Sam Roberts Stands By Criticism Of Bianca Belair

As we reported last week, Sam Roberts made some controversial comments about Bianca Belair on the NXT TakeOver: Phoenix preshow where he said she didn't deserve a spot on the card and that she stood no chance of defeating Shayna Baszler for the NXT Women's Championship. Roberts continues to stand his ground and stated on his podcast that he won't apologize to Belair.

“So a lot of people have a lot of opinions about it, a lot of people upset, a lot of people agree, a lot of people don’t agree, a lot of accusations being thrown my way. Look, WWE invites me to those Kickoff Shows and they ask me to give my opinion on things. On Saturday night, I was not fed an opinion in my ear, I know that’s one of the theories. I’ve never been fed an opinion in my ear. They wouldn’t bring me to give their opinion, I’m not good at that. I just go on and they just ask me to be me, and give my opinion. I had a crisis of conscious in that moment. I felt like I was just going along with the show, so I decided to say exactly how I felt in that moment. I know that Mark Henry has started a campaign saying that 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. There were people after the show who had conversations with me about the way I said what I said. But the fact is, I said what I said. You know, 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. Those are, again, maybe things that I don’t exactly want to get in to at this moment, however, we’ll see how things go as we move forward.“

Check out Roberts' original comments below.