In the summer of 2021, Matt Riddle sparked headlines when he openly called out Roman Reigns during an interview with BleacherReport.com. At the time, Riddle said:

“You’re related to The Rock. Shut up. Like, I’m not impressed, I can beat you up in a real fight. So, shut your mouth. You’re not moving needles.”

The remarks caught the attention of Roman Reigns, who did not take kindly to them. Speaking later with TMZ.com, Riddle revealed that Reigns reached out to him directly after the comments and made it clear he was unhappy.

“I could beat him in an MMA fight, a jiu-jitsu match. In a football game, he probably could catch better than me, throw better than me, tackle better than me. He’s a bigger guy. Dude, he flipped out. He texted me. ‘Not cool, dude.’ And I was like, ‘oh sh*t.’

So I apologized. I wrote this long apology. I go, ‘Randy [Orton], how does this look?’ I just showed him and he goes, ‘Nah, this isn’t right.’ You know, because Roman’s on SmackDown. This is during COVID, we’re still separated. He fixes the text. It was basically: ‘My bad, bro. Maybe we’ll work again someday soon.’ We’d worked since then. And the guy loves me… I try to tell this to people, it’s pro wrestling. If I’m not talking sh*t, like what are we doing here?”