Seth Rollins Gets Candid About His WWE World Heavyweight Title & Roman Reigns
The creation of a second world title is always going to make that second belt feel, well, secondary. In the case of the newest incarnation of the World Heavyweight Championship in WWE, there's also the fact that it's assigned to the "Raw" brand, where Cody Rhodes is, but he's made it clear that his story is tied to the title that Roman Reigns holds, as it carries the historical lineage dating back to the original World Wide Wrestling Federation World Heavyweight Championship established in the 1960s.
With that in mind, it was an obvious topic to discuss with WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins when he appeared on "Out of Character with Ryan Satin," and the champ obliged.
"It's hard to take a title [that's] basically built from nothing and make it feel like a big deal," Rollins explained. "And so I think that's the goal right now, to just elevate this thing every single time the people see it, whether it's a live event, on 'The Today Show,' or ESPN, pay-per-views, whatever. Try to make it feel as big as we possibly can so that it raises all the ships around it."
'I'm under no illusions that this title is the same as Roman's title'
"I think because I'm in a position on the show where I'm featured fairly prominently, it really helps now that we have a title that's there every Monday where people feel like they've got something to aspire to," Rollins continued. "As opposed to before, when there was just one champion on a part-time schedule, it was really difficult for performers to come up with where they wanted to go next. There was no end game for them, and that can create a little bit of mundaneness, I guess."
After more prompting from Satin, Rollins continued, explaining that he understands that his title may be seen as secondary.
"I'm under no illusions that this title is the same as Roman's title," he said. "That title has been around and has so much equity put into it over the last few years. It means a lot. You saw how evident it was, even at Money in the Bank when he got pinned for the first time in over two and a half years. You can't just come in and pretend that this title is that important. No one's gonna buy that crap. The way that I always saw champions that I looked up to and that I aspired to be were champions who took the title to every territory or every town and defended it, and over time, people believed that it was a big deal."
The Champion Rollins Wants To Be
Rollins continued with a light shot at Reigns.
"Here's the thing. If Roman was doing what I was doing, there wouldn't really be a need for a secondary championship, there wouldn't be a need for another World Heavyweight Title on 'Raw,'" Rollins said. "But because of the route he has chosen with his schedule and what he wants to do with his title reign is not what I'm doing, somebody's got to fill that void. We did our best with the United States Championship for a little while to do that, but it never really felt like a World Heavyweight Championship, and so there's got to be that person, there's got to be that spot for everybody to get to, to try to fight for, and I'm very happy to be the carrot that's dangling there."
Rollins later added that he "understand[s] where people are coming from" as far as calling his title a "consolation prize," and "wasn't offended, wasn't annoyed or anything like that" by those who labeled it that way, but he said it still felt like a big deal to him regardless because he was still picked above every non-Reigns wrestler on the roster to carry the new title.
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Out of Character with Ryan Satin" with an h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.