At 49 years old, Shelton Benjamin has seen it all. The former WWE Tag Team Champion is now a current AEW Tag Team Champion alongside his Hurt Syndicate partner, Bobby Lashley.
‘My Background Is Real, Proclaimed Shelton Benjamin
The two are managed once again by MVP, a callback to their days together in WWE’s Hurt Business stable. Recently, Benjamin and his Hurt Syndicate partners sat down with Chris Van Vliet, and the topic of Brock Lesnar came up.
Leading up to this point in the interview, Bobby Lashley had voiced frustration over his WWE feud with Brock Lesnar, feeling like both men were held back. Lashley said that with fewer restrictions, their matches could have been far more memorable. Their first showdown took place at the 2022 Royal Rumble, where Lashley defeated Lesnar in just over ten minutes to win the WWE Championship. Brock later evened the score in Saudi Arabia with a match that lasted barely six minutes.
Shelton Benjamin then took issue with MVP when he said that Brock and Bobby were the two toughest guys he knows. Benjamin, after all, is no slouch. He’s a former collegiate wrestler and a two-sport athlete in college. In high school, he carried a 122-10 wrestling record and was a two-time South Carolina heavyweight state champion.
Benjamin’s collegiate wrestling career started at a junior college before he transferred to the University of Minnesota for his junior and senior years. He finished fifth in the heavyweight division in 1997 and third in 1998. A few years later, Brock Lesnar became an NCAA national champion at the University of Minnesota in 2000. Both men eventually transitioned into professional wrestling after their collegiate careers.
“For two and a half years, I was the guy that had to spar with Brock for three to four hours a day,” Benjamin said. He added, “Some days we would literally have a hand fight for three to four hours. Luckily, he never threw punches.”
MVP quickly jumped in, joking that Benjamin should be grateful Lesnar wasn’t throwing elbows. One infamous example of Brock’s brutal elbow strikes came at SummerSlam 2016, when he busted open Randy Orton with a vicious shot. Lesnar doesn’t exactly pull his punches when he decides to add a little blood.
Chris Van Vliet asked Benjamin if he ever managed to pin Lesnar in their sparring sessions. “I’ve thrown him to his back, but he got up immediately,” Benjamin said. “I’ve never pinned him. He’s just too strong to be pinned.”
Unlike Lesnar and Lashley, Benjamin never pursued a career in MMA. Lesnar famously became a UFC Heavyweight Champion, while Lashley compiled an impressive 15-2 MMA record, with his last fight taking place at Bellator 162 in 2016.