The Hurt Business was a professional wrestling stable that performed on the WWE's Raw brand from 2020 to 2022.
For much of its existence, the group had composed of MVP, Bobby Lashley, Shelton Benjamin and Cedric Alexander and the stable was the centrepoint of the ThunderDome era during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group held four different championships seven times with Lashley held the WWE and United States Championships while Alexander and Benjamin held the Raw Tag Team Championship once and the 24/7 Championship four times each (Benjamin held it three times and Alexander held it once). The group was gradually disbanded after Lashley and MVP left the group in early 2022 but Alexander and Benjamin continued to function as a tag team under The Hurt Business name until that August.
Background
Prior to the existence of the stable, in 2000, Shelton Benjamin debuted with the then-World Wrestling Federation's (WWF) developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling before debuting with the renamed World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002 as a tag team partner with Charlie Haas as Team Angle, later known as the World's Greatest Tag Team, in the SmackDown brand. Lashley also debuted in 2005 before switching brands various times until his release in 2008 and was a two-time ECW World Champion during his first tenure. A year later, Porter debuted in 2006 at the No Mercy pay-per-view event and was the then-longest reigning United States Champion, holding it for 343 days. After both leaving WWE in 2010, Benjamin and MVP joined forces in New Japan Pro-Wrestling through 2012 to form the tag team "Black Dynamite". MVP also worked together with Lashley in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling through much of 2014 as part of the "Beat Down Clan" stable, during which Lashley became a two-time TNA World Heavyweight Champion. Cedric Alexander made his WWE debut in 2016, in the Cruiserweight Classic, while Benjamin and Lashley both returned to the company in 2017 and 2018 respectively. MVP returned to WWE at the 2020 Royal Rumble event also during 2020 both Shelton and Cedric would feud over the WWE 24/7 Championship and R-Truth
History
Formation and championship success (2020-2021) On the May 11, 2020 episode of Raw, MVP aligned himself with Bobby Lashley, with MVP promising to manage Lashley to a WWE Championship reign. At Backlash, Lashley failed to capture the WWE Championship from Drew McIntyre following a distraction from his on-screen wife Lana. The following night on Raw, Lashley blamed Lana for his loss at Backlash and he would then ask for a divorce, thus ending their romantic storyline.
On the June 22 episode of Raw, Lashley attacked United States Champion Apollo Crews and placed him in his full nelson hold after he turned down MVP's offer to join them. After defeating Crews in a non-title match, MVP unveiled a new United States Championship design and declared himself the "real" United States Champion. This set up a match between Crews and MVP at The Horror Show at Extreme Rules; however, Crews was pulled out from the match the day of the event, with the reason given by WWE being that he was not declared medically fit to compete, while media such as Forbes reported rumors that Crews had tested positive for COVID-19. As a result, MVP won the match by forfeit, and afterwards, declared himself the new United States Champion; however, this was not recognized by WWE. The following night on Raw, MVP and Lashley added Shelton Benjamin into their group as the duo helped Benjamin capture the 24/7 Championship from R-Truth, and the group was formally named "The Hurt Business", and the faction were often presented as a high-end bunch, often wearing expensive, fashionable suits. Crews returned from hiatus on the August 3 episode of Raw and retained his title against MVP, taking the new title design in the process. Following this, The Hurt Business began feuding with Crews' allies, Ricochet and Cedric Alexander, with both groups exchanging victories and attacks throughout the following weeks on Raw. During his time in the stable, Benjamin won the 24/7 Championships two more times, both coming on the August 17 episode of Raw.
While MVP lost another title match against Crews at SummerSlam, Lashley would defeat Crews at Payback to win the WWE United States Championship. On the September 7 episode of Raw, during a six-man tag team match between Crews, Alexander and Ricochet against The Hurt Business, Alexander betrayed Crews and Ricochet, attacking them and helping The Hurt Business win the match and subsequently celebrated with them, thus turning Alexander heel and joining the group as a result.