Seth Rollins Opens Up About Rediscovering His Groove In WWE, WrestleMania 35 Match Against Brock Lesnar

RAW Superstar Seth Rollins was a recent guest on the E&C Pod of Awesomeness. The WWE Superstar opened up about the knee injury that forced him to relinquish his WWE Championship, when he was able to rediscover his groove in the WWE, and his upcoming WrestleMania 35 match against Universal Champion Brock Lesnar. Highlights appear below.

(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone) 

Rollins On His Mentality After His Knee Injury:

I was super disappointed, at first. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be at the shows and be there for the audience that pays a ticket. I just feel like, if I’m not there I’m not contributing. I get stir crazy sitting at home and not doing anything. It was very depressing at first and once I was able to kind of accept the fact that this wasn’t one of those injuries where you take a few weeks off and come back – I have no choice, I’ve got six months – and I put all my focus in rehabbing and make that my life’s work for the next six months. It was nice to be able to be in the same place for a few weeks at a time to kind of sit back and enjoy what I’d been able to accomplish the last decade or so I’d been wrestling. It was a nice little break, a nice little respite to live a little bit. The first two months after the knee surgery was terrible because it’s painful and all that, but once I got past all that I got to do a movie, and I got to meet a lot of new people, and try new things, and just do something different for six months of my life. I’d dedicated my entire adult life to being a pro wrestler, so to be able to do something that wasn’t pro wrestling was pretty nice, I will admit.

On When He Re-dicovered His Groove After Injury:

About a year ago is when it really started to kick in for me. [Dean] Ambrose and I had some really good tag team matches a couple years back. When we started teaming back up and we started to do some things with The Shield before his elbow injury, we were having a really good time with some of these tag team matches, and I started to get my groove back. Things were feeling good, and I was feeling more comfortable playing off him, and just being myself, and then he got hurt. I had to again, ‘OK, where do I fit in? Let’s survey the landscape and see what I can do.’ I knew I wasn’t ready to be the guy at WrestleMania, but I felt like the Intercontinental Championship and some characters like The Miz and Finn Balor – these were some guys I could play off of and so I pitched the idea to work with Miz at WrestleMania. That worked out great and we ended up getting Finn in there, and Finn and I have excellent chemistry. Miz is awesome and the three of us really came together. We had a really good WrestleMania match. I won the Intercontinental Title there.

A couple months prior to that I had the opportunity to go over an hour in a Gauntlet Match on RAW where I wrestled [John] Cena, and Roman [Reigns], and eventually Elias. That really reminded people, ‘Yeah, he can still wrestle pretty good,’ not part of The Shield, or part of this tag team, but, ‘Seth Rollins is one of the best wrestlers in the world.’

I’ve always been one of the guys that admired the work-rate guys. Shawn [Michaels] was my favorite wrestler growing up after I got out of the [Hulk] Hogan phase and I started to watch wrestling wrestling. It was Shawn, it was Eddie [Guerrero], Curt Hennig, Ricky Steamboat, and from the newer generation Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz, [Kurt] Angle, and even the luchadors in WCW, [Dean] Malenko and stuff, those were the guys I liked to watch. To be seen as one of those guys, I never took at as an insult. I always thought it was cool. I took it. I ran with it and I took that title at WrestleMania. I said, ‘Lesnar’s not going to be on this show and I want to take this title and make it what it meant in the past. Just let me wrestle. Just let me do my thing.’ That’s really where I was able to find my groove. [Dolph] Ziggler was an awesome foil for me and I was able to have some amazing matches. I just found that sweet spot where I couldn’t do anything wrong. I could see the matches a mile away.

Rollins On HIs Upcoming WrestleMania 35 Match Against Universal Champion Brock Lesnar:

From an emotional standpoint, I’m stoked. I really can’t wait for it. I think last year at WrestleMania, I was excited going into the Triple Threat Match. It wasn’t a low pressure situation. WrestleMania is WrestleMania, but this one is a high pressure one and this is the one that I wanted. Whether or not we’re the main event or Ronda [Rousey] and Becky [Lynch] is the main event, to me, this is the one I wanted. When I was 14 years old and I said, ‘I’m gonna main event WrestleMania,’ this is the one. To now be almost 33, to have that, and be able to go into the next couple of months to build into that moment and have the audience on my side, and have them really want me to take that title off of Lesnar, it’s really an exciting time. I’m looking forward to making some magic with him because whether people love him or hate him, he is one of the best performers in WWE, for sure.

Readers may listen to Edge and Christian’s interview with Seth Rollins in its entirety below:

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