In 1999, EA Sports put out its WCW Mayhem game on PlayStation and Nintendo 64.
The game might not be memorable for most fans, or might be memorable for the wrong reasons, but it led to a big opportunity for Lash LeRoux, who wasn't heavily featured on television prior to the release of the game.
Speaking to Colt Cabana on the Art of Wrestling, Lash explained how EA Sports helped him get in the good graces of WCW.
"You mention the video games, that's sort of what opened the door for me. EA Sports, they came to the Power Plant and wanted to film some of the guys doing moves. It was the first wrestling game they were going to do with the new technology with the motion capture suit and you have all the bulbs on you that give the signal and turn it into a skeleton. They weren't quite sure how they were going to go about tackling this, so they came to the Power Plant, and they're filming us doing these moves. You know how guys can be when you're unsure of yourself, everyone is standing around the ring and no one wants to jump in and be the guinea pig. They go, 'We need someone that can do chain wrestling.' I did amateur wrestling in high school and won a state championship. I jumped right in and did chain wrestling. 'We need someone that can do power moves.' I'm not the biggest guy, but I'm not the smallest, and I'm big enough and thick enough that I can do power moves, suplexes, and everybody else's stuff, I was enough of a mark that I could do everybody else's stuff. 'We need guys who can do lucha libre.' They were really heavy on that at the time. Now, it's a little different. I heard someone refer to wrestlers as 'flippy white dudes.' I feel I was an OG flippy white dude. We had a lot of luchadores from Mexico, then we had me and Billy Kidman. I taught myself that stuff, I could do hurricanranas and tilt-a-whirl head scissors, so I jumped in the ring and did that. EA Sports reaction was, 'that's who we want to do the game.' I did all (the motion capture), just about. Me, Sarge, and Bobby Eaton for a few things. Ted DiBiase was a consultant. WCW said, 'we want to get Lash up there because he can do everything we want him to do.' I would even mimic guy's gimmick in the motion capture. At first, WCW balked and said, 'You should choose somebody under contract so we don't have to pay extra.' EA Sports came back with, 'He's impressed us so much, we'll pay him.' EA Sports paid me. That got WCW's attention," he recalled.
Lash would become more featured on WCW throughout the years until the company closed in 2001.
Lash went on hiatus form wrestling in 2006, but returned for GCW Say You Will to face Joey Janela. You can find his comments regarding his return by clicking here.
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