Flip Gordon is aware that his conspiracy theory gimmick rubbed wrestling fans the wrong way.
The former Ring of Honor star discussed this subject during his recent interview on the 3 Count podcast, where he recalled switching from his Mercenary character into a character that greatly reflected his real-life interest in conspiracy theories. Check out his full thoughts in the highlights below.
How his mercenary character in ROH spun off into his conspiracy theory heel gimmick:
The Unreal’ was kind of like a spin off of my mercenary character that I was doing back in Ring of Honor. Towards the tail end of Ring of Honor, I was doing this conspiracy gimmick, because I was a heel. I never really watched movies or TV shows or read books growing up, only thing I was really into was professional wrestling. That was really my only source of entertainment. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started getting into conspiracy theories as a way to let my mind explore. ‘What if this is happened? What if that’s happening?’ I started going down some of these rabbit holes and I was like, ‘I can throw this into my gimmick. I’m a heel, so I can amp up this a little more.’ I remember, I was down in Mexico with Juventud Guerrera and he pitched the whole flat earth thing to me. ‘That is ridiculous, but I like it.’ I came back the following week, and we even put it on BTE [Being The Elite], I told the Bucks [The Young Bucks], ‘Let’s do this flat earth thing.’ They laughed and enjoyed it, and we tied it into that.
On allegations that he didn’t wear a mask with COVID, and how he used real-life conspiracies to play into his character:
I was like, ‘Man, conspiracies is a way to get on people’s nerves,’ and I started coming up with the wackiest theories like wild fires having borders and not entering into Canada or Mexico. Obviously, when COVID hit, I was really on the whole ‘no mask’ thing because people would freak out about it. ‘A mask isn’t going to work.’ Meanwhile, I was the first person to wear a mask. When COVID first hit, I did a bit in the airport with a gas mask. People just had this narrative about me and I kept going with it. For me, that’s where I got my entertainment from. Taking something I enjoy outside of wrestling and bringing it into wrestling. To me, that was conspiracy theories.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
