“The Almighty” Bobby Lashley had an impressive reign as WWE Champion. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
After clobbering The Miz to claim the gold, then doing it again in a rematch, Lashley would wallop a few more former WWE Champions – Kofi Kingston, Drew McIntyre, Randy Orton – before losing the title to Big E.
Near the end of his run Lashley had a somewhat underwhelming clash with former Universal Champion and WWE Hall of Fame legend Goldberg at WWE’s SummerSlam 2021 pay per view. It was a match my late cousin Louis and I had dreamed about.
Louis hilariously referred to Lashley as “Chocolate Goldberg”!
Unfortunately, my cousin passed away four months before Lashley vs Goldberg came to fruition. Louis would have been disappointed anyway.
During their bout Lashley managed to injure Goldberg’s leg which resulted in the ref rewarding the victory to The Almighty via stoppage.
In a weird post-match twist, Lashley wound up clinching his Hurt Lock (full nelson) finisher on Goldberg’s 16-year-old son Gage. This enraged the Hall of Famer in the moment, a definite seed for a continued feud. Nothing immediate grew from it.
Fast forward a month, Goldberg and Lashley are prepared to settle their differences in a No Holds Barred match at pay per view Crown Jewel.
With no rules, this could be the epic, barbaric beatdown my cousin and I imaged.
What’s the hardest to visualize is watching Goldberg and Bobby Lashley challenge each other for a second time without my cousin sitting next to me or watching while we’re on the phone with one another.
Louis was a fan of both men. The only way to know who he’d root for is to ask him, which, heartbreakingly, I can’t do.
The disappointment of that hurts more than watching Lashley sinch his crushing submission maneuver on an injured Goldberg’s 16-year-old son. |THIS.
[By The Champ | Photo courtesy of WWE]
This is “Railing”, a professional wrestling column written Mr. Joe Walker for THISENT.com.
