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What’s the story?
With the rise of All Elite Wrestling and particularly the release of Jon Moxley’s podcast conversations with both Chris Jericho and Wade Keller, WWE and Vince McMahon, in particular, have been besieged by current and former fans recently.
This led to Seth Rollins standing up for his company. He also believes that he is standing up for the locker room that he represents.
Over the course of the day, a number of people backstage in WWE and particularly the WWE locker room have shared their opinions of the situation with me. The reaction has been mostly in favor of Seth Rollins.
In case you didn’t know...
In the latest WWE NEWS,Seth Rollins is the current WWE Universal champion. The night before Stomping Grounds, Rollins made the following comment on Twitter.
This resulted in a wave of negativity and abuse. Seth would double down though, taking aim at those who refuted his claim and or attacked the company that he calls home. In an interview today, Seth would even take aim at Jon Moxley, his former friend Dean Ambrose.
Rollins is currently in the middle of a very strong push and is considered one of the top performers in WWE as well as one of the best wrestlers in the world. That said, he is the first WWE figure to break ranks and actually speak out against the current situation, wherein a lot of WWE talent are believed to be unhappy, trapped and eager to leave for greener pastures.
The heart of the matter
If Rollins is truly speaking for the locker room, then that same locker room will surely be supportive of him. Between reaching out myself and people coming to me, the mood was overwhelming in favor of Rollins.
Multiple people picked out the fact that during every Q and A and in the replies to a lot of their tweets were endless questions about when that person would be going to AEW.
One recounted an experience taking a picture with a fan where the fan would continually ask when that wrestler’s contract was up. When the wrestler refused to answer, the fan would become “super defensive.”
Another had more general concerns. “Jon wasn’t happy. People just expect I’m not happy too. I love wrestling and that’s what I’m doing so I’m happy.”
Others cited a much more varied selection of schedules in the current locker room as something to be happy with. When asked directly about Seth, one person told me “he doesn’t speak for all of us but he speaks for a lot of us. Why shouldn’t you love coming to work every day?”
Meanwhile, not everyone was positive. One non-wrestler told me that their contract wasn’t due to run out any time soon but when it did, they would be assessing their options due to the increased choices that might be available to them. “It’s just somewhere new to work.”
What’s next?
Whether we now see more people openly supporting WWE or openly going against them is something that we will only know with time.
It’s very refreshing though to see somebody standing up and being counted instead of the usual WWE tactic of pretending that nothing is happening outside of their four walls.
One thing is clear; Seth Rollins has no plans to go quietly. We haven’t heard the end of this.
