Lio Rush came into the WWE in 2017 as a highly-touted prospect and one of the top in-ring performers in wrestling.
Lio was beginning to establish himself on 205 Live when he was moved to the main roster in September 2018 as the manager for Bobby Lashley. Though Rush quickly found his footing on the microphone as the mouthpiece for Lashley, he never envisioned himself as being a "mic guy."
"No, I didn't see myself as a 'mic guy.' That's probably the last thing that I saw myself as. I probably saw myself as a referee before I saw myself (as a mic guy)," Rush told Sam Roberts on Not Sam Wrestling. "To go week to week to week to week doing these matches, and for it to just be cut and it be, 'Okay, you're a mic guy now.' I didn't feel unprepared. I felt prepared because I had been writing promos on my phone and had been cutting them outside and inside of the PC, I put them on social media, I was doing vignettes. I was prepared. I could see why they wanted me to be a mic guy. I just wanted to be a well-rounded professional wrestler. I'm not cutting promos to be like, 'I want to be a manager.' I feel that helped me, too. It helped me so much because it puts you in a different role. It teaches you how to cut a promo in a different way, cutting it about somebody who is with you rather than yourself."
Rush was aligned with Lashley through WrestleMania 35. He was off television following WrestleMania 35 due to reported heat in the company. He did not return until September 2019 when he was back in NXT.
Rush is currently active in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and various independent promotions. He teamed with Tomohiro Ishii to challenge Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis) for the NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Titles at NJPW Collision in Philadelphia.
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