Seth Rollins admits he was initially aghast by the concept of an Eye For An Eye match, but did say the bout ultimately achieved its goal by getting eyes on the product and attracting outside attention.
Rollins spoke with Alex McCarthy of TalkSPORT at length about his memorable he had against Rey Mysterio for The Horror Show at Extreme Rules.
“I certainly did not expect to be in that match at any point leading up to it. When the stipulation was given to me, I was definitely caught off guard and didn’t even really know how to prepare for it.
“I’ve watched back a fair amount of Rey Mysterio matches over my lifetime and going into the match I tried to study First Blood matches because that was kind of the only thing and the only match type that I could understand was akin to an eye-for-an-eye match.
“I went back and studied some of those matches and saw how they were and how they went and stuff like that, so going into the eye-for-an-eye match, I knew it was going to be a mix of us trying to gauge each other’s eyes out and getting one another in a position to do such a thing which would involve some actual professional wrestling.”
Rollins said that the stipulation certainly wasn’t ideal, but it did catch people’s attention.
“I think pro wrestling can just be one-on-one, hold-for-hold wrestling or it can be storytelling like any other form of television and I think that when you start to look at it too critically, especially stuff like that… I dunno, to me it reeks of 2020 trying to pick everything apart.
“If you like the Lake of Reincarnation in AEW but you hate the eye-for-an-eye match… you know what I mean? Then where are we really at here?”
Rollins does state that while the concept did take him aback, he wanted to give it his best shot nonetheless.
“Again, when the idea was presented to me, I was aghast. I thought it was ridiculous and a bit of a joke. But the more I thought about it and the more it came to pass I was like ‘OK, this will be different.’ And it can be good and we don’t have to scoff at everything right out of the gate – I don’t want to be that person.”
Rollins also said that Vince McMahon wasn’t as embedded in the dirty details as he was made out do be.
“Vince wasn’t as hands on as people think that he was. If I’m going to break the fourth wall here, so to speak, it was really 99.9% myself, Rey Mysterio and Jamie Noble.”
