Seth Rollins Talks Work Ethic and The Shield’s Early Success

“Mr. Money in the Bank” Seth Rollins appeared on “Sam Roberts Wrestling” this week to discuss various aspects of his WWE career. Some highlights from the conversation can be found below.

On not becoming too satisfied with where he is positioned:

“Well I mean if that’s human nature, then maybe I’m not human. Because to me, that sounds like complacency, and that’s not something I’ve ever been good at in wrestling or in life. I always, and maybe to a fault for me, it’s always been the grass is always greener and I’m always looking at what’s next and how I can improve on something, you know, part of my life. And I like I said, it could be to a fault, and I’m sure that philosophy has gotten me in trouble many times in my life but it has also put me in a position to succeed and get the opportunity to live out my dream. It’s pretty simple man, there’s always more to accomplish and I think that’s the kind of thing that separates people, is that complacency.”

Rollins touched on the reason The Shield was able to be so successful out of the gate:

“We were put in a position to succeed for sure but, a lot of people are put in positions to succeed and it doesn’t always pan out. There comes a point when you’ve got to deliver. If you get the ball and you drop the ball or you’re not successful on your attempt, they’re going to give the ball to someone else. And it was up to us to perform every time we were out there and that was something that we took pride in. Especially having the background that I had, Ambrose too I think, we really relished the opportunity to take on the top guys in WWE right off the get-go. There’s a confidence that all three of us had that exuded on screen, I think people figured that out pretty quick and it was something that we had backstage as well and it really helped us step our game up on a night-to-night basis, and not only that, it pushed everyone else’s level. They realized there were three guys in here who were super hungry and were going to do whatever it took to succeed and had the ability to make that success a reality. So they all had to step their games up as well, try to compete with that. It created a pretty awesome year and a half of matches and moments like that, it’s going to go down in history, it’s a start of an era I’d like to think.”

He also spoke about how some of the other guys in the locker room felt about their presence and ability to get into main event programs so quickly:

“It certainly rubbed people the wrong way. It was one of those things where it makes people uncomfortable. You put people on the spot and they don’t like that. I think that over the time when you do steal the show night in and night out, when you are doing all the things you said you’re going to do, you earn people’s respect and they sort of jump on the bandwagon so to speak. So over time the guys who didn’t appreciate our attitude kind of jumped on board and wanted to be part of the movement. It was either that or you were going to get kind of lost in the shuffle because there was absolutely nobody who was going to outwork us on a day-to-day basis and we made sure of that.”

The entire conversation between Rollins and Roberts can be heard here.

Editor’s Note

It’s not hard to believe that the characters they portrayed on-screen as The Shield is who they were backstage. Sometimes, you need that swagger to be successful.

Follow @JonAlbaSFC