Former WWE Champion Seth Rollins recently spoke with former WWE World Heavyweight Champion Christian and WWE Hall of Famer Edge on the latest episode of E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness where he talked about a wide range of topics.
There was one story that Rollins shared where he had an incident with WWE Chairman Vince McMahon that almost made him walk out on WWE. This is where he had a match with longtime WWE star Kofi Kingston on SmackDown before it was live on the USA Network.
The WWE boss was looking to have Rollins do a squash match against Kingston. However, the Raw star had other ideas as he didn’t want to completely disrespect Kingston and wanted to give him some offense. As a result, this upset McMahon and order the match to be redone. This upset Rollins to the point where he almost walked out of the company but later realized that it was a learning experience.
“So it took me a little while to grow into who that person was, figure him out, try on different skins, and you know sometimes it didn’t work and Vince would get mad and you’d have to go — like one time on SmackDown I had this match with Kofi, it was when they were still taping SmackDown. I had this match with Kofi and it was meant to be a ‘get over’ match for me and now Kofi is someone I have a lot of respect for and who is someone I would never even in a match that was made for me to look good in I would not like just squash Kofi. I just wouldn’t do it, I’d want to give him something, you know that’s just my nature.”
“So we went out and it was literally three minutes long start to finish bell to bell. Three minutes long and I gave Kofi a little bit and made him look good and beat him and I remember coming to the back thinking, ‘Okay that was alright.’ Vince was just furious about it — furious.”
“He’s like, ‘Get over here!’ and he’s yelling at me and he’s like, ‘If you’re gonna be my guy, if you’re gonna be my guy that’s not what I want!’ And he shoo’ed me out of Gorilla [Position] and I didn’t understand.”
“I didn’t get it and then Michael [Hayes] was trying to explain to me what Vince wanted out of the situation and they ended up having to make me and Kofi go out and re-do the match. I remember the feeling when they told me that I was so angry and embarrassed I was ready to walk out and not do it. I was like, ‘Never in my life — never. This should never happen to me!’ It was such a learning experience in retrospect that it’s okay to screw up sometimes, you know? It’s okay to try things and fail and learn from your mistakes and as long as you prove your second time around and don’t make the same mistake twice, like you’re gonna be alright. So it was little things like that for 6-8 months before I really started to figure out who I was.”
You can listen to the entire interview by clicking on the player below:
