During the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, former WWE talent Rob Conway talks on La Resistance and being fired on television.
On how he became a part of La Resistance:
“So Renee had already been in OVW for like a year or so, and then Sylvain came, he was a referee at Hulk Hogan versus The Rock or something. He was learning to wrestle, but he was already under contract, and they sent him to OVW, and he wasn’t real popular with the other guys, because he got into the business from not going the indie route and stuff like that. Back then, they were a little tougher on the Tough Enough guys and stuff like that, because everybody, for the most part, was still coming up through two or three years of the grind. But I hit it off with him, he’s a fun guy, and so they were going to bring me up, and I went to TV, and I had hair like I’ve got now. It’s a little bit longer, blonde hair, curly. I wore white and pink trunks, and they brought me up specifically to team with Stevie Richards, and Victoria was going to be my girlfriend, and they were going to call me the Golden Boy, and I was going to wrestle Tommy Dreamer, and we already had the match planned out. That was my TV debut as an actual character.
About an hour before the show starts, John Laurinaitis came to me and says, ‘Hey, Robbie, we should change your match tonight, and you’re not on the road next week.’ Because I’d already got an itinerary that I was going to be on four nights a week, and that’s pretty much there goes your dreams. But [he said] ‘We are going to bring you to TV next week. We think we got something better.’ I was like, okay. So they called me during the week, you see that number, and you think either something good or something terrible. They told me to get a military outfit, so I went with my dad, he had got drafted in the army, so he was in the army at one point, and we went to army surplus store, and I got the nicest army outfit you could imagine, even said R. Conway on. I think I made myself a sergeant. We don’t want to be like a four-star general at 29. So I got to TV, and they said, ‘Let’s see it, and I showed it to them, and they said, ‘That is beautiful, but we can’t use it because the army is one of our sponsors. So the seamstress backstage, her husband was retired from the Air Force. I’m not sure, that must have been where they live, because she brought that uniform. So I debuted in the uniform with La Resistance that night, but first they set me down in a chair and cut off all my hair. I actually sat with Robbie Roode, Tyson Dukes and Showtime Eric Young, that’s first time I met him. So yeah, I had an outdated Air Force uniform on, and they gave me tickets, and there was a girl backstage, it was an extra too, so we went through the front with the ticket. I sat in the front row with my cell phone, just in case they decided to do something different, and I ended up coming out of the crowd and leaving the Dudleys laying and joining La Resistance.”
On the fans hating La Resistance:
“They never stopped hating us. They broke us up way too soon, like you took one faction that had more heat than anybody and broke us up into three not that strong of characters. So I felt like it was kind of a demotion when they broke us up. Went from being all the shows, being on pay-per-views, to having bad music, and being on middle to low card, having bad music.”
Getting the quick win on Jeff Hardy, told he was going to be fired on television:
“No. So the backstory on that is that I had done a show in OVW with Renee, and he hit, I believe, Ryback before he was Ryback with the flag, and the flag wrapped around and hit me in the face. So I ended up breaking my nose and having a deviated septum, so we had a little time off for Christmas. I had nose surgery because I could hardly breathe out of one side. So they contacted me and said, ‘Hey, we want to do this thing, we’re going to put you and Sylvain back together on SmackDown. But we’re going to have you get fired on TV.’ So the wording has to be, I will quit Raw, not the company, if I don’t win. So I said, well, I’m not cleared to wrestle. I just had surgery like five days ago. They’re like, well, we’ll just fly you in and have our doctors take a look at you. So originally the match was supposed to be just like a normal three or four or five-minute match. The match was irrelevant, it was the promo, and to get Vince. I was like, man, I can’t get hit in the face. I wasn’t in great shape. Still taking pain meds. So then the match kept getting shorter and shorter, and I was like, what about this? How about I just start off on him and shoot him in, and he does the sunset flip out of the corner, 1, 2, 3, and I’m like, oh no. They’re like, okay. Everybody likes Jeff, but I mean, if he had hit me in the face, I don’t even know what would happen if I would have started fighting back. So we were doing everything we could just to get from I’ll quit Raw to losing to Vince saying you can’t quit, you’re fired. Then I was already getting gear made to wrestle on SmackDown with Sylvain.”
His contract being up and people thinking he was fired on TV for real:
“Just so you know, my contract ran over in January, so I got fired on TV January 1. Well, because my contract rolled over, I was not on the road, so I was sitting at home getting paid full paychecks, and they had to keep me off TV till after WrestleMania, because the whole ‘You’re fired’ was to spark the angle between Vince and Donald Trump. So if I showed up two weeks later, he didn’t do a very good job of firing me. So after WrestleMania, then I was supposed to start on SmackDown with Sylvain, because together we were gold, separately they didn’t really do that much with either one of us. So I was getting gear made. So whenever WrestleMania came and went, and they didn’t call me up to do it. I started thinking, man, I’m getting paid, so if I had already made my guarantee, then I’d be sent at home not getting paid. But the way it worked out, I was getting a full paycheck. I was thinking either do something with me or let me go. If they did let me go, it’s not like if I did six months later I wouldn’t be like, yeah, I’ll come back. Who’s gonna say no to that kind of money?”
“It kind of hurt my stock, so to speak, because most people get fired, released, and then 90 days, and you can start on TV. Well, I was off TV until I got released, I think, in May, and they kept paying me till August, but I’d been off TV for nine months. People thought I got fired on TV. So it literally was like I’m the only guy who got fired on TV and really seemingly got fired.”
All quotes are courtesy of Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
Conway also talks on John Cena, Brock Lesnar and more.
You can watch the full interview below.
The post Rob Conway talks on La Resistance, being fired on television appeared first on WWE News, WWE Results, AEW News, AEW Results.
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