LA Knight recently referred to Roman Reigns as a “manufactured corporate puppet industry plant,” and Conrad Thompson made it clear during a Wednesday (October 7) appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show that he agrees with the evaluation.
Of course, Thompson has been dishing out criticisms of Reigns for several. weeks now, calling the WWE World Heavyweight Champion “overrated” multiple times on a couple of different podcasts that he co-hosts.
Conrad began the verbal shots against Reigns in August on 83
Weeks, which he hosts with Eric Bischoff.
“I think Roman Reigns is probably the most overrated main eventer in WWE history,” Thompson said at the time, before invoking the term “industry plant” to describe the superstar.
He later doubled-down on those comments in another episode of 83 Weeks before taking up the charge again on the September 25th episode of Something to Wrestle, a podcast he hosts with John Bradshaw Layfield. He again called Reigns overrated, before stating: “It’s also true that never have I ever seen a Roman Reigns T-shirt out in the wild. Not once.”
Thompson went on to say to JBL of Reigns: “I’ve also never heard anybody say he’s on their Mount Rushmore [of wrestlers],” before he dismissively compared Roman to Triple H.
On Wednesday’s episode of The Ariel Helwani Show, Thompson returned to the “industry plant” talk when Helwani asked him about LA Knight’s promo.
“The thing that upset everybody is I called him an industry plant. If you look at Stone Cold, he got really hot and over with the crowd, and then they made him champion,” Thompson said. “The same is true with every other wrestler in history except for Roman Reigns. They forced him to be on top and to always win over and over and over. When he beat The Undertaker at WrestleMania, he shows up on Raw the next day, and they booed him nonstop. Fans just did not want it.“
Conrad then went on to give a lot of credit to Paul Heyman, saying the manager “changed the way we all felt about Roman Reigns.” He also noted that Reigns benefitted by being paired with the decorated Usos and “scene stealer” Sami Zayn.
“I give you the longest entrance. I let you go on last. You’re always the main event, and you always win. Well, I think that formula would work for pretty much anybody,” Thompson said of the push WWE gives Reigns. “I mean, that formula worked with the Ultimate Warrior and with Goldberg, it would work with anybody.”
Thompson continued by saying Reigns only wrestled seven matches last year, and his name on the card for WrestleManias and other major events doesn’t affect ticket sales.
Elsewhere in the talk, Thompson speculated: “Can he sell out Poughkeepsie this weekend? We’ll never know.”
“He’s not selling tickets. He’s not selling pay-per-views. I’ve never seen the merch. Now, is he more than upholding his end of the bargain? Absolutely. He’s been a part of three of the four most phenomenally financially successful events in WWE history,” Thompson said. “He was there in the main event, but did he earn that spot or was he given that spot? And we know the answer. And if we’re confused about it, we can just go watch those early WrestleManias, where when he comes out, the boos are so loud they have to turn the volume down, for a baby face. It’s never happened before. It hasn’t happened since. It’ll never happen again. Vince McMahon wanted to prove you’re wrong, I’m right. He’s our top guy, and he willed it so.”
Thompson also leveled criticism at WWE as a company, particularly the flow of matches being interrupted by ad breaks.
“But I understand that, you know, AEW is making wrestling for fans, and I think WWE is making wrestling for investors. You know, their audience is investors,” he said.
What do you think of Thompson’s latest comments? Let us know in the comments.
