Seth Rollins has opened up about the origins of his “Visionary” character, revealing it was born of frustration with WWE programming during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the Games With Names podcast, Rollins said he found the product of that era lackluster and devoid of energy.
“When I was developing the Visionary character, it was coming right out of COVID, and we did live programming during COVID, just as the NFL played games with nobody there, we did TV shows with nobody there,” Rollins said. “It was boring. It was dead. There was no energy, that’s how it was when we did ours at the Performance Center and then later we did some residencies in local arenas in Florida.”
Rollins noted that after taking time off for the birth of his child in December 2020, he watched the show from home and felt that everything had become too muted and serious. He singled out Roman Reigns’ “Tribal Chief” persona as an example of the understated style that had become prevalent.
“But one of the things I noticed when I was watching the program, I have my baby in December, and I have two months off, maybe a month off, and when I’m watching the program, I just notice how blegh everything was,” Rollins said. “Everything was toned way down, the promos, the backstage, everything was just muted, it felt slow, it felt like everyone was trying to follow this trend. Roman Reigns is really hot at the time doing the Tribal Chief thing, where everything is just very mob bossy, very quiet and understated.”
In response to this trend, Rollins decided to go in the opposite direction. He drew inspiration from flamboyant legends of the past, aiming to bring back the “larger than life” elements of professional wrestling.
“When I was watching the show, I was like man, I didn’t love this about wrestling, I loved larger than life, bright colors, over the top, and Macho Man Randy Savage, the way he delivered his promo,s but still be taken seriously when it was time to fight,” Rollins explained. “Ric Flair, Rick ‘The Model’ Martel, Mr. Perfect, Ravishing Rick Rude, these were the villains that I looked at and hated but loved at the same time, so I took some elements from those guys when thinking about what the Visionary could be. Randy was probably one of the biggest influences on the character, I would say.”
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.
