Candid comments from MVP.
After a four-year run with WWE and taking on the roles of producer, commentator and manager in addition to being an in-ring performer, MVP is now a free agent. He is scheduled to be in action at GCW/Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport XII and he’ll be facing Barnett.
MVP opened up about his time in WWE as he participated in a virtual signing for K & S WrestleFest. As he was speaking about The Hurt Business (Bobby Lashley, MVP, Shelton Benjamin & Cedric Alexander), he stated that he ‘thinks’ Alexander signed a new contract with WWE. This has been confirmed by Fightful Select.
I think Cedric (Alexander) recently signed a new deal.
Staying on the topic of the group, he said The Hurt Business is dead. He added that he has been in contact with Lashley and Benjamin and told the public to stay tuned.
The Hurt Business is dead, and it was killed off by the powers that be at WWE. But I can say myself, Bobby Lashley and Shelton Benjamin, we are talking amongst ourselves about what we wanna do going forward and I’ll just say stay tuned. Stay tuned. Me, Bobby and Shelton have been talking about what we wanna do and I’ll say stay tuned.
When it comes to the group splitting, MVP was vocal about his disapproval of that. He asked former WWE CEO Vince McMahon not to pull the trigger on it. Looking back at the formation of The Hurt Business, he threw some credit to Paul Heyman.
MVP stated that it came from Lashley’s mind when he saw a sign in American Top Team founder Dan Lambert’s office about being in ‘the hurt business.’ It was Heyman that signed off on the idea. MVP touched on those early days of The Hurt Business and said for the first three months of WWE’s Performance Center era in 2020, he was not under contract. His producer contract had been terminated, but Heyman still used him as talent among other roles.
He recounted being in Vince’s office and McMahon expressing that he could get years out of The Hurt Business. After some time, Vince viewed the group as just Lashley and MVP.
Absolutely (I was against The Hurt Business splitting up). Very vocal about it. ‘Vince, don’t do this. Please don’t do this.’
So, Paul Heyman gets credit, because initially, The Hurt Business was Bobby’s idea and as a matter of fact, Bobby (Lashley) had a very successful MMA career and he trained at American Top Team with Dan Lambert and if I understand it correctly, Dan Lambert has a sign in his office that says, ‘The Hurt Business. We’re in the hurt business.’ So that’s where the idea came from and then Bobby presented it to Heyman and Heyman signed off on it… and then once Vince (McMahon) had the opportunity to see what we looked like and I think upon my return, I think maybe Vince forgot what I could do and then after Vince seen me — because when I came back, I was a producer. It’s funny, I got a text on Wednesday that my contract as a producer had been terminated. Then I got a call on Friday that I was needed for TV on Monday, and I was like, ‘Hold on, wait. You guys messed up. I got fired. I’m not here.’ They said, ‘No! We need you as talent.’ So for the first three months of that P.C. era, I was working week to week. I had no contract, and Paul Heyman put me — they still had me doing some producer work. I was doing commentary for Main Event. I was doing the in-ring stuff, the backstage stuff and producing. Paul Heyman gave me like five hats to wear and he would joke about it and say, ‘Hey… if I give you enough hats, one of them will stick,’ and then putting me with Bobby and then that was working well and then recruiting Shelton (Benjamin) and then, you know, the momentum came and Vince really got behind it. I’ll never forget when we were in the Amway Center in his office, Vince said, ‘We can get years out of this Hurt Business thing!’ He loved it, he was so excited and then, for whatever reason, he decided that he wanted to put the emphasis on me and Bobby and I guess initially he liked the group. But then his focus was on Bobby and then at one point he said, ‘The Hurt Business is Bobby Lashley and MVP and whoever we say it is,’ and I was like, ‘Ugh. Vince, don’t do this’ and then we talked about it a few times but when Vince makes up his mind on something, that’s just it, you know? So, it was an unfortunate demise and I think that it was broken up way too early because… when The Hurt Business shirt came out, as soon as it was released, it was the second-highest selling shirt behind Roman Reigns, and when you saw the ThunderDome, you would see all The Hurt Business shirts on the screens. So organically, we got super hot and we never got a chance to appear in front of a live audience. So, disappointing for all of us.
Fast-forward to more recent times, MVP said it was told to them that The Hurt Business would be reforming. He said shirts were made, but then Lashley started appearing with The Street Profits (Montez Ford & Angelo Dawkins).
MVP then received a call from Bruce Prichard, who informed him that another route was being taken. He admitted being ‘very salty’ about there not being a conversation before plans shifted.
We (Hurt Business) were told that we were gonna be reunited. I still have a shirt. The shirts were made. ‘Hurt Business’ on the front, ‘Back in Business’ on the back. The shirts were made. We were told that it was gonna happen, and then, next thing I see Bobby’s with The Street Profits and like, what happened here? And then I get a call from Bruce (Prichard), ‘Oh yeah, somebody should have called you. Sorry. We decided to go in a different direction’ and what the f*ck is that? That’s not professional. But, that’s how it went down. I’m a professional, and I show up, I go to work and I do what I’m told and you know, in the pro wrestling business, once you get to a certain level, you do have input into what you do and it’s just one thing when you’re told you’re going to do this and the steps have been made and then there’s a pivot without the conversation. That’s not good business. I don’t care what anybody thinks. It’s not how you do business, and needless to say, I was very salty about that, and you know, you had Bobby (Lashley) from being a two-time WWE Champion to not being in the conversation. He got more talent than the title picture at all and he got put with The Street Profits who are white hot! And then they got cooled off, and then Bobby and The Street Profits went from being major figures to sitting in catering. I don’t know why, I don’t understand it. But, you know, I don’t make the decisions…
Elsewhere during the signing, MVP addressed Instagram comment section responses from him that had to do with Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque’s booking of Black talents. He clarified that he never said Levesque is racist, but his thoughts on how he books Black wrestlers is a different conversation.
It made the rounds that, ‘MVP said that Triple H was racist.’ I never said that word. I never said that! You show me a quote with a caption or the soundbite where I said that. Somebody made a comment on my social about how he books a Black talent and I just said, ‘Ah, you see it.’ I didn’t say he was racist. I never said that. It was never anything I said. So, I wanna make that very clear. If you’re watching, you got that soundbite here first. I’ll go into it more on my podcast later on but…
I didn’t say that. Now, my opinion about how he books talent of color, that’s a different conversation. But, I never said that man was racist. Hulk Hogan is racist. He said it himself. He said, ‘I’m a little bit racist, right?’ And he said that so, you know, but as far as Triple H, I don’t know that he is and I don’t know what his motivations are. But I never said he was racist.
Lashley, Benjamin and MVP are no longer with WWE. Alexander is the sole member of the group that is still contracted to the company. He is currently a part of the NXT roster.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit K & S WrestleFest with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
