Here’s How Seth Rollins Will Make WWE History At Night of Champions

Seth Rollins will challenge AJ Styles at WWE’s Night of Champions pay-per-view this Saturday in the finals of the World Heavyweight Championship tournament. A win would give Rollins his fifth WWE world championship reign (and first since 2019), but he’ll carve his name into the history books regardless of how the match turns out. The show will mark the third time Rollins has competed to crown an inaugural champion in WWE history, something never seen before. He previously beat Jinder Mahal to become the inaugural NXT Champion, then faced Finn Balor at SummerSlam 2016 to crown the first WWE Universal Champion. 

Rollins is already a two-time Grand Slam Champion, joining The Miz as the only wrestlers to have ever accomplished that feat twice. And if he manages to beat Styles, he’ll be the first WWE star to have held the NXT Championship as well as three different WWE world championships. He has previously held the WWE and Universal Championships twice apiece. 

And yet, despite the fact that Rollins has virtually guaranteed himself a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame, he has openly talked in interviews about not feeling like WWE’s top guy as his WWE career has consistently overlapped with Roman Reigns. 

“I just feel like I’ve never, in some ways, I’ve never gotten my just due. There’s always like… I’ve never been the guy, you know? I’ve never been the one on the marquee at WrestleMania,” Rollins told Ariel Helwani last year. “It was John (Cena), it was Roman (Reigns). In some regards when I was at Ring of Honor it was Nigel (McGuinness), it was Bryan (Danielson). And I was always the guy on the come up, or underneath. I was kind of the second or the next big thing type thing, you know? That always just eats at me. It eats at me so much. I don’t know where that competitive spark comes from but it drives me insane. The thing is if I was that guy I don’t know if it would just go away. I would always find some way to put the chip there. It’s just the way I operate best. I have to have it for some reason, in everything. For better or worse sometimes.”

“I don’t know, man,” he later added. “I wonder often if because I live in the Roman Era that that’s just never going to happen. The only time I was even considered, I think, for the main event of WrestleMania was when Roman got leukemia and he was out from August until January whatever or February it was. I was kind of second behind in the little babyface column there and, you know, I got slotted in. I feel like it’s one of those things, I’m like the… the best I can hope for is to be the Edge to his Cena, or the Savage to his Hogan. Sometimes I just feel like that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think I’m better than he is, or that I can perform, or that I can draw at that level. I certainly think all those things, but it’s not my sandbox. I don’t make those decisions.”