Seth Rollins believes that the current landscape of professional wrestling—and the world at large—has made it significantly easier to play the heel. Speaking on the Games with Names podcast, the WWE Superstar discussed the dynamics of being a heel in 2025, attributing the shift to the negativity prevalent in online culture.
“Now, I will say this, it’s much easier in 2025 to be a bad guy than it is to be a good guy because everybody wants to hate everything,” Rollins said. “That’s that’s like that’s what they all want to do. No one wants to get online and talk about how much they love something because no one cares. They just want to get online and bitch about anything they can find. They want to complain about anything.”
Rollins noted that this environment makes “trolling” and inciting anger a simpler task than in previous eras. He argued that for a bad guy, mistakes can actually be beneficial, whereas babyfaces face more scrutiny.
“So, it’s so easy to troll people, to mess with people. It’s so easy to just get people to hate you,” Rollins continued. “It’s like it, there’s no wrong. You can do no wrong. You can do no wrong as a bad guy. You can screw up left and right. You can mess up your promos. You can screw up in the ring. Doesn’t matter. They’ll boo you for it, and then you’re gold, you know?”
However, he pointed out a unique challenge facing modern villains: the intelligence of the audience. Rollins explained that when a performer excels at their craft, fans often begin to appreciate the performance rather than despising the character, leading to the “cool heel” phenomenon.
“The thing that’s different… is that our audience nowadays is so intelligent that they know you’re playing a character,” Rollins said. “And if you do that too well, then they start to like you. And so you stop losing the ability to heel.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Games with Names with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Subscribe to Games with Names on Apple Podcasts.
