Seth Rollins vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, WWE Payback 2023 (9/2/2023)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Stink Time. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was for Rollins’ fictional title.

It’s fine, honestly.

Really.

Seth Rollins has a bad back and Nakamura attacks it. That’s it. There’s nothing really egregious to complain about. No kickout spot upset me. The match isn’t irrationally long like some other WWE pay-per-view main events recently. Seth Rollins’ selling was even pretty decent. Not great, but there were a few moments where he remembered or did some small minor movements that someone with an actual hurt back in real life may have done. I thought it generally escalated well, and while not every transition was perfect (the way they get to the ending stomp is especially abrupt feeling), it gets a lot more right than I think I expected, or maybe that you maybe would expect had you not seen the match. It’s also not a match that has, to my knowledge, been met with a ton of comically overblown fanfare by pervert WWE fans, so there’s not even a conversation about it that would annoy me.

It’s not a bad match and it can’t hurt anybody.

It’s just kind of boring.

Rollins is one of the least sympathetic or likeable guys on the roster, so playing an under-the-gun babyface was always going to be something that never worked for me, and while there are things that are objectively good or fine here, it also never really comes together as more than that. It’s an odd thing to write about, a match I didn’t love, but also have no real negative feelings about, and I suppose for Nakamura at this point and for Seth Rollins as a solo act in general, it’s a wild overachievement and, at least relative to my expectations, a success.

Good for them, having an alright match.

The comment that came with the commission for this match (as well as Moxley vs. Orange Cassidy the next night) asked if there was any sort of parallel here or a relationship between the two matches. I assumed that meant just Shield boys main eventing pay-per-views in matches for theoretical secondary titles and succeeding, but the relationship lies elsewhere, or at least the connection between them. Compared to a match the next night with a wrestler who very silly and/or stupid people have called some kind of cosplay wrestler, its Seth Rollins who, yet again, does the actual tribute acts, not only as a beat up older pretty boy being constantly trucked by Nakamura, but as one with a bad back too.

Given what a huge fan Rollins obviously is of both far better Nakamura opponents, I’m happy for him that he got to have his little fantasy camp.

The Miz vs. Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor, WWE WrestleMania 34 (4/8/2018)

This was for The Miz’s WWE Intercontinental Title.

First things first, it is HILARIOUS that Seth Rollins again went for the Game of Thrones entrance aesthetic for WrestleMania, this time with the Ice King stuff. This is an especially funny choice as — while one could write off 2017’s Kingslayer idea as being tied into his match, as bad as it was — there’s not only no connection, but he chooses a character that winds up being absolutely nothing after all that build up. It ties into the hilarity of the extended bit in general, tying himself so concretely to this thing that, once it was over in a year and change, would have lit itself so severely on fire that it would have almost no cultural impact outside of a few phrases and ideas. It is perfect for Seth Rollins, the most empty calories ass wrestler imaginable.

As for the match, it’s actually really good!

Generally speaking, I am not going to be the guy to do an extended 2018 Seth Rollins retrospective. The idea of him as this workhorse WOTY in 2018 always felt not only like total horseshit that only the most empty minded braying hog WWE fans would get into, but also weirdly astroturfed. It always felt to me like they realized the fanfare that people like 2014 Dolph Ziggler or 2016 Miz or even 2017 Roman Reigns got for these string of long and great TV matches and midcard title defenses/programs, and simply tried to graft that onto Seth Rollins. None of it is really stuff I enjoy, both because of the artificial seeming nature of both the idea and so many of the matches he has within it, but also because he is simply not an especially good or interesting professional wrestler, and so it has no real value.

Having said all of that, it did at least work at the start, as I really genuinely like this match a lot.

It’s not the most complex thing in the world, your standard WWE triple threat.

Still, all three try really hard, the match doesn’t waste a lot of time if any at all, and they have enough cool little ideas to get them through it in an impressive enough way. It’s the kind of match that I very easily can wind up hating, but that never gave me a chance to. The pace is not blistering and nothing they do is blowing my mind, but it all just sort of comes together in a way that I found really pleasing and satisfying.

Far greater than the sum of its parts.

Rollins hits Balor with a curb stomp into Miz’s back as he tries to pick Miz up in a neat little spot, and then hits Miz with the regular edition Curb Stomp to win the title. It’s the correct call for a finish, if not for a result (Balor is naturally likeable in a way Rollins has never been able to simulate, do the same thing in 2018 with him instead, and it is like 50x better), beating the champion himself instead of the other guy, and allowing zero gripe about how it went. Rollins should never have been the one to get the real rub out of beating Miz for the title definitively in a big spot to end the Miz IC Champion era, but as it is, it’s all very well done and I suppose that is all that you can hope for from this company at this point.

Bad ideas executed well enough that, in the moment, they seem simply okay.

A great version of a very particular kind of WWE bullshit.

***

Triple H vs. Seth Rollins, WWE WrestleMania 33 (4/2/2017)

Reposting this, as I couldn’t find it on Twitter and quote tweet for some reason. This was a commission from Bren as part of the “five worst matches” commission. You too can pay for reviews over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon.

(ORIGINALLY WRITTEN — 11/27/2021)

In doing this, there were some problems. The request was the five worst matches I’ve ever seen, but I already wrote about the 2015 Royal Rumble. I wrote about the 1991 Great American Bash as a whole. Various Triple H matches, Davey/Eddie at Final Battle 2011 (the match that cost me a toenail). I wanted to try and avoid things I was going to write about in the future. Your ZSJ/Ciampa three fall matches, your blood money retirement home epics, your Undertaker vs. Shane McMahons, etc.

However, I cannot imagine a match more specifically designed for me to come away truly revolted with the entire process, and so this felt correct to do here.

Seth Rollins is really maybe my least favorite wrestler ever. I felt something off about him the first time I saw him in 2005, and spent the next fourteen years incredibly confused at not only all the praise he got (save the initial Shield run) but the praise that he got instead of the people clearly making most of it happen. Carried by Josh Abercrombie, enhanced by every tag partner he had, given every booking gift in the world and still only barely having great matches. One of the only wrestlers I dislike on the same level is Triple H, and so their pairing together in 2014 was a specifically disgusting sort of a thing. Putting Rollins not only into a six month long Triple H feud but then also blowing it off in a half hour WrestleMania epic that not only insists on high drama and emotion but that ALSO tries to be a limb work match feels like a very deliberate and equally as specific attack on my very person.

Every moment of this is excruciating.

It is not an Encounter, but instead, an Ordeal.

It begins with the entrances, as not only is Triple H a solid three plus years late to the Cool Motorcycle Guy With Evil Wife bit (on top of making a poor Ron Perlman), but Seth Rollins once again cloaks himself in Game of Thrones shit for Mania. The KINGSLAYER motif is there, but he also has dragon scales on some of his gear and then golden gear, so he’s mashing multiple different motifs together and just being Guy Who Likes Game of Thrones (as he naturally lacks any substance of his own).

I’d complain more about that, actually, but few things fit Seth Rollins more than basing so much of himself around a pop culture phase that would be not only over within two years, but largely looked back on now as a great shame as a result of how bad it got in the end.

Some things are just too perfect, you know?

As for the match, it’s some real hot dog shit in ways both expected and unexpected.

Seth Rollins comes in with a hurt knee and that’s the whole thing, despite it never once stopping him from doing every single move he’d ever thought up in his head or performed before this. Instead, it’s half an hour of rolling around to try and simulate pain, but clearly never being in enough of it to make a difference. The result is that on top of the ways I always expected this to suck (both men are slow at this point, Rollins’ highspots post-knee injury look like he’s trying to run through molasses, neither is very creative or smart and prone to WWE Bullshit), it also sucked in ways I don’t always expect from them. Add in the usual WWE stunt spots, interference theatrics, sledgehammer drama, and a few different offensive move theft ideas (Triple H teasing a Pepsi Plunge, Rollins using the Border City Stretch as if he hadn’t already borrowed enough). Rollins wins with Pedigree, as they can’t even abandon that bit even when it would be the most thematically appropriate, needing Triple H’s ultimate fall to come at the hands of his own move because nothing Rollins could come up with could be good enough. Don’t at me about how it’s the biggest insult or some dog shit. If the story is “this guy made me worse and i want to be good again”, then maybe using the finish he passed down isn’t the best ending.

The big takeaway, once again, is that a Triple H match at this point is a litmus test for virtually everyone who undertakes it, so long as it doesn’t become something like the Sting match or the Roman Reigns match, which are both political hits moreso than wrestling matches. A Triple H match at this point exposes those who take it on completely. The Black Lodge of professional wrestling matches.

Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson is the greatest of all time and pulled a career level match from him through force of will and unstated political pressure. Men like Dean Ambrose and Dolph Ziggler in 2016 did their best, and showed what they had to offer when not being crushed inside the belly of this horrible machine. Later in the decade, Randy Orton, John Cena, and Batista will all get a final crack at it apiece, and it will lay bare every strength and weakness of each man individually. As Seth Rollins has never had much of a soul as it pertains to this thing, we all suffer instead for his failures as he is cracked open and shown to the world as a lifeless husk, devoid of any element that makes someone worth watching or rooting for.

A blank void in a shiny costume.

It is then no wonder that of all these people to undertake this test, he is the one to get the clearest green light as a top guy going forward.

I watched this for the first time outside of pay-per-view in the summer of 2020, and so I had none of the usual outlets to make myself feel better after a bad experience (bar, seeing a friend, going to the gym) and so I just walked around the city for half an hour or so and eventually just sat on a bench by the river for another ten or fifteen minutes before then going back home. It’s not the absolute worst watching experience of my life, it’s not like I thought I had COVID because of how bad it felt, but it was still a match that did truly deep psychic harm.

This go around, it’s not quite that bad (although I am going to leave the house again and not watch wrestling when I return). It is, however, still a match match so stupid, bad, and offensive that I think less of myself every time I do it.

Give me thousands of dollars to make up for it.

This was the opposite of a religious experience.

Watching and then writing about this match is like being abandoned by God.

Light your house on fire and walk into the nearest body of water, there’s no point to any of this, everything you enjoy will have its own version of this match. All your heroes will die and your enemies will take power. Punch yourself in the dick until you can’t feel your hands anymore. Crawl into the Earth and live with the moles. There isn’t any point in liking anything. A terrific advertisement for nihilism until you remember how fucking boring nihilism is. This is the creative nadir of professional wrestling, the last half an hour or so of something beautiful falling down a fucking gorge and finally finding where the bottom is.

As i predicted for the last decade before this, Seth Rollins was the man capable of finding that bottom once and for all

I may never watch a worse professional wrestling match?

I cannot imagine that there is one.

 

Seth Rollins vs. Sami Zayn, WWE Raw (1/23/2017)

I don’t make a habit out of a reviewing a lot of Seth Rollins matches as a solo act. Not counting the one I was already paid to cover from a few months after this, I’m not positive I’ll write about another match of his in 2017 without another financial incentive. If you’re a new reader, you can go through the tag and just see that I do not enjoy him, and if you’re not, there’s no need for me to go into it again. He is one of my least favorite wrestlers in the world and it is one of modern wrestling’s great miracles that The Shield was great as it was.

This however genuinely worked.

Part of that is, as usual with Rollins’ best work, the limitations. It’s a sub fifteen minute match that doesn’t aim especially high, and now that he’s working babyface, it’s one that doesn’t ask him to control some great swath of the match’s real estate by working in control, something he never quite developed a high level skill with. It’s also got a nice little story working towards it, with only the winner getting to go to the Royal Rumble, and while that doesn’t necessarily make or break a match, it’s the sort of help that at least does something for the match.

Of course, the most obvious answer is probably also the most correct one, which is that this match has all of those positives, but it’s also just that this time, Sami Zayn is there to guide him through it.

Sami Zayn, in one of his last relevant matches as an all-time great babyface, accomplishes something huge and has a stellar face/face match against Seth Rollins of all people. He’s gotten better matches than this out of wrestlers who are probably objectively worse than Seth Rollins, but given that this is a face/face WWE TV match that is cut up by a commercial and under fifteen minutes, a prelude to some Booking, and held back offensively/not allowed to really get all that wild, it is quite the feat.

The tricks lie in the things Zayn always does in matches like these. The pacing and the escalation of the match are immaculate, not featuring anything all that fancy or new, but playing the old hits like teasing things to pay them off later, repeatedly blocking moves only to hit them out of newer or less common situations, things like that. Every major piece of offense here is set up incredibly well, far greater than in most other Seth Rollins matches that aim for the sort of thing that this does. Zayn’s facial expressions and little movements are also once again responsible for so much, filling in the gaps that the match has as result of Rollins’ bad ones and a commercial cutting this down to eleven or twelve minutes. Zayn does so much in this regard, from communicating exhaustion or cumulative damage with little shakes and heavy breathing motions, to showing the broader idea of the match, which is that he’s not totally comfortable being used as a pawn in a Triple H/McMahons plot against his opponent, but a win is a win. There’s a tentative nature to his movements early on that eventually goes into a sort of pure desperation, and it adds a lot to what was already a pretty brilliantly assembled mid level bombfest.

Being entirely fair, Seth Rollins turns in one of his better singles performances in the WWE here. That’s not a high bar, but between not trying to strike as much, putting more effort into big pieces of offense to make them seem actually forceful, and going along with all of Zayn’s ideas, I don’t honestly have all that much to complain about. The trick, as always, is to limit Rollins to under or around fifteen minutes, and to place him in the care of one of a generationally great wrestler at worst.

After finally hitting the Pedigree, on the apron in the rarity that it felt like the match was building towards, Rollins gets distracted by Triple H’s music. The moment allows Our Hero to recover, and Zayn blocks an attempt to pick him up into a cradle for the win.

There’s a chance they can do better than this, in a slightly longer match and with less bullshit at the end. However, when one has already achieved a low level miracle, why risk it even further?

Secretly one of Zayn’s greatest accomplishments.

***

Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins, WWE Money in the Bank (6/19/2016)

This was for Reigns’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

A remarkably weird thing, all in all, and despite the match not quite being great, it’s one that I think ought to be studied as a historical document.

Largely, it’s a real fascinating exercise, in which Roman Reigns totally goes with the crowd and works as the out and out antagonist for the first time as a solo act. He walked on the border against guys like Bryan and AJ and Cesaro, a little bit against Dean Ambrose in brief little clashes, moments in which he was never going to get 100% of the crowd with him. For whatever reason, he gets basically none here, and works the match as an outright bully.

It’s wonderful, so very obviously his true calling.

Roman’s shit talk is fantastic, In a purely mechanical sense, it’s one of his best performances like this, still retaining that explosive quality that a good chunk of the Head of the Table run hasn’t had. His offense is as great as it always is, but when allowed to control a match, he uses even more heavyweight offense than usual and executes everything with a little extra force. While he’s had many better matches than this, it’s one of the most natural performances Reigns had given out up to this point.

Unfortunately, the match fails him.

Firstly in that the way the match is set up goes completely against everything in storyline both before and after the match. It feels like a reaction to everyone yelling at the company for bringing Rollins back as a heel when so many people (for some reason????) wanted to cheer him, but that’s already done and you can’t just undo it, especially when you’re not going to continue down that path after the match is over. Beyond that baffling piece of decision making, it is a deeply strange experience to be told this thing on commentary and in video packages, only to experience this whole other reality when the bell rings. It’s disorientating, in a small little way, and results in a complete disconnect between all of the different facets of a match.

That might have been fine though, had his opponent not been Seth Rollins. That’s not even about his bad looking offense, now half-speed flying with a good chunk of his athleticism taken from him, or really any of the things that he’s mediocre at in terms of performance. The real thing is that Rollins is one of the least likeable professional wrestlers in history and anything that casts him as the protagonist in any way, shape, or form is giving itself an extraordinarily large handicap that very few matches have been able to overcome.

Even more confusing is that these decisions ALSO make no sense with where things are going.

After Rollins beats Reigns clean (???), he meets his revenge for the last two years when new Money in the Bank holder Dean Ambrose hits the ring, cashes in, and immediately takes the title away from him.

It’s a phenomenal bit that, had this match followed the story a little more closely bell-to-bell, could have been something really special. It’s genuinely great booking around the annual event, between Ambrose being robbed in 2014, barely losing to Rollins in a title match in 2015, and now not only finally getting the revenge on him that he’s been denied since June 2014 (and some of Roman’s revenge for WrestleMania 31, a great bit given how often he’s been cast as Reigns’ little buddy), but also finally winning the title he promised to win from Rollins a year earlier.

Naturally, they cannot help themselves, and such an obvious success is undermined in just enough stupid little ways to turn it from one of the best stories of the decade into just another thing.

Because Reigns works so dominantly from above for much of this match and because Rollins wins entire clean, it diminishes Reigns while also further babyfacing Rollins. Diminishing Reigns is the least offensive bit here, given a failed drug test, but it’s a wild call given how much of the shows will continue to be built around him anyways. If you’re gonna do something, don’t half ass it, you know?

Rollins (fucking NATURALLY) is preserved the most here, but even he’s harmed in a way, effectively turning face over the course of half an hour, only to revert back for the next two months, and then only turning again as a result of another heel turning on him. This match and segment isn’t the whole thing for him in the way it is for the other two, but it’s part of a pattern that results in fans not really taking to him as a babyface for a while once he’s actually turned (it will take the great Shield reunion angle in 2017, I think) in the way that they did organically in one match here.

The biggest victim though, obviously, is Dean Ambrose. Because Rollins regained a title that he never lost in clean fashion and worked the match as the hero of the two, it then ALSO undermines Ambrose’s win, because it doesn’t feel anywhere near as good. His big moment turns into another MITB cash in where a face kind of just looks weaker for doing it like this. Instead of Ambrose’s LONG awaited revenge on Seth Rollins, he’s cashing in on a guy who fought through adversity and succeeded fairly. It doesn’t feel as good and Ambrose’s long-awaited revenge should have felt like one of the best things in the world.

Somehow, in a night in which each member of The Shield held the WWE Title, the company found a way to make each one of them look worse. It’s one of the decade’s great statements of promotional incompetence, somehow diminishing every single person involved in it one way or another.

A remarkable show of efficiency, all things considered.

 

Seth Rollins vs. THE FIEND, WWE Hell in a Cell (10/6/2019)

More of those Black Friday Sale commissions. This one comes courtesy of AndoCommando, whose greatest wish is to see me in pain. You too can pay me to watch and write about wrestling matches or other things, over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. Ideally you have higher ambitions than to just make me watch bad stuff, but hey, dealers choice. That’s $5 per match and more if you’d like to discuss that in the DMs. 

This was a Hell in a Cell match for Rollins’ WWE Universal Title.

During this whole process, I’ve realized that I have a sort of set idea about what someone gets if they pay me. I want to hit over 500 words at least, and really expand upon everything I mean. Sometimes those words don’t always come, but if they start to flow, I just sort of see where they wander off towards. Even if it’s something I hate like this and that leaves me feeling insulted by the end, I always keep in mind that someone paid for this, and generally speaking, people deserve what they pay for. It’s not like either of these two abused a teenager or anything, you know?

Before I write about this “match”, I want to talk about the WWE and the way I consume it, and my reaction to this in the moment.

Ever since 2017 or so — save a six or seven month run in 2018 when 205 Live was often something worth watching live — I’ve consumed the WWE just like I would New Japan or Takeshita-era DDT or something like that. A company with a lot of talent, but whose booking frustrates me and whose lesser shows are rarely worth a start-to-finish watch. Cherry pick what looks decent or what’s received acclaim from people you trust, but it’s really about the monthly big shows. I’ve only ever watched WWE pay-per-views live, and I’ve typically gone over to my cousin’s to do so. We have some beers and a pizza, it’s a fun time. He’s a bigger WWE fan than I can ever be and pays for the stream, so it’s also just a little bit anthropological on top of allowing me to watch with slightly less guilt (I mean, I still have a Peacock sub that I regularly forget to cancel, but that’s mostly for sitcoms. I tell myself this to make it okay).

Unless a show is entirely useless, I go over there for just about every pay-per-view and it’s a good time.

This was a real bad one.

Bad enough that even my cousin hated it, and bad enough that I walked the few blocks home, got online, and set about making every one of the people I regularly interact with online watch this match. Called it THE ENCOUNTER, described it in detail, and just hounded people until they also experienced it. Typically, a burden shared is also a burden lessened, but that’s not the case here. The load never felt any lighter, it didn’t un-watch the match. Really, I thought it was just phenomenally terrible and I wanted other people to suffer too. That saying about a burden is about real labor with an aim to accomplish something. As it pertains to parasocial relationships, if I suffer through a great ordeal, I kind of want everyone else to suffer through the same thing.

Here and now, I’ve joined a select and probably damned group of people to have watched this match twice.

I would appreciate it if everyone reading this joined the same club.

It’s still one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. None of it’s any better. It hasn’t been rendered quaint by worse things to follow in the way that some NXT matches have. Everything that sucked about this initially and immediately will always suck about it. The action is pedestrian, the booking is atrocious, and the acting is embarrassing.

However, one thing I’m always fearful of being in this space is unoriginal and this match has been discussed to death.

So, actually, fuck this.

I don’t know that you need me to break it down for you when everyone knew from the moment it started to go downhill how bad this is. Better writers than me have detailed it with gifs and videos to break it down like it’s the Zapruder film (do I think the CIA did this? hard to say), and there are countless articles elsewhere on the internet about the myriad of ways in which it’s bad, stupid, and a total failure. All of the no-selling is bad, the attempt at a horror movie finish after the match  complete with blood packet like THE FIEND ripped Seth’s jaw off or something, and especially the maudlin display where the ref pleads with Seth not to use the sledgehammer as well on top of all the other steel objects to the head (gotta pay the fiddler, nobody dances for free) before a fucking Hell in a Cell match is stopped. It’s all bad, and it’s all bad in the ways you’ve always known it was bad.

Nothing that I have to say about this match is new, and I doubt very little than any of it is interesting.

What I’m left thinking about is how this whole exercise had a way of revealing people and what it is that they really wanted.

Some of you could have and did spend money on good matches. Matches that, I imagine, you wanted to know what I thought of and wanted to see me go into detail on. I appreciate that. Not only the money, but the implicit show of respect that comes with it. Times are not especially easy, although there are many far worse off than I am, and I could use it, but I’m far more comfortable doing something to earn it. This is one of the things that I’m best at and so this is my solution. I think it’s a fair trade, and it’s allowed me to mostly not pay for Christmas presents for the people in my life that I love and appreciate while also doing something I greatly enjoy.

Some of you had some weird requests though, and didn’t leave this process looking all that good. The sort of commissions that either greatly upset me or deeply confused me, that caused me to immediately raise my eyebrows, deaden my eyes, and sigh deeply. This is right near the top of that list.

Really though, I don’t know what the point of me writing about this is.

Whether intended or not, it feels a lot like being asked to dance for my money, doing something I really don’t want to do. “You want money to write? Here, write about some terrible matches!” Ask for video of me running into a wall or falling down the stairs instead maybe. It’s a much quicker thing, and fundamentally, a more honest version of what’s really going on. I know there’s an audience out there just for negative reviews, but it’s not really the sort of thing I enjoy doing when it comes to something THIS bad. I try my best to synthesize between the heart and the head, and sometimes that turns out angry and negative. I would much rather write 2500 words about something I loved, or loved most of, than write 1000 words about something like this. (the ideal, of course, is sub-500 words about something i sort of hated but that a lot of people really loved.)

Truly, I have absolutely nothing to add to the conversation about this match that hasn’t already been said over and over and over and over and over again. No turn of phrase, no secret meaning to unlock, there’s nothing here for me to latch onto in a way that I find interesting or valuable. Nothing I have to say about it is new or offers any unique insight. There is nothing of value here. No good deed is commemorated here, etc. I had just opened this blog when the match happened, and there’s a reason I didn’t write about it at the time.

It stinks, it’s rotten, and everything bad that’s happened to the WWE and the world at large sort of feels like reaping what was sown by allowing something like this. There. It’s the concept of entropy as a professional wrestling match.

This is a terrible match, but you all already knew that.

Outside of being paid to discuss a sexual abuser who is still active in wrestling, this is the most offended I’ve been at one of these yet.

 

 

John Cena vs. Seth Rollins, WWE SummerSlam (8/23/2015)

This was a title vs. title match for John Cena’s WWE U.S. Title and then some midcard belt Rollins held called the WWE World Heavyweight Title.

It’s PWG Jawn through and through, with all the faults that come with that. The Attitude Adjustment used as a transition move in the middle of the match, some awkward attempts at big fancy offense like the springboard Stunner, and some repetitive counters near the end. At the same time, there’s also a little more substance to this than usual with the importance of Cena trying for #16, and some more thoughtful construction than usual throughout.

To be entirely fair, this is an actual good Seth Rollins performance. It’s not quite as great as his recent defense against Neville, but this is also a kind of match that doesn’t do him quite as many favors. For the first 99% of this match, it exists in that same universe as the Neville match though, as a kind of show of what his title run could have been. He’s not great, but he’s easy to hate and still capable of some big time athletic offense, and it comes together pretty well. It feels like they get to the root of the character and what he always should have been as a heel. Someone who pretends to be a smart guy because he’s spent his career around smart guys, but is actually reliant way more on athleticism, and is a real god damned prick about it. Not only does everyone hate a fraud, but it also successfully undercuts all of the fantastic offense that he can do but making him such a braggart about it.

Rollins gets the green light here to really break out all he can, which save for his old running Shooting Star Press that nobody has real ownership of anymore, simply means a lot of theft. He always used to steal the Low Ki tree of woe double stomp so that’s not so egregious, but there’s a clear use of the Akira Tozawa two tope and then a flip dive sequence, as well as his even more offensive use of the Sling Blade and then the HIGH FLY FAUX. That’s Rollins though, he’s never been especially creative. It’s a Godsend in this match that he’s there with a guy like Cena, who is especially good at fitting these big pieces of offense into a match in a coherent way, making Seth go bigger and bigger with his cut off spots until he finally eats shit.

Cena manages his comeback, and the finishing run is generally good. They’ve faced each other so many times now since their first singles meeting in late 2013 that there isn’t really anything new that they can do together, but it all works fine and builds up a certain frenzy within the crowd that adds significantly to the atmosphere when they start to get into those major kickouts.

Naturally, instead of hitting a crescendo, there is instead some real bullshit. A ref bump leads to Jon Stewart coming out and turning heel by hitting John Cena in the stomach with a chair (telegraphed by a mistimed camera cut to that angle, before cutting back to the wide shot, and then doing that again), and setting up a Rollins Pedigree on the chair to win. It’s a shitty finish that everyone immediately hates and that they later justify by having Stewart say he wanted to protect Flair’s record, before he eats an AA the next night. It doesn’t work and it sucks. Seth Rollins isn’t worth going to bat for really, but it was a match that deserved a finish both in terms of the stipulation of it and the match they had wrestled up to that point, even if it was just Seth using some one on one heel bullshit.

Of course, nothing seems more fitting for Rollins’ big defining moment of the title run itself than the WWE needlessly getting in its own way, so maybe it’s also a little bit perfect.

***

Seth Rollins vs. Neville, WWE Raw (8/3/2015)

This was an impromptu match for Rollins’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

Genuinely, a great piece of booking.

This show is in San Jose, the location both of Rollins’ HEIST OF THE CENTURY at WrestleMania, but also Neville’s main roster debut the next night. Rollins trying to mock the injured John Cena with his own open challenge, limiting it to those under six feet, and then getting Neville answering it is a great piece of booking. WWE rarely bothers with location based booking, so like most things they get correct, I’m inclined to believe it’s an accident, but intent doesn’t matter so much once the deed is done. It’s there, and it’s a great story. Beyond just the location, it’s also a rematch of a great little match four months prior, and also a little bit of a play off of Neville answering Cena’s open challenge in May and being the one guy who answered it who Cena wasn’t outright able to beat.

It’s also an actual great match, loath as I am to admit it.

Genuinely, it’s the best post-Shield performance that Rollins has had yet. Years later, it’s still right near the top, if not in pole position.

Like their meeting four months prior, this is exactly the sort of setting in which Rollins can excel. A set up with a strong angle, kept to under fifteen minutes, and with an all-world level opponent who can do all the complex stuff while Rollins limits himself to basic simple heel work and then the few spectacular things he can do (at a point in 2015 where he’s still physically capable of them without looking like he’s moving through quicksand). The match escalates smoothly, with all of Neville’s stuff being out of this world great. The corkscrew moonsault dive, a few gross bumps for the cut off spots, two insane German Suplexes, all of it. The benefit of Rollins keeping it basic is that Neville’s stuff stands out more, but even if he hasn’t, it’s all jaw dropping and perfectly executed enough to stand out in virtually any match.

Neville wrestles the perfect match and has Rollins beat after the Red Arrow, only to grab an overexcited cover and inadvertantly drape Rollins’ other foot over the middle rope. He manages the three and the move is again protected, but it doesn’t count. The way they execute the false finish is especially great, as it’s hard to tell if it’s Neville’s antsy cover or if Rollins himself got the foot on the ropes. The ambiguity is key, not ever being able to fully tell if the coward heel is actually that smart or if he just got incredibly lucky.

Another right after fails, luck runs out, and Rollins wins with the Pedigree.

It’s incredibly easy to imagine a ten year old watching this and it becoming their version of Triple H vs. TAKA Michinoku or something. It can never work the same on you as an adult, but it’s the sort of match every generation has their version of. The worst thing I can say about it is that I never really believed, but I’ve talked to younger fans who 100% genuinely thought Neville won the title, so like, who the fuck am I? It worked. It absolutely worked. It’s genuinely good as hell, a perfect execution of this classic old trope, and outside of Seth Rollins being the WWE World Heavyweight Champion, something I have zero complaints about.

Great television wrestling, credit where credit is due.

***1/4

Seth Rollins vs. Dean Ambrose, WWE Money in the Bank (6/14/2015)

This was a ladder match for Rollins’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

A big stupid thirty five minute piece of shit that tries to be a revenge beating, a knee work ladder match, and then a indie style stunt show epic all at the same time. It manages to achieve nothing it went for (aside from genuinely good knee selling from Ambrose in the middle segment), murdered the crowd, and was yet another embarrassing overreach in the career of Seth Rollins. I could go on for a thousand words on this — and initially, I did — but really, it does not matter because none of this mattered.

I’d say this is the sort of bomb that would mandate re-thinking this entire push, act, and story in a better era of the company, but the fact that they ever got enough rope to hang themselves this severely already shows everything about where the WWE is at. A handy explainer of the WWE is where it’s at and how it’s gotten there over the six plus years, even if it’s far from an efficient one.

A true testament to Kenny Omega vs. Michael Elgin a year later that this isn’t immediately and obviously the worst ladder match of the decade.

 

 

Seth Rollins vs. Randy Orton vs. Roman Reigns vs. Dean Ambrose, WWE Payback (5/17/2015)

This was for Rollins’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

It’s far from a perfect match and to whatever extent that it is a great match, it’s barely a great match.

However, this does have another of my favorite little bits that the WWE put out in all of 2015. Around the middle of the match when the bullshit is flowing, the three former Shield members briefly get the same idea. Rollins shouts the spot out that they’re already going to do, the classic Triple P Bomb through a table. In his shithearted exuberance, he tries to keep the con going, and the results are wonderful.

A heel getting lucky once, overreaching, and getting his ass kicked. A classic Steve Austin style exaggerated laugh into a serious face on top of it, with a few faces between Dean and Roman that have a lot of charm to them, before a great right hand.

Just a nice piece of bullshit.

The rest of the match is what it is.

Independent of WWE being WWE, this is potentially a really great match. Nobody is great in this, but the format allows them to bounce around between different pairings and not one of them is bad. The ex-Shield interplay is especially good, beyond just the one funny bit.

However, they cannot help themselves. There’s some real embarrassing Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose “LOSER BUYS DA BEERS” stuff that is someone’s idea of humanizing Roman. Naturally, he gets booed even more than Rollins at points here, the gains from WrestleMania already having been completely undone. Even winning the title here would probably not have worked. I thought before watching this again that it might have, but it really does seem like there was the one window to pull it off successfully and they shut it closed. Part of that is what they did then, but part of it is also Rollins now having cooled off quite a bit himself too, thanks in part to booking him more and more as someone else’s toadie and less as the schemer he’d been for the nine months going into the title win. You can rehab Roman to some extent by having him take down a hot heel, but when you cool down the one you just built, that route’s closed off. The segments of action are all good, the bones of a great match are here, but the entire thing is undercut by the real emphasis just being on the interminably long Seth Rollins vs. Kane feud. Kane constantly interferes, and fucking CLEANLY gets the best of all three babyfaces with regularity, like he’s the real one to worry about. It’s all a god damned mess on every level but the mechanical, and even that’s not exactly perfect.

Seth Rollins wins by using the Pedigree as a finish for the first time, as nobody can ever pass go in this fucking company without paying their tribute.

I really love that one bit though.