Seth "Freakin'" Rollins recently appeared as a guest on the "After the Bell with Corey Graves" for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling.
During the discussion, the WWE World Heavyweight Champion spoke about his back injuries, the women's division and the career of the late Bray Wyatt.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On Bray Wyatt’s career: “Creativity is one thing, but the resilience, you got to remember like Windham was like, this close to getting fired. He was this close to just being gone. He had come up, done NXT, he had done the Husky Harris thing, he’d gotten removed from the the NXT TakeOver thing, the the Nexus stuff that happened on television, and then he got sent back down to developmental and like, he just totally revamped himself, and he took a shot. It wasn’t immediate. He tried a lot of different things. He had a lot of different ideas floating around in his head, and to be there kind of on the ground floor and see that process and see what eventually turned into Bray Wyatt and the Wyatt Family, I mean, that is a lesson, to keep it in the wrestling bubble, that’s the lesson to all young talent or talents who are trying to find their footing in our industry. Don’t let setbacks force you to feel like you failed, or that you need to give up or give in or or any of that. You can be successful. You just have to figure yourself out. You’ve got to figure out who you are and what your character is. You can do all these things. You just have to believe and you have to work and you have to process and it takes time and that’s okay. I know Windham was frustrated during that period of time, but he just let his creative juices flow. He had the American Dream Dusty Rhodes there, and he had his friends and his brothers and his people, and everybody was rooting for him.”
“I remember the first time hearing the Bray Wyatt kind of voice. Don’t get me wrong. That’s a lot of Windham, but you know that little twang. I remember the first time I heard him talk like that. It’s giving me goosebumps right now. I remember distinctly the first time I heard his voice and that Bray Wyatt delivery, that cadence, that whisper, changed everything and then he was off to the races from there. Sometimes that’s all it takes. But the most important thing it takes is diligence, that resilience, and that patience to understand that it’s just not going to happen overnight. When your back is against the wall, you fight. Keep fighting. He did and he was special in that way, and he was remarkable in his creativity in what he brought to Harper, Brody, and Rowan and what he gave them, and Brawn as well. He contributed a lot to a lot of people who looked up to him. He was a special cat. He really, really was. Creativity is second to none. The character work and effort that he put into that character and what the vision for Bray Wyatt was second to none.”
While we’re on it, I mean, look. The Fiend and Bray Wyatt, the two versions of Bray Wyatt that you saw on WWE television were two completely different brain childs for him. Even in his final incarnation, the third version, I mean, he was always figuring out new ways to reinvent himself. He and I were very similar at that time, and we were always thinking. We’re always thinking what’s next? What’s next? What’s next? How do we transform? How do we transcend what we’ve already done? I was always in awe of how he was able to come up with these transformations that made sense in the depths of his character. If you look at the trajectory of everything that he did, it all flowed together in this perfect river, but they were all so different from each other and that was, that’s a hard thing to do, and he did it better than anybody.”
On if he feels there are voids to be filled in the women’s division on the main roster: “I would say 100%. There’s a lot of space to fill there, on RAW, on SmackDown. I think absolutely there is a void. What I sense more than anything is this kind of bubbling little undercurrent from our audience, like they want something fresh and new and they want to have people to get behind. They want it, and I’m not saying these people are coming from NXT. You never know. It might be somebody that steps up, a Chelsea Green, a Piper Niven. You never know. There’s tons of women capable on our main roster at the moment, but there is like this, I’m feeling it. It’s very much like we want something more out of the women. We know it’s there and we can’t wait to see it, but there’s like a growing intrigue. There’s a growing desire to see it.”
“This past Monday, Zoey Stark was in the ring with my wife, Becky, and they absolutely wrecked the main event of Monday Night Raw, absolutely wrecked it, and that was Zoey’s first main event. It was her first main event on RAW and I told her afterwards, I said first of many. It’s going to be a huge thing. She’s one of them that has the opportunity to really lead this next generation of women into the future. I just think that it’s there. It feels like they’re on the cusp of a breakthrough. I felt like Monday was a huge reminder of what they’re capable of. They haven’t, and I’m going to be frank with you, they haven’t been showcased as well as they could have been over the past, you know, six months or so. They haven’t been. Aside from a few exceptions, and I don’t need to pick and choose, and name names. Sometimes that’s just how the cookie crumbles and that’s part of the the industry. It’s part of the business. I’ve been in situations where I absolutely feel like I’ve not been showcased, or male talent, the same way. It has nothing to do, in my opinion, with gender at all. It’s just a commentary on where we’re at right now. There are opportunities and I think Monday was a reminder of how incredible our female talent roster is and can be when given the opportunity to main event, to succeed, and to be the best. I think it’s all there. I just can’t wait to see who steps up and fills that space and grabs that ring.”
On his back injuries: “My back sucks. I’ve had these injuries for four or five years now. I have two stress fractures in the lowest vertebrae you can possibly have in my lower back and occasionally they flare up. If they accrue too much damage, it can become extremely painful and it can be very difficult for me to get through matches and it can be very difficult for me to get up for the morning activities for days sometimes. So there is absolutely a danger in that.”
Check out the complete interview at Spotify.com. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
