As noted, Seth Rollins recently appeared as a guest on The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast for an in-depth interview. Below are some additional highlights.
On having a healthy sense of competition within The Shield back when the group was active: “I think so. I think it was a healthy competition though. It was one of those things where it helped us push each other because we all wanted to be single’s stars – we were never like, ‘hey, let’s do this together and call ourselves The Shield.’ That was kind of thrust upon us. Myself, Ambrose, and Reigns all separately down in NXT/FCW, whatever, were all on our own doing our own thing, we all wanted to be world champion and that kind of stuff. We all had a little bit of a camaraderie as far as our generation coming to the forefront and pushing some of these older guys out of the way, but like, once we got put together in The Shield, it was honestly like a real brother type of bond as far as travel together, workout together, we had the same mindset. We were going to use that triad of force to be an even bigger wedge and really shove everybody else out of the way. And then, as we got sort of towards the end of it, we were like, ‘well, I want to be positioned to be seen this way or that way’ amongst the three of us. But again, I don’t think there was ever any jealousy. There was never any envy. It was a positive sort of healthy environment, healthy competition, to see who could kind of one up each other.”
On The Shield breaking up: “It was thrust upon us very quickly. I don’t know if that story [has] been told or not, but we were not prepared so well for the break up – ‘yeah, you’re going this way, you’re going this way, you’re going that way’ sort of thing. Well, no, [they did not want to break up] we weren’t ready for it. We thought we had a big babyface run in us, which is what we just started. We had two months with Evolution, having a couple of six-mans. We were like, ‘alright, let’s go! This is the idea we have to kind of push ourselves in that direction’ and they were like, ‘no! We need three single’s stars and we need them right now.’ And I was like, ‘well, if it’s going to be anybody, [there is] no better time than when we were on top of the world, so it worked really well and I was hesitant at first because I didn’t really see it that way, myself as the bad guy of the group. But once it was kind of laid out and the ball started rolling in my head, I was like, ‘okay, this is definitely something I can slide into’ and it worked out quite well.”
Check out the complete episode of the Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast featuring the Seth Rollins interview at Stitcher.com.