Seth Rollins is by all accounts an underdog against Roman Reigns at the Royal Rumble on Saturday night in St. Louis, but he doesn’t see it that way.
The former WWE champion spoke to The Post about their match for the Universal title, if he’d be interested in an acting career and the silver lining of fatherhood coming during the pandemic.
“I’m extremely confident I’ll beat Roman Reigns, based on our past history,” Rollins said. “Yeah, you can look at it and say he’s in a different place now. Well I’m in a different place too. We’re both very much at the top of our game, the best versions of ourselves, and have been improving on the same arc.
“I definitely feel like I’ve gotten inside his head. I’ve rattled him a little bit. I may be the only person who can do that on our modern roster.”
Reigns has been WWE’s Universal champion for more than 500 days — the longest reign in the title’s history. However, he has never defeated Rollins, his former teammate in The Shield, in a high-stakes singles match.
Rollins’ upper hand
Rollins famously cashed in his Money in the Bank contract and pinned Reigns to conclude WrestleMania 31 in 2015 and become WWE champion and beat him the following year in a singles match for the title at Money in the Bank, but was subsequently pinned by their third Shield-mate, Dean Ambrose, who cashed in his briefcase. Ambrose now wrestles as Jon Moxley in All Elite Wrestling.
“You may be able to find a stray tag match here or there or a random Raw, but when it comes to main title matches, no, Roman’s never beaten me. I won the match at Money in the Bank decisively,” Rollins said.
Rollins feels like he has a mental advantage over Reigns based on the dynamics of their relationship.
“We spent hours and hours together when we were in The Shield. Days if you count it all up. I spent more time with him than I did with my family in those years. We rode in cars together, slept in hotel rooms together, went to the gym together, ate together. Literally anything and everything.
“I know all of the things that bother him, all the things that don’t. I know all his insecurities. Look, it’s not like we haven’t stayed close, either. There aren’t too many people on the roster who understand what we’ve been through over the last 10 years. I know everything.
“He knows everything about me too — make no bones about that. But I’m just being a little jerk. I’m just better at needling him than he is me. That’s just our personality types.”
Furthermore, this will be Reigns’ first title defense without his former special counsel Paul Heyman in his corner after the pair’s storyline breakup.
“That puts him at a disadvantage,” Rollins said. “The Usos being barred from ringside puts him at a disadvantage. Me being in his head puts him at a disadvantage. I would suggest I’m the betting favorite going into this match. I feel like I have him right where I want him.”
According to the betting odds at BetOnline, Rollins is not indeed the favorite. With Reigns at -240 (bet $240 to win $100) and Rollins at +165 (bet $100 to win $165), the book is giving him about a one in three chance.
Lengthy relationships
Rollins and Reigns have been inextricably linked in WWE since being put in The Shield almost a decade ago. This means that Rollins, 35, has been involved in stories with Reigns on the main WWE roster for nearly 30 percent of his life.
“We have essentially been tethered to each other for the last 10 years,” he said. “It’s wild and crazy to think it’s been that long. The days move slow sometimes in this gig, but the years move fast.”
Rollins referenced Moxley in his promo with Reigns last week, saying The Tribal Chief uses The Usos as his pedestal just like he used to with Rollins and Moxley. It is somewhat taboo for someone in WWE to mention a performer in a competing company, but Rollins didn’t think it was a huge deal in this instance.
“It’s not anything that we’ve shied away from or ignored at all,” he said. “He’s (Moxley) been in the video packages. It was one of those things where it fit in the context of what I was talking about. It wasn’t anything that I had planned, like, ‘Ooh, I’m gonna get this in here.’ It just felt right. He’s a huge part of our history. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about that.”
Hollywood aspirations?
Another aspect of the promo between Reigns and Rollins was the champion derisively comparing Rollins to John Cena, chiding him for using similar material in promos two weeks in a row. Rollins laughed off the comparison.
“I’d much rather Cena write my promo than Paul Heyman,” Rollins said. “One of those guys drew major money and the other stole money.”
Rollins mentioned how Cena has had enormously lucrative opportunities in movies and marketing, starring in commercials and feature films. Asked if that’s something he would like to pursue, Rollins was ambivalent.
“If it happens, it happens,” Rollins said. “I don’t have a ton of aspirations as far as Hollywood is concerned and being in commercials or movies. If it comes it comes. I’m not going to force that sort of thing. I always love to see people like John Cena, Batista, The Rock and my wife Becky Lynch do things outside of WWE, but I’m very content in doing what I’m doing.”
Fatherhood
In late 2020, Rollins and Lynch welcomed their first child, daughter Roux.
It was a bit of a dichotomy to become new parents during the pandemic, when the whole world has gone crazy. However, a silver lining of that was that WWE’s famously grueling touring schedule was mostly at a pause, giving Rollins much more time to spend with his newborn than would have typically been the case for a performer at the company over the years.
“The timing of being a new parent couldn’t have been better for us,” Rollins said. “We got to start with training wheels a little bit. For most folks the pandemic was a nightmare because they had to figure out what the heck to do with them. But for us, we had time off and we could slowly work into what is now a full-time schedule traveling with an infant.
“Being able to have that period of time where we could adjust and figure out what to do was immensely beneficial to us and our stress levels. The experience has been incredible. Nobody ever tells you how fun it is to be a parent. It’s a pretty sweet party.”
The touring schedule has since resumed, and Rollins marveled at how much enjoyment he gets from traveling the world with an infant.
“You hear that it’s rewarding, but not that it’s fun,” he said. “Like, watching them figure things out — watching a 1-year-old figure out how to get her fingernails un-stuck. I’m thoroughly enjoying it. We have a ton of help, taking her all over the world, from Alabama to Saudi Arabia. She’s been the best.”
Long-term goal in WWE
While wrestling careers have been elongated by modern medicine and healthier lifestyles, Rollins recognizes that his isn’t going to last forever. He sees himself entering a phase of his career where his biggest goal is to help young talents find their footing.
“I’ve always just wanted to leave the business better and help everybody else on the way up,” he says. “At 35-36, the next phase of my career, however long that lasts, is to focus on trying to help set the business up when I’m done and not the guy on top.”