Posted on 9/09/126 by Colin Vassallo
Former WWE star Rob Conway sat down with Chris Van Vliet in
Nashville, Tennessee to discuss having early matches with
John Cena and Brock Lesnar in OVW, how he was selected to be
in the La Résistance faction with Sylvain Grenier and René
Duprée, fans hating the group, why he doesn’t like his “Just
Look At Me” theme, being fired on live TV by Vince McMahon,
getting beaten up by WWE legends, and more!
How did you get called up to be 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. 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. 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.’ 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.”
“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.”
You didn’t like your theme song?
“I don’t think anybody actually likes it. I think they get a
kick out of it, because it’s kind of funny, but if you were
getting ready to bench press 300 pounds, you wouldn’t say,
let me throw on Just Look At Me. Let’s say, a month before I
come out with La Resistance, the crowd is going crazy. You
switch it to that lounge music, and I think Stone Cold could
have walked out to it, and people be like, who’s this guy,
and why is this music like it is?”
There’s people online that say that’s their favorite theme
song of all time. So, you hate it?
“I’m just not a big fan. I call it a crowd killer. At the
gym that I go to, sometimes I’ll walk in and they’ll switch
the music, and I’ll look up. They’ve got my action figures
and stuff up, but yeah, they know when I look at them like,
come on.”
Did you have any say in what that music would sound?
“I had absolutely no say. As a matter of fact, the first
time they played it, I was in Gorilla, and I think Kerwin
White had just had a match. When they played my music, I
thought they were playing his exit music, and Jerry Brisco
was like, ‘That’s your music, go. ‘ I was like, oh no.”
But you got to a point where you were clearly embracing that
theme song, you were singing it as you were walking down the
aisle. Whether you like the song or not, it’s become
synonymous with the Rob Conway character.
“I mean, when you’re a professional. I’ve wrestled people
that I don’t get along with. But when you’re out there, you
do make the most of it. I mean, it’s your time to shine, and
your entrance. Even though I didn’t like the music, is the
only time that, for the most part, it’s 100% focused on
you.”
Why does the singer of your theme song have a French accent?
“Everybody thinks it’s Randy Newman from Toy Story. They all
think that they used to think it was him, now they call it a
knockoff of his. But the thing is, when I first heard it and
went out, I was like, is there any way we could speed it up
a little bit? Jim Johnston, I guess, got upset about that,
so it’s like now I had heat with the office because I didn’t
like my own theme song that I had no part in and have
anything to do with.”
When you got beat by Jeff Hardy in 21 seconds, did they tell
you a number, did they say the match has to be 20 seconds or
less?
“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.”
“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?”
But people think that Vince firing you on TV was essentially
real
“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.”