In an interview with TheWrap.com, Bobby Lashley talked about the storyline with Lana from last year and if it hurt his career:
“Look, I’ve been in the business for about 17 years. And there’s a lot of people that watch the business for years. But there’s only a few people that have been like a crucial figure in the business for a long time…I talked to people about it when I came back into wrestling and everybody knows my character. They know Bobby is tough, Bobby was in the military, Bobby has that wrestling national champion place in the world. So I’m a machine in that sense. But the one thing that I’ve never been able to do is just relax. And I think a lot of those storylines I did at the beginning was to really make me chill out and relax. This is a different day and age. Even though my character is rough, still I’m able to enjoy it a lot more. Before I was so machine, so locked in. It’s like, ‘Here, let’s throw in some storylines over here to make him feel completely uncomfortable and to be able to relax and then be able to come into something.’ And when I say that, I say that because a lot of the people looking at it got pissed off about it. I was going into it and I was a little taken back. But then when I sat back and I actually realized, because I had a talk with Vince, and he told me, ‘Man, I want you to just go out there and have fun.’ And that was one thing that you have to do. And a lot of times when you tell somebody to go out there and have fun, that’s not going to resonate, that’s not going to sink in. Then you have a bunch of us just beating people up even more. But to be able to loosen up, this is entertainment. We’re fighting, but it’s entertainment. So in order to have entertainment, you have got to be able to loosen up. Because the crowd can feel where you’re coming from. And even though I went into this real dastardly, mean character, people could feel it because I’m able to get in more touch with — I don’t want to say emotions and go straight into acting — but into that, just relaxing and having fun with the character. So I think everything that I did led me up to where I am now. So I think everything helped.”
