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When Bobby Lashley made the jump from WWE to AEW, he made one thing clear: he preferred to work under Vince McMahon over Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
Now granted, some of this could be personal beef, or a difference in communication styles, or even just an acknowledgment that McMahon always viewed the “All Mighty” as a main event-caliber force, whereas Levesque stuck him in a faction without that upside. But when asked about the two regimes, Lashley has always preferred his time under McMahon and might even still be there today if he was still in power.
Need proof? Well, look no further than Lashley's appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet, where, despite all of the scandals he's currently engulfed in, the Hurt Syndicate leader still celebrated McMahon for helping to put food on thousands of tables.
“You have to have people give you that pull up. That's what I try to do with people right now. At the same time, I always think of the people that gave me the opportunity. Yeah, Vince is going through a whole bunch right now. We understand that, but Vince McMahon has personally fed thousands of thousands of people and people don't understand that,” Lashley explained via Fightful.
“When you have a business like he created, there are so many people right now that, the amount of mouths that he fed and kids that he put through college and houses that he's buying. There is so much and people don't understand that. Yes, there are a lot of bad things going on right now, but because of that business, we have so many people who are able to do things that they probably never had an opportunity to do.”
Goodness, a “whole bunch of stuff” is certainly one way of putting what's happening with the McMahon family right now. Another would be the acknowledgment that, while he has helped people succeed in the wrestling world, it has largely come at the expense of just as many broken dreams.
Bobby Lashley reveals which old friend influenced his move to AEW
Elsewhere during his appearance on Insight, Lashley reveals how Dan Lambert, the former AEW personality and MMA gym owner, helped to influence his decision to join the company, noting that his firsthand experience proved invaluable during the process.
“I have a good friend that was working with AEW before, Dan Lambert. He was in AEW for a while. Dan is one of my favorite people in the world. He helped manage me through fighting and everything. He’s always been a great friend, first and foremost,” Lashley explained via 411 Mania.”I talked to Dan and we discussed different options. I asked him about Tony (Khan) because I didn’t know. ‘What about this Tony guy?’ A lot of things he told me about him, I can respect it. He said, ‘He has a personality like you in a sense where he goes out of his way to be nice to be able. He’s a genuine person.’ He told me pros and cons.”
Though he hasn't been on AEW television since Cody Rhodes was still under contract, Lambert's American Top team angle played a pretty big part in Tony Khan's programming a few years back, both in managing ATT, the “Men of the Year” and in his initial advocacy for Paige VanZant. If Lambert helped to play a role in Lashley coming to AEW, he deserves some credit, more than most fans are willing to offer for his Jim Cornette-lite schtick from 2021.
