10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Bobby Lashley
9. The Meme
One micro moment of unintentional hilarity, if sufficiently powerful, threatens to haunt the macro perception of a performer.
People still associate Curtis Axel with his infamous NXT promo that, from that moment on, starting from now, from that moment on: stigmatised him as a dope. People still associate Kalisto with doing good lucha things, even when he is actually doing good lucha things. People still associate Sin Cara with botching, even though the man under the mask for years was completely different to the man unable to jump on a trampoline.
WWE will not want you to remember and thus associate Lashley with the dire promo game he once boasted in the mid-2000s. In an otherwise stellar introductory feud with Finlay, Lashley was scripted to say the following: "You say your name is Finlay, and you love to fight. I say your name is Finlay, and you're a b*stard."
Lashley's soft delivery didn't really contrive to utter the bastardisation of "bathturd", but the high-note delivery completely undermined the visual of a muscled monster. He should have been muted, or assisted with a mouthpiece.
Instead, WWE exposed the man they sought to position as "Unstoppable".