Seth Rollins is currently on the third world title run of his career. The Visionary first had a taste of the main event scene in 2015 when he became WWE Champion at WWE WrestleMania 31 and spent the rest of that year as a fairly cut and dry bad guy. Four years later, Rollins would once again win a world title at a WrestleMania, the WWE Universal Championship at WWE WrestleMania 35, but this time around he was a fully-fledged conquering hero. His popularity during this run gradually soured until WWE was forced to turn him heel once more. Four years on from that, Rollins is once again a world champion, but his current character is somewhere in the middle.
Rollins is undoubtedly a fan favorite, as he receives some of the most positive reactions every week, but his persona’s morality operates in a shade of gray. He basks in crowd singalongs to a near-narcissistic level. He belittles his opponents on the microphone. He takes the occasional shortcut to win matches.
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“Life is not black and white, and so good and evil aren’t always so black and white. There’s a lot of gray area. The other thing is that it always changes. The same thing goes with wrestling, right?” Rollins told Last Meals regarding his current perception of his character work in wrestling. “So to figure out how that applies to a large crowd, what they want or what they want to cheer, the difference between a good guy and a bad guy, a heel and a babyface, I think figuring that out and being able to put it into practice teaches you a lot about people.”
This latest “good guy” version of Rollins is not dissimilar from the antagonist he portrayed on WWE TV just a year ago. As evident by his match with Roman Reigns at WWE Royal Rumble 2022 and his months-long feud with Cody Rhodes later that summer, Rollins had the ability to fulfill either the babyface or heel position without making drastic changes to his character. It wasn’t until he became WWE United States Champion in Summer 2022 that Rollins clearly turned face again, but as emphasized, this pompous version of the former Shield member is not above using the odd heel tactic here and there.
Rollins defends his WWE World Heavyweight Championship against Drew McIntyre this Saturday at WWE Crown Jewel.
