll be there. They’ll have that opportunity.”