RENOWNED mixed martial arts (MMA) gym, American Top Team (ATT) founder, Dan Lambert, is expanding his reach in the world of professional wrestling by bringing Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) stars, such as Jorge Masvidal, Amanda Nunes, Junior dos Santos and Andrei Arlovski into the All Elite Wrestling (AEW) programme.
The ATT founder, who currently serves as the mouthpiece for AEW wrestlers Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky, known collectively as Men of the Year, often brings notable ATT fighters with him to ‘AEW Dynamite’. In the past several weeks, he has also welcomed MMA fighter Paige VanZant, Bellator contender, Austin Vanderford, and Professional Fighters League (PFL) star, Kayla Harrison.
“It’s funny. They say all actors want to be singers and all singers want to be actors. A lot of the MMA guys want to get into pro-wrestling. Then you hear pro-wrestlers who want to get into MMA,” Dan recently told Cageside Seats.
“It’s just fun for them right now. While they’re fighting, they’re fighting. You have one ass, you can ride one horse at one time. Would I be surprised if any one of those guys got into it at some point in the future? No. Although when Andrei and Junior dos Santos were in that skybox looking down at that tag match with the Lucha Bros. and the Young Bucks and the crazy s—t they were doing in the cage at the pay-per-view the other night, I looked at them and said, ‘Are you sure you want to do that at some point in the future?’ They’re like, ‘I don’t know about that’.
“I think Jorge’s plans (on what his future holds) probably change by the day,” Dan continued. “Talk about somebody who’s in demand. He’s all over the place. He called me a couple of weeks ago and I said, ‘It sounds like a weird connection. Where are you at?’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I’m in Egypt'. He’s everywhere. I don’t know what’s in Jorge’s future but he’s probably going to be busy.”
One of the key components for creating a top-level professional wrestling star is charisma and Dan says Jorge was game-bred with the gift of gab.
“I think Jorge is the best on the mic at the gym,” Dan says. “If you ever go to the open workouts, at least pre-Covid, when they were doing those at the bigger shows. He’d walk out and, instead of hitting pads or doing something like that, he’d just grab the microphone and say, ‘You’ve seen me hit pads a million times. You’ve seen me hit people all the time. Let’s start talking'. You just watch the fans interact with him and the guy is just so sharp on the microphone. It’s not like a script. He’s not memorizing lines. S—t just pops out of his mouth and people want to hear it.”
Amongst his fighters, who does Dan think would most likely give pro-wrestling a real shot?
“Up until that tag match, I would have said Junior dos Santos because he’s going to these and watching, and he’s like, ‘Man, this is great. I would love to do that'. And then every time I see him at the gym he says: ‘Hey, when are you going back to that wrestling stuff? I want to go with you’.
“But, as I said, he looked down from the rafters and was having second thoughts on that,” Dan shares. “But I think I’ll stick with him or maybe even (Andrei) Arlovski. I think they would both like to get into it. They’re both big, strong guys. Maybe Andrei’s a little scarier looking and he’d probably end up being the heel and I think Junior dos Santos would be the perpetual babyface.” – Agencies, September 22, 2021
