The Royal Rumble is at hand this week everyone. It is but three days away now! And as we get closer and closer, the anticipation builds… after all, we’ve got two Rumble matches to look forward to, and a lot of potential winners for both! Because of the lack of direction and foreshadowing going on, the field really feels wide open this year, much more so than normal. And given recent events, last year’s Seth Rollins is among the more interesting names to talk about as far as winning it all goes this go-round!
This is part of a mini-series, in which I will be looking at all the favorites for both the men’s and women’s Rumble matches, atleast the ones I find the most interesting… and you get to pick the last two names! You can vote on that right here. Voting will close when the clock strikes midnight CST on Friday. In other words, we’re looking at about thirty hours to go at the time of this posting! Now then, let’s take a look at the chances of the Monday Night Messiah.
Seth Rollins – Relevant Stats
- WWE Debut: 2012
- First Rumble appearance: 2014
- He won the Men’s 2019 Rumble match.
- This will be his fourth Rumble appearance.
- He has amassed eight total eliminations.
- He is a two time WWE Champion and a two time WWE Universal Champion.
- Current betting odds: +2000
How 2019 Went For Seth Rollins:
Well… that’s an interesting question, huh? Per the standards of a guy who was put in the position Seth found himself in, 2019 was rough as Hell. But a select few people ever rise to the point that he attained in the first place. Comparing his year to others is a little hard by that basis. But we can only objectively look at these things in a vacuum, so let’s start from the top.
Going into the year, well… it’s actually a little sad thinking about those days. Just twelve months ago, Seth Rollins was one of, if not the most popular wrestler on the roster. He was coming off a truly excellent 2018, during which he established himself as one of the best modern day Intercontinental Champions going. He put together a stellar record of fantastic matches and performances on TV and PPV alike. It can be easy to forget that, in those days, people were chomping at the bit to see him return to the main event scene.
And return he did. He entered the 2019 Royal Rumble and easily ended up being the ironman of the match with a stay of about 43 minutes before last eliminating the gargantuan Braun Strowman to win the Rumble for the first time. This put him on the fast track to a match with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania where he beat the Beast in stunning fashion, pinning him in just two and a half minutes to become the WWE Universal Champion. To top it off, he also reunited with the Shield for one last time around the Spring as well.
Seth Rollins went on to hold the Universal title for the majority of the year.
Everything was going great for Rollins during pretty much all the first half of 2019. His first major defense saw him defeat Raw newcomer AJ Styles at Money In The Bank in a naturally great match. But then cracks began to form. For the next several months, Rollins had the unfortunate task of feuding with one Baron Corbin.
Corbin’s a love him or hate him figure for sure. Personally I always thought having him challenge Rollins when he did was a terrible idea. He’d proven himself a ratings killer with being all over WWE programming, and even though they always featured him like a top guy, his win/loss record was abysmal. He had exceptionally little credibility, as far as a challenger went. Sure he beat Kurt Angle in his final match, but remember, when he was announced as his opponent, the reaction was largely a chorus of “But why, though?” because it was so easy to think of better candidates. He was utterly underwhelming as a choice for that slot, and even more so as a potential world champion.
Not to mention he was a proven ratings killer when he was the Constable, and mind you his gimmick and status barely changed when they removed him from that role. Even on-screen, they actively blamed Corbin for the ratings decline, yet continued pushing him exactly the same anyway. Now honestly, speaking today, I do think Corbin’s pretty effective in his role. Surprisingly it does seem like winning KOTR managed to give him some credibility in hindsight. But in the summer, this was absolutely not the case. He had zero business challenging Rollins at one PPV, let alone three in a row.
Even though Seth Rollins dominated Corbin throughout their whole feud, it still made him seem weak by association the longer it went.
The complete failure of this main event angle was best encapsulated by how the PPV they headlined, WWE Stomping Grounds, drew one of the all-time worst gates in the history of such events. In an arena that could’ve theoretically held 18,000 fans, only 6000 showed up. And that’s with many free tickets being handed out the night before. Reports are that around 4000-4500 tickets were actually sold. This would be the lowest since the infamous December to Dismember in 2006. Comparisons to the In Your House days were abundant.
The product in general was going through a rut, but Seth Rollins vs. Baron Corbin was the main feud on Raw so it had to bear a lot of the brunt of this. The numbers were so striking that the next month, for the show where this angle finally ended, they had to pull out the Undertaker for an extraordinarily rare B-PPV appearance to prevent the same thing from happening at Extreme Rules.
Rollins felt the heat from this failure in a big way, and took it really personally. You could tell by the way he was lashing out around this time. And that brings us to another facet of this year that really does need addressing… as much as I’d love to put all the blame on Baron for his decline, Rollins did do a lot of it to himself.
In 2019, Seth Rollins showed us that one’s online presence is much more important than previously thought.
He spent much of the year committing one gaffe after another. He got into a ridiculous Twitter feud with New Japan’s Will Ospreay, disparaging him as a lesser Ricochet clone, putting down the indies (basically stomping on his own roots in the process) and comparing bank accounts, which Rollins himself later admitted was pretty bad. But he did a lot of things he never apologized for as well. One of the ones that probably damaged his image the most were his potshots at Jon Moxley, the famed Vince line of “taking his ball and going home” and such. He also rather foolishly accused him of taking food off the table of everyone in WWE. This in spite of the fact that AEW’s mere existence spawned a huge pay raise for most of the roster.
While he was defending WWE after Mox vented his frustrations with his own experiences, it should be noted that Moxley never disparaged Rollins and had only nice things to say about his Shield mates. And that kneejerk need to defend WWE in every given situation was really the main crux of Seth’s problems. He would adamantly call it the best pro wrestling on the planet even when it was clearly in a slump, both in quality and fan engagement.
Whether he knew it or not, Rollins was basically going out of his way to absorb all the heat the WWE got for terrible creative decisions that, in all likelihood, had nothing to do with him. Any blunder they made became Rollins’ blunder too. He made it that way with his unflinching endorsements.
Back to his actual feuds for a moment…
Rollins finally finished off Corbin only to be cashed in on by Brock Lesnar, who took the Universal title back from him. Seth was than repeatedly obliterated by the Beast, violently assaulted… and yet, the fans had zero sympathy for him. This led to one of the more out-of-touch and awkwardly quiet promos in WWE’s history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-6luQS1ib4
Nevertheless, Seth Rollins did once again defeat Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam. A quick mini-feud with Braun Strowman later, which for some reason saw them win the tag titles for a hot second, and Rollins was then targeted by the Fiend. Who constantly destroyed him, even making him into a terrified, whimpering mess any time he showed up. Being simultaneously ineffective in defending himself AND cowardly did nothing to help Rollins as a babyface, nor did his retaining over at the Hell In A Cell… by what appeared to be a loss via DQ.
This is, to me, one of the most truly garbage finishes in not just WWE but pro wrestling history, the ending of one of the most uniquely bad matches WWE has ever put on PPV. And afterwards, Rollins of course went out of his way to make sure people blamed him for the finish by defending it wholeheartedly, even going so far as to say that the iconic Foley/Taker Cell match probably should’ve been stopped early as well. It’s honestly hard to believe he thought saying this was a good idea but I guess he did.
By the time the Fiend finally took the Universal title off him, he was ruined as a babyface.
Buuut on the bright side, he then turned heel in a feud with Kevin Owens that’s still going on now. And everything seems to be looking up as it was quite the effective, wholly necessary turn. Now he’s got his own stable, helping the likes of AOP and Buddy Murphy find their footing on the roster. It took us longer than it probably should’ve to get there, but he did close out the year on a high note and is actually going into the Rumble with more momentum than most.
So where does that leave his chances?
Funnily enough, even though he’s on a bit of a hot streak, fresh off a turn and is among the most significant people going, he’s not being talked about as a likely Rumble winner as much as others. His Vegas odds actually put his chances lower than guys like Aleister Black, or even people that aren’t likely to show up at all such as Edge or CM Punk.
This is funny to me, but I do kinda get why it’s like that. For starters, he won last year. It’s pretty damn rare to see people win the Rumble twice in a row. Only Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin have managed this feat. And that much alone should really tell you how long it’s been since it happened. But just to put a number to it, it last occurred in 1998. Soooo 22 years ago.
Beyond that, he spent almost all of last year being world champion and I just recapped how that went… plus, he’s gone against Brock Lesnar like, more than anyone else ever already. It’d be kinda silly to go for that again, especially now that both are heel.
But I can pretty much counter all of that.
First off, the situation now is just wholly different. It wouldn’t feel like a repeat at all to me, more akin to a significant echo. The first time he was a conquering underdog babyface. Now he’s a self-righteous heel with his own stable. The tone and meaning of this victory would be very different. Plus… I mean somebodies’ gonna twice in a row again eventually. And I think this year it’s more likely to happen than most.
Again, he’s fresh off a turn and that usually means big things on the horizon. This would really cement him as the undisputed top heel in WWE. You can also do a fun parallel with last year. Instead of the ironman run that won him the match last time, he could have a particularly short, lazy and cowardly route to victory this go-round.
The same goes for Rollins as world champ. While his run faltered, that was because of how unlikable a babyface he made himself into. (With plenty of help from WWE’s booking.) There’s no reason to think the same would apply to him as a heel, especially because he’s already had a lengthy heel run as top champ in the past, which was much more effective. And he’s a lot more credible now than he was back then.
The Lesnar thing also isn’t really an issue. You can have someone else get added to the match to ensure there’s a babyface there, or just have someone else take the title off of Brock before Mania. Remember, we’ve got the Elimination Chamber to look forward to before Mania, so a lot can happen there.
What would his story be?
Almost certainly if Rollins wins this, the endgame is going to be a world title match against Kevin Owens. Having said all this, I think it’s much more likely that Rollins would be the champ going into that match. Owens being the challenger just makes more sense. But the inverse could happen as well. Owens could win the WWE title in the Elimination Chamber (Imagine Brock in one of those? Fun stuff!) or just straight-up pin Lesnar in a one-on-one match. I mean, we haven’t done Brock/Owens yet. Sounds like fun to me.
This would then setup Rollins/Owens to finally square off in a singles match on the grand stage. It’d be a big way to blow off their feud for certain. I don’t know if I expect it all go down this way, per say. But I do think it’s more likely than the oddsmakers would have you think.
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