WWE Raw: Bobby Lashley Needs A Change And He Needs It Fast
“The Destroyer” Bobby Lashley returned to the WWE on the Raw after WrestleMania 34. Lashley had been gone for ten years.
During the decade while he was away from the WWE, Lashley kept very busy. He was winning world championships in TNA/Impact Wrestling and putting together an impressive MMA career, going 15-2.
Prior to leaving WWE in 2008, Lashley had won the ECW championship twice as well as the United States title. Perhaps his biggest accomplishment was being selected as Donald Trump’s representative in the “Battle of the Billionaires” at WrestleMania 23.
When Lashley made his long-awaited return to the WWE, it looked like a can’t-miss scenario. The fans were excited to see him back, especially those that kept up with his career while he was away.
Lashley is marketed as a “destroyer”, but WWE has already destroyed his return.
This is what I believe needs to be changed immediately to salvage his career going forward:
First of all, keep the man away from the microphone at all costs. Lashley has NEVER been a good promo. He’s a classic case of a man whose voice does not match his look whatsoever. He’s soft spoken, which sends the wrong message if you want fans to take you seriously as a “killer”.
Brock Lesnar actually has a similar problem with his promos, but that has been masked by pairing him with Paul Heyman to do his talking for him. Give Lashley a mouth-piece.
Next, he needs a new finishing maneuver.
Lashley has the size, strength, and athleticism to pull off any move imaginable but he currently uses a delayed vertical suplex to put away his opponents. In 2018, a vertical suplex CAN NOT be your finishing move.
Photo Source: WWE.com via Twitter
I understand that he has used moves such as the spear (Roman Reigns uses that now) and the powerslam (Braun Strowman uses that now) to win his matches in the past, but literally ANYTHING is better than a vertical suplex.
Most importantly, Lashley needs to turn heel immediately.
He’s been thrown into a tag team that nobody cares about with Braun Strowman. What’s really baffling to me is why this team wasn’t put together at WrestleMania. Had Lashley been the surprise partner for Strowman instead of Nicholas (which was a complete disgrace to the pro wrestling business as a whole) we may be in a completely different situation with Lashley right now.
Lashley’s return would have been totally unexpected at ‘Mania and we’d have he and Strowman running roughshod over the Raw tag team division right now.
Instead, we have a floundering pairing between the two that seems to be going nowhere fast. I think we need to see Lashley turn on Braun to show that he’s here to kick butt and win championships.
This coming Monday on Raw, Sami Zayn will be calling out Lashley and his three sisters in a segment that will surely end with the crowd booing Lashley. The fans couldn’t care less that Bobby has three sisters. It’s a storyline that will go absolutely nowhere.
When (not if) Lashley defeats Zayn at Money in the Bank, then what? He’ll be in the exact same spot that he is right now, only possibly getting rejected even more by the WWE Universe.
WWE has a potential mega-star in Bobby Lashley. But only if they make some serious changes as soon as possible.