Dan Lambert On Which American Top Team Members Would Transition Well Into Wrestling

American Top Team founder and AEW manager Dan Lambert sat down with Shakiel Mahjouri of Cageside Seats to talk about his recent run in AEW with the Men of the Year (Scorpio Sky and Ethan Page). Lambert has frequently been accompanied by his American Top Team fighters, and discussed the potential of them wanting to get into the AEW ring some day.

"It's funny," Lambert said. "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. 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 JDS 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 (Masvidal)'s plans on what his future is probably changes by the day. 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."

Lambert continued to talk about Masvidal, one of the top fighters of American Top Team and a fighter who has accompanied Lambert twice to AEW tapings. Lambert put over Masvidal's ability to cut a promo.

"I think Masvidal is the best on the mic at the gym," Lambert said. "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, 'f**k it. 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."

So which American Top Team fighter has the best chance of crossing over from MMA to the pro wrestling world? According to Lambert, it's two former UFC Heavyweight Champions.

"Up until that tag match, I would have said Junior dos Santos cause he's going to these and watching, and he's like, 'man this is great. I would love to do that,'" Lambert said. "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.' Like I said, he looked down from the rafters and was having second thoughts on that. But I think I'll stick with him or maybe even Arlovski. I think they would both like to get into it. They're both big, strong guys. Maybe Arlovski's a little scarier looking and he'd probably end up being the heel, and I think JDS would be the perpetual babyface."

You can watch the full interview below.