Matt Riddle Still Wants a Match With Brock Lesnar in WWE

Matt Riddle has made it no secret he wants a match with fellow former UFC star Brock Lesnar. Unfortunately back at the start of the year it looked like that wouldn't be possible, as Riddle and "The Beast" reportedly got into an argument backstage at the Royal Rumble in which Lesnar said he'd "never" work with him. And yet "The Original Bro" hasn't given up hope. He cut a promo in front of a live audience days later vowing to retire Lesnar, and told ESPN's Ariel Helwani this week that he was still hopeful for a match.

"He came up to me with a security guard, not that he needed a security guard. He came up to me, put his arm around me and basically said, 'We are never going to work' so I shouldn't be putting his name out there, talk about him or call him out on social media," Riddle said (h/t Fightful for transcript). "I said, 'Whatever you want, bro.' What am I going to do? He's Brock Lesnar. I get it. You don't want to work with me and I offended you. All I can do is change your mind. That's it. I won't tweet at him, but I still want to work with him. That's not going to change."

Riddle added he has a tremendous amount of respect for Lesnar, and that his challenges were his way of complimenting the former world champion. He also added he wants nothing to do with a match against Goldberg.

Riddle will make his debut on Friday Night SmackDown this Friday. Back when he was in NXT, Triple H addressed the Riddle-Lesnar situation during a media conference call.

"Vince didn't express his disapproval of anything that was said, and I'm sure if there were an issue, he would've called me directly. He's not shy about that. I didn't see that. I heard what you heard about the conversation between the two," he said. "Matt's Matt, Brock's Brock. They had a conversation that's between them. They're men. I don't mean that to be disparaging of anybody. They're grown adults, let's just say that. They had a conversation."

"Matt is an incredibly talented performer. He's very vocal, he has his own personality and his own viewpoints on things," he said. "That's a great thing. I think Brock is of the opinion, my guess would be, if you're gonna write checks, you better be able to cash them, and I think Matt writes checks and he can cash in his mind. Who knows? We'll see where it goes."

Lesnar has not appeared on WWE television since dropping the WWE Championship to Drew McIntyre.