During a recent interview with DAZN, former WWE Champion Bobby Lashley commented on the lack of diversity in the WWE Title’s history, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On competing with Big E. for the WWE Championship: “I think it was phenomenal. It’s what I try to say when people ask me about the race thing. The biggest thing for me is I like to make sure that it’s a norm. I want to make all these things the norm. Like when I won the title, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re the third African-American. You’re the third black champion and then Big E was the fourth’.
“I’m like, ‘We don’t need to put that next to it anymore. It’s just the norm’. I want it to get to the norm with anyone. We don’t want to say, ‘You’re the second African-American, you’re the second Mexican, you’re the second this’. It’s not even about that anymore. I think it’s just making it a norm,” he stated. “Everybody gets the opportunity to win that title. We put in the work. You do the things you have to do. You hustle, and you have the opportunity to win it and it’s no asterisk by your name. It’s just – ‘Here’s the guy, here’s the guy who it is now.’ I’m glad that we broke those barriers and started to make this a norm. But ultimately, I just wanted to be, ‘Here’s your champion, period’.”
On if it bothers him that there hasn’t been more diversity in WWE Champions: “No. I think what it does is it gives an opportunity moving forward for there to be more. Everybody has that same opportunity. I think some of the other guys are going to be excited because they have that opportunity to step up and win that title. And when they do, it’s just gonna keep adding on, so I’m not disappointed. Because if you look at our roster right now, we have a lot of African-American or black guys on the roster that can step up and potentially win a world title. So when they have the opportunity to do what they need to do and get to where they need to get, they’ll be there. They’ll have that opportunity.”
