WWE has released two clips from the new “After The Bell” podcast with host Corey Graves, as seen above and below.
In the video above, WWE Universal Champion Seth Rollins was asked about the negative fan feedback following the controversial finish to the recent Hell In a Cell match with “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt. Rollins said pro wrestling is a weird industry and in 2019, he’s not sure what the business looks like anymore.
“Yeah, I mean, controversial… I mean, it’s kind of one of those things that, you know, where do you go? Like what’s the answer… why? Why? It’s sort of like, people just… if they don’t get what they want, they whine about it on Twitter, right? That’s kind of what happens nowadays and that happens with everything, it’s not just our industry. If you do something and it strikes a chord, then it’s almost like you’re doing the right thing. I don’t even know anymore, it’s a weird industry, dude. It’s 2019 and I don’t know what wrestling looks like anymore. It’s a weird place, dude,” Rollins said.
Graves recalled when Rollins was the “internet darling” and the days of Tyler Black, and asked what it feels like to main event a major WWE pay-per-view like Hell In a Cell, and to go out to leave it all in the ring, do do the best that you can, to only have it be “universally panned” by fans online. Rollins admitted that the reactions sometimes hurt his feelings.
“Well, you mentioned internet darling, the funny thing is, you could go all the way back, 6 months, you could go back a year ago from Hell In a Cell,” Rollins said. “I was everybody’s favorite. Those same people that are panning Hell In a Cell, and talking about how Seth Rollins is not cool, are those same people that were clamoring for me to be the guy to face Brock Lesnar going into WrestleMania. I don’t know what changed as far as the fact that, except for the fact that I became the person that they wanted me to be, and then they hated me for it. It’s a very fickle audience. It is what it is. To answer your question directly, it feels awful. You know, it’s not a good feeling to go out there and put your body on the line and not just at Hell In a Cell, but every single night, for the past how many ever years I’ve been doing it. I go out and compete at an extremely high level, and dare I say I’m one of the very best at my job, and I do what I have to do when I have to do it, and look, it’s not always pretty, but you go out there and you do your job, and you do it well, and people don’t like it, and they kind of forget that it is what it is. And so it hurts your feelings. You’re a human being. You go out there and you work hard, and it’s fine, it’s art, you can have your opinion on it, but man, it’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes.”
Graves also spoke to Triple H and asked him what goes through his mind when Vince McMahon makes the call to bring a talent up from WWE NXT to RAW or SmackDown. He recalled how the NXT women’s division was gutted before current WWE Women’s Tag Team Champion Asuka had her big run on the brand. Triple H said he believes things like that will change now that NXT is another top brand for the company.
“So, I think that will change now,” Triple H said. “Before it was just like, ‘Hey, this is what we need, this is the moment we need it in.’ When Vince called and said I need basically your entire women’s division from NXT, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, the whole thing?’ Pretty much, and he’s like, ‘Not the whole thing.’ And then he listed the talent, and I’m like, well that’s everyone. And what I had said then was, ‘Can you leave me Asuka?’ If you leave me Asuka, I can tent-pole her and build the rest of it around her, and then no problem. But you know, all those women kind of went at the same time, and there was a plan for more to come right after that. So, I was like, ‘Man, that’s tough.’
“But now you put yourself in a position where you kind of sort of can’t do that. You have to give some considerations to the other brand, so there needs to be longer term plans laid out,” Triple H said. He went on to say he could bring talents to NXT if nothing is being done with them elsewhere. “You know, they don’t have something for somebody, if I see somebody that’s just sitting, not doing anything and I think, ‘You know what, I got a big idea for that person.’ Great.”
Graves also asked if we could see another situation like Finn Balor, where he just returned to NXT from the main roster.
“I do,” Triple H said. “I think now this is sort of the template of whatever is on the table. And I think that as… if you look at the roster, there’s going to be times where they’re like, ‘Look, until the next Draft comes or whatever, this talent is here but they’ve kind of worked with everybody and we’re going to finish up this program with them and then we almost inherently need to send them down for 3 months or 6 months, just to clear this up, so we can get to this other side, and then when we do the switch, it’s new again.’ Great, give them to me, I’ll take them. Here’s the window and here’s what I’m going to do with you in that window, for the most part, barring all the other things that can happen.
“It’s a cool opportunity and I think right now… Finn and I had this conversation the other day and he actually said it on the FOX show [WWE Backstage]. That we were talking about the differences between RAW and SmackDown, and he basically said, if RAW and SmackDown are The Avengers movies and it’s Hollywood, big budget Hollywood, NXT is like going back to Broadway. And I had heard that a couple weeks prior when I was in a meeting with NBCU and I don’t remember who used it, somebody just said it making the analogy, and it really resonated with me, and Finn and I were having that conversation, and he used it the other night, but it’s the truth. In a way it’s less bells and whistles, a tighter sort of focus on the action, not the fans, not the size of it, not the spectacle of it, not the lights and the bells and whistles. There are some of that but it’s more, at that point, about the performances. It’s more at that point about the actors and the actresses, so to speak on the stage of Broadway, and people are still lined up around the building to get in, they’re just getting in to a thousand-seat theater as opposed to going to see the blockbuster film.”
Stay tuned for more from the “After The Bell” premiere.
