Seth Rollins has revealed that a sponsorship deal involving two of his fellow Superstars led to his SummerSlam match with Matt Riddle being postponed.
In recent weeks and months Seth Rollins and Matt Riddle have been at each other’s throats. The rivalry became increasingly personal until the pair finally met in the ring at Clash At The Castle.
For almost 20 minutes the two men threw everything they had at each other, but in the end it was Rollins who scored the win, taking advantage of an overly emotional Riddle.
However, the match had originally been scheduled to take place at SummerSlam weeks earlier. Despite the bout being advertised it was pulled from the card and postponed due to a storyline injury to Riddle.
Speaking in a new interview with Ariel Helwai about his rivalry with Matt Riddle, Rollins revealed that the match was moved due to a sponsorship agreement involving the Mysterios. This meant that Rey and Dominik had to appear on the show, which led to Rollins’ match being pulled.
“It was one of those situations where we had a regime change in the midst of the build to SummerSlam, I believe a week out, we had the biggest change in the history of our industry. When Triple H took over the creative process, he was looking at the hand that was dealt to him.
They ended up having to add what I believe was the Mysterios match based on a sponsorship agreement, I believe Rey and Dom have some sort of deal with an alcohol company, a beer company, there was some money involved and they had to add the match on. To do that, you either have to take out a whole match or you have to cut time from other matches to keep the show at a reasonable time. I think the runtime ended up being almost four hours anyway. Anything beyond that is a little ridiculous in my opinion.
You were looking at the card and you look at the title matches, which we weren’t. You look at the celebrity matches that you only get one chance to do, which we weren’t. We kind of fell into that spot where it was, ‘we could use more weeks to build this story.’ They made the choice to ax our match and make sure all the other matches were maximized with time and story and all that.
Totally understood that and respect it, I was a little upset we advertised the match and not given that to them [the fans] and at the level I have been performing for really the last year, I felt it was a bit of a slap in the face to me as a performer that I wasn’t able to be on what is essentially the second biggest show of the year for us,”
Rollins confirmed that he felt disrespected by the move, adding that he “didn’t take too kindly” to the news.
“Of course, I think anybody in my position who takes pride in what they do, I think there’s got to be a little disrespect felt there. Did I go about it the right way? Maybe, maybe not.”
“I got the word that they were killing the match and I didn’t take too kindly to it. I had a couple of days to sit on it before they actually announced that they were going to move it. I was kind of thinking about what I wanted to do. I just feel bad for people who were excited to see the match, who had paid money, maybe, to see that match specifically that we had been building towards for a few weeks and advertised for a week or two.
I felt the need to control my own narrative in that regard. I didn’t feel like letting other people shift the way the story was going was in my best interest. I took things into my own hands,”
Once the postponement was announced, Rollins took to Twitter to air his frustration and his tweet was picked upon by Triple H who replied. The former World Champion explained that he and WWE’s new Head of Creative discussed the change and cleared the air.
“I understood what I felt was the purpose to the tweet, the response. Maybe it was a bit of a smirk. ‘Okay, he’s listening.’ It’s interesting going from his perspective because he’s been in my shoes many times and most certainly been in situations he didn’t want to be in or asked to do something he didn’t want to do creatively or maybe taken off a show when he was advertised when he was healthy or maybe not booked.
He probably understood where I was coming from. Didn’t like that I was throwing pie in his face in his first week, most likely, and rightfully so. We talked about it and hashed things out. I respected his position and understood where he was coming from. I think he understood where I was coming from. We sort of agreed to disagree and just move along when it came to this situation,”
H/ to Fightful for the transcription.