Seth Rollins Discusses Being Upset With Aloof Extreme Rules Crowd

Seth Rollins hasn't forgotten about the 14,000 knuckleheads from Extreme Rules.

At SummerSlam, Rollins will meet Dolph Ziggler for his second crack at regaining the Intercontinental Championship. Regardless of how things finish, Rollins is likely to have a better experience than he did in July at Extreme Rules.

During he and Ziggler's Ironman match, the entire arena devoted their energy to the 30-minute countdown clock instead of the in-ring action. Despite an exceptional performance, Rollins and Ziggler's match became a footnote to the crowd's thirst for irony.

In an interview with CBS In This Corner, Rollins was asked about how the self-indulgent crowd made him feel like a performer.

"I think upset is the right way to put it," Rollins said. "People are like, 'did you get mad?' Naw dude, I just get sad because I love performing and I love having that synergy with the crowd and when they're, you know paying attention to something else, inexplicably really, it's frustrating from a performance perspective. Especially when you know you're in the main event of a pay-per-view for the Intercontinental Championship, it hasn't been done in twenty-odd years and it's the match that you know, most people in the building paid money to see, to begin with," he said.

Rollins, like anyone else who sits down to think about this, is confused as to why someone would pay money to ignore something.

"So it still doesn't make sense to me. I don't get it. I can't imagine myself paying money to go to some sort of show or game or concert or something and you know and not paying attention to what's going on. Again, you know they did buy their tickets they're allowed to do whatever they wanna do with their time. So it's sort of a double-edged sword in that sense. They can do what they want, but yeah it definitely makes you question your own validity in that spot," he said.

This made for an easy transition to Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar who are no strangers to crowd protests. And on Sunday, the snarky Brooklyn crowd will likely be charged up to not care.

"You just gotta go out there and do your job to a point," Rollins said. "At the end of the day the people are gonna do what they wanna do and you have to go out there and like I said, do your job. I think that you know, there's a section of the audience that already has something in mind. They already know what they wanna do when you bring up something like a Brock and Roman situation. They already have in mind how they feel going in and then it becomes very difficult to change their minds, you know during the course of a match," he said.

Regardless, Rollins says the goal is still to entertain.

"It just makes your job a little more difficult is all. I don't know the science, you know there is none, it's an art form, right? So I don't know how it works in 2018 all the way. It's such an interesting time that we're in with pro wrestling. So I'm anxious to see how it comes out on the other side. I can't imagine it will be like this forever. It's an interesting paradigm shift in how the audience uses the show, I think," he said.

[H//T Wrestling Inc.]