CULTURETECHLENSBobby Lashley
VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)
Combined Graph record U-07857 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6985.
Franklin Roberto Lashley (born July 16, 1976, in Junction City, Kansas) built three combat-sport careers. In amateur wrestling — ordinary, sanctioned sport — he won three consecutive NAIA national championships at 177 pounds for Missouri Valley College (1996, 1997, 1998), then competed through the U.S. Army's World Class Athlete Program, earning CISM medals. In mixed martial arts, also sanctioned sport, he compiled a 15–2 professional record between 2008 and 2016, including a 5–0 run in Bellator. In professional wrestling, he debuted for WWE in 2005; his title history records two ECW World Championship reigns and four TNA World Heavyweight Championship reigns, and after returning to WWE in 2018 he held the WWE Championship twice (2021 and 2022). AEW's official roster biography documents all three lanes of the career.
Answer summary · this record in brief, from its own record text
Franklin Roberto Lashley (born July 16, 1976, in Junction City, Kansas) built three combat-sport careers. In amateur wrestling — ordinary, sanctioned sport — he won three consecutive NAIA national championships at 177 pounds for Missouri Valley College (1996, 1997, 1998), then competed through the U.S. Army's World Class Athlete Program, earning CISM medals. In mixed martial arts, also sanctioned sport, he compiled a 15–2 professional record between 2008 and 2016, including a 5–0 run in Bellator.
The record
- Also known as: Franklin Roberto Lashley, Franklin Lashley
Notes
Firsts disposition: NOT ASSERTED: the 'first African American ECW champion' claim circulates only in weak aggregator sources and fails the GOV-006 bar — withheld until an authoritative source carries it. Photo: CLEARED — 'Lashley Raw April 2018 (cropped).jpg' (Shared Account), CC BY-SA 2.0 per Commons API extmetadata. Curator's Judgment (DRAFT): Three careers, three evidence lanes: the amateur and MMA records are legitimate sport and are written as such; the professional-wrestling championships are written as title history. Staged 2026-11-03 in packet W (professional wrestling), temp id — merge assigns the next sequential CTL-E id. No CTL-SPE roster id exists for professional wrestling — the AAES roster's wrestling shelf holds only Olympic wrestling and Bobo Brazil (CTL-E-6902). See the packet memo's roster-addition proposal.
Sources
- All Elite Wrestling. “Bobby Lashley.” Official roster biography, allelitewrestling.com. (primary source · build store)
- Wikipedia. “Bobby Lashley.” en.wikipedia.org. (build store)
- Bloody Elbow. “Money, exclusivity, barriers: WWE Champion Bobby Lashley on joining UFC/Bellator.” bloodyelbow.com, 2022. (build store)
Photograph · rights-cleared record, CultureTechLens Photo Rights Log
Bobby Lashley on Raw, April 2018
Bobby Lashley on Raw, April 2018 — Shared Account, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source: CultureTechLens · view at source
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Record CTL-E-6985 · Combined Graph record U-07857 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.
Cite this record
Chicago: CultureTechLens. “Bobby Lashley (CTL-E-6985).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph. Chicago, IL: CultureTechLens, 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6985/
APA: CultureTechLens. (2026). Bobby Lashley (CTL-E-6985) [Entity record]. CultureTechLens Combined Graph. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6985/
MLA: CultureTechLens. “Bobby Lashley (CTL-E-6985).” CultureTechLens Combined Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-6985/
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