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Franklin Roberto Lashley was born in Junction City, Kansas, on July 16, 1976, the son of a U.S. Army drill sergeant. Lashley is of Panamanian descent. He grew up in a single parent household with a mother who barely spoke English and struggled to secure a good job. He has three older sisters, one of whom is still on active service in the U.S. Air Force as of 2015. The family occasionally moved from one military base to another. While his father was stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, Lashley attended Fort Riley Middle School, where he was introduced to amateur wrestling in seventh grade as an off-season alternative to football. He later graduated from Junction City High School, where he continued to wrestle. He attended Missouri Valley College, where he was the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) National Wrestling Champion in the 177 lbs category in 1996, 1997, and 1998, and graduated in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in human-service agency management and recreation administration. He followed his father into the United States Army after college, and continued to compete in amateur wrestling in the army's World Class Athlete Program. During three years in the Army, he won a gold and silver medal in the International Military Sports Council senior freestyle wrestling event. In 2003, while living and training in Colorado Springs with the goal of qualifying for Team USA to wrestle at the 2004 Olympic Games, Lashley witnessed a bank robbery and was forced to dive for cover to avoid gunfire; this resulted in a knee injury that required surgery, ending his amateur career.

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