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Bobby Lashley has lifted the lid on how the Hurt Business was created.
The group was one of the bright spots in the WWE during the pandemic. The faction was comprised of Lashley, Shelton Benjamin, Cedric Alexander and MVP, and picked up multiple titles during a short period of time.
However, they broke up much too soon and fans clamoured for their return. Three-quarters of the group have since jumped to AEW and reformed as “The Hurt Syndicate”.
Bobby Lashley joined the rest of the Hurt Syndicate on Close Up with Renee Paquette. He revealed how the group originally came to be, explaining how his boxing coach was the inspiration for the group’s name.
“I remember talking with Shelton backstage; it was when MVP came back. He was returning because his son had never seen him wrestle. Me and Shel were sitting back there, and I was thinking about a little bit of a character switch. I thought, ‘Man, what if you put Suge Knight, Don King, and The Rock from Ballers all together into a character?’ I was thinking I’d love to play that and really run with it. Then me and Shelton saw MVP walk back, and I thought, ‘That ain’t me—that’s him.’
“I’d always wanted to do something like The Hurt Business because, when I was fighting, my boxing coach used to wear a shirt that said Hurt Business, and I just loved it. I loved the name. So I kept saying, ‘I want to do The Hurt Business!’ We were talking backstage, and then we looked around and realized: he’s here, we’re here—that’s already a group. We were all friends anyway, and we always used to talk. The best part was we had a chance to work with our friends. When you work with friends, it’s real.”
Bobby Lashley: The Fans Wanted The Hurt Business Back
“We just needed one more piece of the puzzle, that younger guy who could fit in with the group. So, when we put it all together, it was magic. We had fun with it, and we ran with it. In wrestling, they always say, ‘Give the fans what they want,’ and the fans wanted us back.”
“To this day, anytime I posted something, at least one comment would say, ‘Hurt Business! Hurt Business!’ The fans always wanted to see us back together because it was something real. We hang out, we work out together, and we’ve been in different companies for a long time. We had a couple of stints together in other organizations where we had fun, and we thought, ‘We’ve got to do it again.’ This was the perfect opportunity to bring it back.”
