Yes, yes, strange headline, I know, but bare with me for a second. In short, Bobby Lashley credits Paul Heyman for booking him in a way that the WWE Creative writing team struggled early into his career.
As WWE’s current top Executive Director of Monday Night Raw (in other words, the head booker and matchmaker), Paul Heyman has been booking Bobby Lashley more recently as Lana’s (as she calls him) “hot boyfriend” onscreen.
This is not the first time that Mr. Paul E. Dangerously has worked so closely with Mr. Lashley. Some may recall that Lashley won the ECW World Championship right before Heyman left WWE in at the end of 2006, but they worked together even further than that.
As Lashley recalls in a new interview with Justin Barasso over at Sports Illustrated that Heyman first met with Lashley back when he was still training in OVW (at the time, WWE’s developmental brand) in 2004.
It was at this time that WWE Creative thought that Lashley “should be like Mr. T and run around like, ‘I pity the fool!’ But that’s not me,” The All Mighty man recalled in the interview. “And that’s why Paul wanted to sit down and talk.”
Rather than guess what kind of person Lashley was or steer towards the Mr. T pitch that the writing team was pushing for, Heyman instead asked to get breakfast with Lashley so he could get to know the man personally and understand how he should approach Lashley’s character.
After a four hour chat, Heyman was able to walk away from the future ECW Champion thinking “I get this guy,” per Lashley’s own words, and Lashley credits Heyman with getting him over as a character and wrestler in a short amount of time down in OVW.
Now, Heyman continues to get Lashley over during his feud with Rusev.