Lash LeRoux is indeed a certified draw. The once pro wrestler of WCW fame now cartoonist joins AdFreeShows.com on a monthly basis for Time Limit Draw, a new series in which LeRoux takes around an hour to draw a squared circled subject at hand. The result? Some potential really cool artwork for those subscribed to AdFreeShows. Since the show started, Lash has illustrated Bruce Prichard, the late Scott Hall and The Undertaker. Next on tap is Owen Hart later this month.
In a new interview with WrestleZone’s Dominic DeAngelo LeRoux explained how both drawing and wrestling ultimately played to his benefit.
“About the time that I got accepted into the [WCW] Power Plant, I sold my first cartoon to the Saturday Evening Post and to Cat Fancy and so it’s funny cause I always went back and I go ‘Well if I sold the cartoons first would In have pursued that and not even try the wrestling?’ But I was all in for wrestling at that point.” He found a way to make both passions play to his benefit, especially with plenty of downtime in the WCW locker room
“Anyone that’s been behind the scenes in that business knows that if you have a show that starts live at 7 PM on television well you better be at the building at noon,” said Lash. Many times he wasn’t the one to film pre-event promos so he let his artistry play to his favor.
“I began taking the dry erase marker with me and I’d go to the whiteboards in the locker room and I would draw caricatures of the guys,” and it caught the eye and funny bone of one “perfect” player.
“Curt Hennig loved that. Being the natural practical joker and ribber that he was, he thought that was the greatest thing in the world and he would just sit in the locker room and go, ‘Lash! Lash! Draw Hulk Hogan!’ I’m like 21 years old I’m going, ‘Okay,’ so I’ll draw Hogan. ‘Draw him really old.’ Okay, I draw him really old. ‘Draw him with a walker and an oxygen mask,’ and I’m going, ‘Dude, he’s in the other room!’
“Curt told me then, just laugh he would laugh and he’d go, ‘Look, if anybody complains you tell you don’t write the news, you just report it.”
Lash cited how a great deal of his drawing passion comes from MAD Magazine.
“Man I’ve got stacks and stacks even now from my childhood of. The things I kept was MAD Magazines and wrestling magazines. Those were the two things.”
Leroux states that he had a few comic books but only for specific artwork that was cutting edge at the time.
“The beautiful thing for me, Dominic, was I had this wonderful position that I’m in now, right? Was I wasn’t expected to be a professional artist. They’re looking at me going, ‘This a wrestler who happens to be able to draw.’ So there’s a little forgiveness there, right? I had this evolution where I was given a lot of leeway to get better and better and better over the course of years because the expectations were lower than they would have been for someone that was expected to be a professional illustrator.”
(Transcription credit from @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone)
This over hour-long conversation will release in full next week exclusively at WrestleZone.
