Bobby Lashley won the WWE championship on the Mar. 1 episode of Raw. At the time, his Hurt Business colleagues Shelton Benjamin and Cedric Alexander were the Raw tag team champions. By the end of that month, Benjamin and Alexander lost the tag titles and were unceremoniously booted out of The Hurt Business. In kayfabe, their ouster from the group came about after they failed to defeat Drew McIntyre in a 2-on-1 handicap match, which meant they couldn’t be ringside to give Lashley an advantage (that he never needed) at WrestleMania 37.
The baffling decision to break up the group seemingly came out of nowhere. Rumors indicated that the talent wasn’t happy about WWE’s creative plans and lobbied for a change. Alexander and Benjamin have been treated as total jobbers in the aftermath, while Lashley continues on as WWE champion.
Appearing on Out of Character with Ryan Satin, the WWE champion admits that the group’s implosion didn’t sit well with him:
“You know, it hurt my heart, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say that. It hurt my heart. Because it was something very special. In the wrestling business, it’s very seldom that really special things like that come together where you can see that synergy and people really get behind it. And they were. But ultimately...business is business sometimes. And originally the Hurt Business was started by MVP and myself. And then we brought some people on that really deserved a chance. And they took it, they ran with it. But...the Hurt Business is not over. We’re just making some adjustments. And I think within the next few weeks we’ll see how those adjustments pan out.”
Lashley’s response makes it sound like we could have some new members of The Hurt Business sooner rather than later. This week’s (Apr. 12) Raw ended with RETRIBUTION members T-BAR and MACE attacking Lashley’s primary nemesis, Drew McIntyre. Could the addition of T-BAR and MACE to The Hurt Business be the adjustment that Lashley is talking about?