Steve Maclin Addresses His Impact World Title Win, Lio Rush On Being Bobby Lashley’s ‘Mic Guy’

Steve Maclin defeated KUSHIDA to win the vacant Impact World Championship at Sunday night’s Impact Wrestling Rebellion pay-per-view event.

On the Busted Open Radio podcast, Maclin declared his immediate goals in Impact Wrestling. Firstly, Maclin plans on defeating former champion Josh Alexander once the latter is through with his recovery. Secondly, Maclin laid out a roadmap for Aldis to challenge for the Impact World Title in hopes of defending the title against him.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On his hopes to go toe-to-toe with Alexander: “The pressure for me at the most is holding onto this until Josh Alexander comes back healthy. Because that’s the one man I want to face because I wanted to beat the longest-reigning Impact World Champion here in Toronto for the world title that I now have. So when Josh is healthy, that’s the man I’m looking to.”

On Aldis’ indication that he wants his own shot at the title: “It’s good to have another former world champion to have to beat down the line. So whenever he gets his opportunity and he is the number one contender, and hopefully he earns that and doesn’t think he can waltz in, he’s got to go in there and work just like everybody here does, just like I did.”

In an interview with Notsam Wrestling, Lio Rush recalled his experience with WWE and being chosen as Bobby Lashley’s manager. While the role wasn’t Rush’s idea, he revealed falling into the part fairly easily despite it being outside his personal aspirations. Rush said,

“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). 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.”

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