With name changes par for the course in Vince McMahon’s WWE, Seth Rollins has revealed he asked the ex-Chairman to tweak his own current moniker in the company.
Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler, Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart, Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts – wrestling has long had many stars use a nickname as their middle name and in WWE in recent months you can add Seth ‘Freaking’ Rollins to that list.
While Rollins had referred to himself in such a way for some time, it has now become a part of Rollins’ official WWE name. But under Triple H’s leadership, many of the name changes of the past have started to be reversed.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani for BT Sport, Seth Rollins admits he doesn’t know if “Freaking” will remain part of his name going forward but says he did ask Vince McMahon to make a change to it before the former WWE supremo retired:
“I’m not sure. As of this interview, I’m not exactly sure. So even before Triple H took over, this was weeks before, I think, maybe months even. I had gone to Vince specifically because I had watched something back on Raw and maybe it was like a highlight on Twitter, and they said ‘Seth Freaking Rollins’, it had been a dozen times in 30 seconds because Vince was also very big on not using pronouns.”
“So, constantly, he wanted the whole brand [said] every single time I was referenced and I’m like, ‘You gotta stop that. You’re gonna turn people off. That’s not what we want, you know?’ So he was like, ‘Okay. On the commentary, they can refer to you as Seth Rollins.’ I was like, ‘Alright, thank you.'”
“So I don’t know. I don’t know if ‘Freakin” is staying or going. I’ve had many, many names and it’s all fine with me. It’s different. No one’s really working with a strong middle name right now. There aren’t any Bret ‘The Hitman’ Harts, you know?”