The curious case of a misplaced Seth Rollins
Seth Rollins picked the wrong time to launch a professional wrestling career.
Caught in a generation of performers who are promoted to WWE’s circus too soon, with a snail’s hair chance of being given real time to develop as a top performer before they are thrust onto the top of the food chain, where fans either like the idea the company is developing, or they kick it to the curb faster than Amazing Red’s career. Rollins is trapped in a situation where he is the best there is on the mat right now, and there are few who can challenge him to be even better.
Few wrestlers, unless your name is John Cena.
The idea of making Rollins the traitor of The Shield was the best move WWE could make, but now he is overused, given little to work with except continual matches with John Cena – which he is losing – and nothing on the horizon that screams fan excitement. To counter that, Kane is now the flavor of the month opponent, which doesn’t give Rollins a chance to mature as a champion, and makes a veteran like the Big Red Monster look more like a loose cannon than a star.
This is the Seth Rollins nightmare, the one all wrestling fans are living in.
Rollins has been compared by some as the new version of Shawn Michaels but in a shorter amount of time. It’s not a fair comparison as fans are gripping to find some connection between the WWE World Champion and the past – a link that isn’t there yet. The same thing was said about Dolph Ziggler a few years ago and became a post-It note that never stuck.
Given the fact there will never be another Shawn Michaels, or Chris Jericho or even another John Cena to get into a wrestling ring, let’s take Rollins for who he is now – a wrestler with immense potential, trapped in a bad situation, in a time where wrestling does not matter as long as Triple H and Stephanie McMahon are pulling the puppet strings. You cannot have a great champion without great booking. That has not happened. Brock Lesnar, John Cena, and Sting were supposed to be a gauntlet of great veteran talent to help put Rollins over.
Cena was the only one who put together a great series of matches with him. Lesnar has his sights back on The Undertaker. Sting is hoping he can get back in a wrestling ring at some point when he should really retire.
It’s a lot like the 1980s when the NWA put together the Great American Bash. The idea was to have wrestling shows all over the southern part of the United States where Ric Flair would defend the world title against wrestlers who may not have been at the top level of talent, but still had a chance to show what they could do in a ring. From that, we saw how good Flair was, but we also saw surprise performances like Ricky Morton competing in singles matches.
Rollins doesn’t have a Morton to compete with. Dean Ambrose is still the best opponent for him, but WWE is content on the former Shield band mate competing in tag team matches. And John Cena winning the United States Title again has more to do with Cena needing to hold onto something more than it means for Rollins to be holding only one title. The matches between the two are awesome and impressive, but they are getting old.
Where do bookers go from here, knowing there is limited roster space and not enough challengers? Nowhere, that’s where. They cannot get out of their own way, allowing Rollins to suffer. Sting’s injury aside, Rollins sold out Sunday night in a pay-per-view with little to celebrate. The comparison again is to Flair doing everything to make everyone look good on a very weak card. And don’t miss understand me – Rollins isn’t a Ric Flair, and never will be. But here is what Rollins is…
A friend of mine was discussing Rollins based on a story my friend Tom Clark wrote for another site. He was spot on in his assessment.
It would help to see him actually decisively beat someone. Sting was supposed to be that guy until he got hurt as guys his age will. Constant clean losses to John just continue to hurt his cause. I think my question is this and this might be the main issue: Where would he have been on the card in 1998, hence the title of your article, but if you go to that era or honestly, any other era, he's a top half dozen guy. He's not Flair or Dusty.
He's not Bret or Shawn. NWO or DX. He's great and every time he's out there, he kills it. But it's similar to the Ascension wanting to be the Road Warriors overnight. He wants to be a 10+ year icon in year 3. Or they want him to be. It's set up to fail. He needs time, but he really needs some clean solid wins against what few icons they have left. He won the title at WM but earlier that night, he lost clean to Randy. Got shoved around by Brock and is what everyone is vs John. Fish food.
Few would argue with the statements. Rollins is the best there is right now, but will be the best there is five years from now? That’s hard to say. You cannot determine future greatness if there isn’t someone great there to challenge the champion. Someone who is his equal. Flair had Sting. Michaels had Bret Hart. Randy Savage had Ricky Steamboat.
Until Rollins has the one wrestler who can match him in the ring – someone who can move through the era with him, we will never know how good the future of this company can really be.