By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Rob Conway
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
How did you get called up to be part of La Resistance? “So Rene [Dupree] had already been in OVW for like a year or so, and then Sylvain [Grenier] 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 been drafted into the army, so he was in the army at one point, and we went to an 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.”
People hated you guys! “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 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 are 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 how 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, it’s the only time that, for the most part, it’s 100 percent 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-, four-, or five-minute match. The match was irrelevant; it was the promo, and to get Vince [McMahon]. 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.”
What happened? “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.”
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