Sam Roberts has spoken out regarding his comments made at NXT Takeover: Phoenix about Bianca Belair, saying people discussed how he handled the situation after the show, but he won’t apologize for his personal opinion.
For those that didn’t see the NXT Takeover pre-show, Roberts said Belair was not worthy of being on a Takeover event yet, and she didn’t stand a realistic chance of winning. Roberts’ comments were met with harsh criticism, and some fans even said he was being fed lines to cause a stir.
Roberts denied anyone told him what to say, saying WWE brings him in to have an opinion, and in that moment he had a ‘crisis of conscience’ and decided to say exactly how he felt. Roberts went on to say despite the backlash, he couldn’t apologize for his opinion, and might change his mind about Belair being ‘worthy’ at the next Takeover event in April:
“I know Mark Henry has started a campaign saying I owe Bianca Belair an apology. I certainly will not be apologizing to Bianca Belair because my opinion is my opinion. Do I think that she deserves to be at TakeOver after her performance? You’ll have to ask me at the end of March. The next TakeOver is in April. I will tell you in April if Bianca Belair, in my opinion, deserves to be at TakeOver. But I found that match, at the beginning of TakeOver, it felt underwhelming to me, so I talked about it.”
Roberts added:
“There were people after the show who had conversations with me about the way I said what I said, but the fact is that I said what I said, so it kind of is what it is. It’s exactly as you saw it and that’s kind of it. Was everybody thrilled with it? No. That’s what I mean about having conversations, but those are, again, maybe things that I don’t exactly want to get into at this moment. However, we’ll see how things go as we move forward.”
(Transcription credit to WrestleYard)
