| Date: 05/09 | 4:00 PM |
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The following is a recap of Ron Kruck's interview with Bobby Lashley on last night's new edition of "Inside MMA" on HDNet.
Ron Kruck: I interviewed Brock Lesnar a couple weeks ago, and he told me that, the most difficult part of transitioning into mixed martial arts has been finding good people to train with. In your opinion, what do you think has been the toughest part of starting your mixed martial arts career?
Bobby Lashley: I believe the same, I would agree with him, especially being a heavyweight. If you get a guy that's weighing over 250 pounds, it's not too many really athletic 250 pounders that can go out there and fight that are in one location. Now they're spread out, cause there's several great fighters that are 230, 220 that can still run with the big dogs. But in one place? It's hard.
Kruck: Let's talk about your prior life. You had a very successful run in the WWE, ultimately why did you leave professional wrestling?
Lashley: Ahh, that's the million dollar question. This'll probably cost me a million dollars to answer that question. Umm, I was I was dealing with, y'know, you can always say I was dealing with some stuff in the WWE. I had that, I had that desire to fight, y'know. I wrestled for 18 years, I accomplished a tremendous amount in amateur wrestling. And there was a time in the WWE where I had an injury, I took some time off, and I had some time to look back on my career and what I wanted to do. And I would say you only live once. I was in a bank robbery and it was almost taken away from me, y'know I almost got shot in the back of the head. I told myself at that point in time, that I'm gonna do what I wanna do when I wanna do it. There's gonna be a lot of people out there that, that are gonna criticize me, for taking the jump into MMA and they're gonna want to see me fail but, you only live once man. If you have an opportunity to go out there and fight, fight. Y'know my next adventure is going to be going into golfing, I'ma do it. I'm gonna do everything man, you life once. So right now, all my focus is on MMA, and I'd like to be a champion in one of these organizations. That's my goal.
Kruck: You recently made an appearance on a TNA PPV pro wrestling event. What's going on there? Do you have a deal with them as well?
Lashley: I took a lot of flack for making that one appearance but, I'm gonna respond to that. All they're trying to do is just give me an opportunity to, make money while I'm still fighting, and then kinda put their brand behind me. Whether or not we sign the deal - we haven't signed the deal yet - because we want to see how it's gonna work with my schedule, if it's gonna take up too much time. Even though it's only 4 days a month, it's still travelling, and being away from my training camp and everything, so we're gonna see how it works.
Kruck: There was some negative feedback after your appearance on TNA. Do you think there's a conflict participating in pro wrestling as well as doing mixed martial arts?
Lashley: I don't think it is at all. I personally wouldn't have a wrestling match before a fight. I wouldn't do it even a couple weeks before, because there's still a risk of injury. The MMA community hated the fact that I went to professional wrestling, but professional wrestling they LOVE the fact that I went to MMA. There's got be a bond there. It's got to be right there.
Kruck: Did you see the movie "The Wrestler" and if so what do you think?
Lashley: If you go into any sport, any career or something and try to find all the negatives out of that, and you put it on film it's going to look bad. And I think the first part of it kinda looks bad, from what I saw, but I didn't see the rest the movie so I can't really say too much on it. I enjoyed wrestling, and if I could've done it over again I would've still went back into wrestling. I enjoy wrestling, and it's probably the funnest thing you can do.
Kruck: You had a very successful collegiate wrestling career. How has it been to learn the other aspects of mixed martial arts?
Lashley: Wrestling is my background, they always say go to your strengths, go to what you know when it goes to a situation like that when you get in a match. So I can always take somebody down and work on the ground, "lay 'n pray" as most of the hardcore MMA fans would say. But umm, I've been working on my standup a lot, and I enjoy my standup. I believe that's where you really make your money. Everybody wants to come and see a good fight, but everybody wants to see that knockout.
Kruck: As we wrap up, tell us what are your goals for 2009?
Lashley: My goals are to continue to work. I want to be very very comfortable. I would like to be able to win a match in every fashion. And since I've already got the decision in there, and I wanted that to be the last one, the next one is submission or knockout. So I'd like to get every facet in there. I had a TKO, I want a knockout, I won a decision, and I want a submission. And I want to get at least a good, I'd say 6 matches, under my belt. Coming into 2010 I'd like to be 6-0.