It is one of those things that wrestling fans have always talked about. Who is the toughest guy in the business? There’s really no way of knowing that for sure, but for most of the last 20 years people would say Brock Lesnar since he is (cue Paul Heyman voice) a former NCAA Heavyweight Champion, a WWE/Universal Champion and a UFC Heavyweight Champion as well. Due to Lesnar’s success in MMA (a 5-3-1 record) as one of the biggest draws in UFC history, it’s easy to pick Lesnar as the toughest. Plus, he was willing to fight Jon Jones, which is probably never going to happen now due to out of the ring issues for both.
With all due respect to Lesnar, there are some people that would dispute that Lesnar claim and that includes former WWE star/current Impact Wrestling star Bobby Lashley. While Lashley has never fought in UFC before, he has a 15-2 record in his career and is 5-0 in Bellator. The competition he faced isn’t at the same level as Lesnar, but the record speaks for itself.
In an interview with Hannibal TV, Lashley talked about the possibility of facing Lesnar in a Mixed Martial Arts fight. Thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcript.
“It’s not on me, it’s on him. I’m not the type to call people out. I have mad respect for Brock and I have mad respect for everybody in the fight business and in the wrestling business. But I think it’s just one of those things that needs to be done.”
It’s cool that Bobby isn’t going the typical route of calling somebody names to get under their skin. He’s clearly being respectful about. Lashley brought up a good point in noting that people would want to see it.
“There’s big matchups all the way across the board. They looked at Brock fighting Jon Jones, that was one thing that was talked about, everybody was like, ‘Oh, that’s awesome!’ Floyd Mayweather fighting Conor [McGregor], these are different matchups that people want to see. I think right now people are starting to move more into that entertainment aspect of wanting to see those different contests and different matchups. Brock and myself, whether it’s in professional wrestling or whether it’s in a fight, I think it needs to be done.”
When asked for a prediction if the fight happens, Lashley sounded confident.
“Until the fight happens, no one knows. I think I would do well. I think our styles are very similar and I think it’s gonna be tit-for-tat in a lot of ways.”
If it does happen one day it needs to be pretty soon because Lashley is 41 years old while Lesnar is 40 years old. While both guys are in tremendous shape, they can’t fight forever and probably only have a few years left as legitimate competitors. In Lesnar’s case, he may never fight in the UFC again after he got suspended for using performance enhancing drugs in his last fight.
This isn’t the first time Lashley has called out Lesnar either. Last year he said he wanted to face Lesnar in a WrestleMania match, which obviously didn’t happen and it’s difficult since Bobby has no affiliation with WWE these days.
In case you haven’t followed Impact Wrestling in a while, Lashley has been a featured performer in the promotion for the last few years and has held their World Championship four times. During Lashley’s WWE run from 2004 to 2008, he was the ECW Champion twice and the United States Champion once. The most famous match he was a part of the Hair vs. Hair match at WrestleMania 23 fighting for Donald Trump (who didn’t seem to know Lashley’s name) against Umaga represented by Vince McMahon. It led to Vince getting his head shaved.
I give Lashley some credit for mentioning a fight with Lesnar. It should get people in the fight game talking about it as a possibility, but realistically it may never happen partly because they work for different wrestling companies in wrestling and in MMA. If that changes, maybe there’s a chance it happens, but as things stand now it seems unlikely.
