One of the matches most of us were looking forward to at SummerSlam was Seth Rollins and Matt Riddle closing out their feud in one of the company’s top four pay-per-views.
Unfortunately, their match was pulled due to Riddle being injured, but they appeared on the weekly shows brawling in the weeks afterwards until they concluded their feud at Clash at the Castle where Rollins got the victory.
While it was great they closed it out and had a few more weeks to build for their final match, we were wondering why it was pulled and Rollins answered that on a recent interview with Ariel Helwani.
Special deal
Rollins was open about the various topics they discussed, and went into depth on what happened to his and Riddle’s match.
“It was one of those situations where we had a regime change in the midst of the build to SummerSlam, I believe a week out, we had the biggest change in the history of our industry.
“When Triple H took over the creative process, he was looking at the hand that was dealt to him. They ended up having to add what I believe was the Mysterios match based on a sponsorship agreement, I believe Rey and Dom have some sort of deal with an alcohol company, a beer company, there was some money involved and they had to add the match on.
“To do that, you either have to take out a whole match or you have to cut time from other matches to keep the show at a reasonable time. I think the runtime ended up being almost four hours anyway.
“Anything beyond that is a little ridiculous, in my opinion. You were looking at the card and you look at the title matches, which we weren’t. You look at the celebrity matches that you only get one chance to do, which we weren’t.
“We kind of fell into that spot where it was, ‘we could use more weeks to build this story.’ They made the choice to ax our match and make sure all the other matches were maximized with time and story and all that.
“Totally understood that and respect it, I was a little upset we advertised the match and not given that to them [the fans] and at the level I have been performing for really the last year, I felt it was a bit of a slap in the face to me as a performer that I wasn’t able to be on what is essentially the second biggest show of the year for us.”
Making the best of it
While it was an unforeseeable event, things happen and it’s why every card generally has in small print “card subject to change.”
The benefit of this was they had a few more weeks to build for it, and it was as simple as them having a confrontation here and there to get us hyped to see them finally face off.
When they did get in the ring, they left it all out there and put in a show stealing performance that was the perfect exclamation to their rivalry.
What did you think of their match? Let us know in the comments below.
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