Seth Rollins questions how WWE booked him against 2-time World Champion
Seth Rollins believes he “got a raw end of the deal” when WWE booked him against “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt after his eight-month storyline with Brock Lesnar came to an end in 2019.
The RAW Superstar received positive crowd reactions at SummerSlam 2019 after defeating Lesnar to become Universal Champion for the second time in four months. Meanwhile, at the same event, Wyatt’s alter-ego also proved popular with fans following his three-minute debut victory over Finn Balor.
WWE’s decision-makers inserted “The Fiend” into the Universal Championship picture shortly after SummerSlam, resulting in many fans turning against Rollins when he faced Wyatt’s new persona at Hell in a Cell and Crown Jewel.
Speaking to WWE personality Peter Rosenberg on the Cheap Heat podcast, Rollins revealed that he was not excited about becoming a heel after the storyline with “The Fiend” ended, as he originally wanted his babyface character to go in a different direction following his rivalry with Lesnar.
“The short answer is no [excited about turning heel]. It wasn’t something that I was excited about out of the gate. I feel like I got a raw end of the deal, a raw shake, when it came to what I was doing at the time and the position I was put in with The Fiend character and the Hell in a Cell and the Super ShowDown [Crown Jewel] matches after I had just come off what I thought was an incredible match and long story with Brock Lesnar from SummerSlam.”
Seth Rollins' 2020 WWE heel run
Regarding the way that fans reacted to him in the months following SummerSlam, Seth Rollins said “the wrong audience was chiming in a little too loudly”, which eventually led to him turning heel in December 2019.
The four-time WWE World Champion also acknowledged that his previous babyface role can “breed complacency” and he feels re-motivated now that he can direct his ire back at the same fans “who were directing it at me for not too many reasons that I can totally understand”.