Bobby Lashley

Franklin Roberto "Bobby" Lashley (born July 16, 1976) is an American professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist. He is signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he is a member of The Hurt Syndicate and is formerly one-half of the AEW World Tag Team Champions with stablemate Shelton Benjamin. He is best known for his tenure in WWE, while also being known for his tenure in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). As a mixed martial artist, Lashley competed for Bellator MMA and Strikeforce.

Lashley debuted in WWE in 2005, appearing on the SmackDown brand where he became a one-time United States Champion. After being drafted to the ECW brand the following year, Lashley became a two-time ECW World Champion. During this time, he had a high-profile rivalry with company chairman Vince McMahon, which included representing Donald Trump in the "Battle of the Billionaires" at WrestleMania 23, before leaving the company in 2008.

He subsequently pursued a career in mixed martial arts (MMA) and had his first professional fight in December 2008. After amassing a career record of 10–2, he signed with Bellator MMA in 2014 where he won all five of his career bouts from 2014 to 2016.

In 2009, Lashley began appearing in professional wrestling promotion TNA before leaving the company the next year. In 2014, he returned to TNA (later renamed to Impact in 2017), where he became a four-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion. He was also a one-time X Division Champion and the final King of the Mountain Champion. After leaving Impact in early 2018, he returned to WWE that April, becoming a two-time WWE Champion, two-time Intercontinental Champion, and winning the United States Championship on two further occasions. He left WWE in August 2024 upon the expiration of his contract. He then signed with AEW, making his debut in October at Fright Night Dynamite.

He has headlined multiple pay-per-view (PPV) events for WWE and TNA, including the 2016 edition of the latter's flagship event, Bound for Glory.

Franklin Roberto Lashley was born on July 16, 1976, in Junction City, Kansas, the son of a U.S. Army drill sergeant. Lashley is of Panamanian descent through his mother, and is of Afro-Caribbean descent through his father, who also was born and raised in Panama and immigrated to the USA before Bobby Lashley was born. Bobby grew up in a single parent household with a mother who barely spoke English and struggled to secure a good job, while his father was in the military. He has three older sisters, one of whom is still on active service in the U.S. Air Force as of 2015. The family occasionally moved from one military base to another. While his father was stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, Lashley attended Fort Riley Middle School, where he was introduced to amateur wrestling in seventh grade as an off-season alternative to football. He later graduated from Junction City High School, where he continued to wrestle.

He attended Missouri Valley College, where he was the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) National Wrestling Champion in the 177 lbs category in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in human-service agency management and recreation administration.

He followed his father into the United States Army after college, and continued to compete in amateur wrestling in the Army's World Class Athlete Program. During his three years in the Army, he won a gold and silver medal in the International Military Sports Council senior freestyle wrestling event. In 2003, while living and training in Colorado Springs with the goal of qualifying for Team USA to wrestle at the 2004 Olympic Games, Lashley witnessed a bank robbery and was forced to dive for cover to avoid gunfire; this resulted in a knee injury that required surgery, ending his amateur career.