10 Biggest WWE Creative Success Stories Of 2018
9. Seth Rollins
In a year in which so many performers were tainted or misused or downright incinerated, Seth Rollins, on RAW no less, escaped with more than a degree of integrity.
It was a middling start - those Royal Rumble flame tights hardly obscured the slight cringe factor surrounding the Architect - but Rollins' performance in the famed, stature-enhancing Gauntlet match of February 19 rebuilt his super-worker reputation (even if John Cena's performance in said match was an affront to psychology). Rollins also starred in one of the best WrestleMania openers of all time before retaining his new Intercontinental Championship at the expense of The Miz, at Backlash, in a match of high drama. The story, marvellous in itself, boasted a pointed subtext: even when WWE was awful in 2018, as Backlash very much was, Seth Rollins was immune to the bullsh*t. Maybe he, not Dean Ambrose, had inoculated himself.
Rollins' feud with Dolph Ziggler killed it on TV (RAW, June 25), but was murdered on pay-per-view (Extreme Rules), and its corpse decayed somewhat as WWE went back to it, again and again and again. But Rollins, a very creative, over and dynamite performer, zapped it back into life at times - to such an extent that the Hell In A Cell RAW Tag Team Title bout, with the returning Dean Ambrose and Drew McIntyre, entered consideration for WWE Match Of The Year.
Rollins is currently in the midst of a shockingly disappointing feud with Ambrose - but if smoke exists where there is fire, and he becomes the Guy in New Jersey, there is no man better equipped to survive Vince McMahon's utter bullsh*t.