WWE News: Corey Graves defends Seth Rollins' Twitter rants, addresses hiring of Heyman and Bischoff
What's the Story?
WWE announcer Corey Graves recently appeared as a special guest on The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, and during the interview, Graves spoke out on a number of topics, including Seth Rollins' recent rants on Twitter, and WWE hiring Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff to Executive Director positions in the company.
In case you didn't know...
Seth Rollins made waves on the internet a couple of weeks ago when he spoke out in defense of the current WWE TV product, labeling it the "best pro wrestling on the planet". Numerous WWE fans, and even NJPW star Will Ospreay, took exception to Rollins' claims, and the ensuing online battle led to a spat between The Kingslayer and Ospreay, and also featured Rollins doubling-down on his stance towards WWE.
Additionally, in the wake of declining ratings, fan criticism of the product, and the emergence of All Elite Wrestling, WWE hired Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff as the new Executive Directors of Raw and SmackDown Live, respectively.
The heart of the matter
Speaking with The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling, WWE announcer Corey Graves defended the comments made by Seth Rollins on Twitter, calling Rollins a locker room leader.
"We've all had it and I'm pretty sure they still do it when you are hired to NXT," explained Graves, h/t to Chad and JP of The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling for the transcription. "We all go through a class with social media and media training and all of that. At the end of the day from Seth Rollins to everybody on the roster and myself included, producers we are all human beings at the end of the day. So when you get done with a show and you feel good about something you did and you log onto your Twitter to read if people liked this thing and it is just hours and hours of "this sucks", "the company sucks", "you should all be fired", you are a human being at the end of the day. As much as we probably have a thicker skin than a lot of everyday human beings and if you work in a bank and every day you get hundreds of awful tweets of people saying you screwed up their transactions and they want you to be fired it will probably rock you a little bit more than we do.
But Seth doing it, it was morale," Graves continued. "He is a locker room leader. The same as in generations past, somebody always wants to wave the flag of the boys and the talent. It is even bigger than that and you don't realize it because they are not on TV the incredible crew that we have that travels just as much as we do and just as frequently as we do. They are at the building before the talent arrives and they are their [sic] breaking it down afterwards. They care as much as we do they just happen to not be on screen and that was simply in my opinion Seth's way of going, Hey! Screw you. I get you guys are upset. He was just standing up for everyone and I respect the sh*t out of Seth for that and I think everyone does. I think we need more people like that."
Corey Graves also addressed the hiring of Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff, describing the atmosphere in WWE as different since the changes were made.
"I think everyone is pretty excited," said Graves. "Obviously there are some pretty well publicized changes within the company and honestly I don't know much more than anyone that reads the internet knows. I kind of get the news around the same time that everybody else does (there's a shocker for you) everyone thinks I am in on it. People get mad about storylines and send me mean tweets and I'm like, well I didn't write it and only saw it when you did but there is definitely a little bit of an internal buzz and obviously they are external sources that is everyone is talking about. It’s in a weird way kind of re-invigorated the locker room and hopefully that is the starting of something cool that is going to permeate inside the entire company."
What's next?
Seth Rollins and Will Ospreay have buried the hatchet since their Twitter feud, and as for Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff, Heyman is off to a solid start on Monday nights, and Bischoff will begin his new SmackDown role in the coming weeks.
How do you react to Corey Graves' comments? Let us know in the comment section!