Rob Conway Recalls Squash Loss To Jeff Hardy, Being ‘Fired’ By Vince McMahon On Raw

Rob Conway’s WWE TV run came to an end with a quick loss to Jeff Hardy and being “fired” on WWE Raw, something he recently looked back on. The former La Resistance had his last appearance on WWE TV on the January 1st, 2007 episode of Raw when he announced that his New Year’s Resolution was to start winning, and if he couldn’t win he would quit. Hardy then came out and beat him in 21 seconds and after the match, Vince McMahon came out and “fired” him. He was released from the company months later in May.

Conway recounted the whole thing in his appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. He noted that people believed he was shoot fired in the segment because it was his last appearance, and that it hurt his value a bit as a result. You can see the highlights below:

On Getting Beat By Jeff In 21 Seconds:

“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.”

On Getting ‘Fired’ By McMahon On TV:

“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?”

On People Thinking It Was 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.”