10 Horrendous Promos Awesome Wrestlers Want You To Forget
3. Tonight, The Role Of Reverend Lovejoy Will Be Played By Seth Rollins
Seth Rollins is a good promo now.
Where he once relied on obnoxious laughter as a crutch in the heel role, and as a babyface appeared to try much too hard, in whichever role he now plays, Rollins draws a reaction from the fans. The reaction is very much "Not entirely sure what this is, but we're into it!"
The Rollins character is strange, and strange to articulate. It should be more cringeworthy than it is. He's playing unhinged, and nobody actually believes that he's not in control of his rational mind, but he's not not entertaining. It's just silly enough to work, ultimately.
Before he settled on this jester schtick, he played a solemn, pious heel after the Fiend killed him as a babyface. This involved dull, monotonous promos; imagine 'Serious Man' Chris Jericho, with a faux-messianic tilt, only terrible. The 'Monday Night Messiah' began as a meta riff on his self-anointed locker room leader role, which was promising and necessary, given that he'd become a meme, but the execution was as boring as Raw itself. He was in fact the standardbearer of WWE, but not in the way intended.
Talking in thesaurus WWE-speak, promising to "eradicate" "non-compliant" WWE stars "for the greater good", it wasn't remotely gripping. Aiming for sinister, he scanned like one of those developmental saps given a poorly-defined supernatural gimmick in the 2000s.
Mordecai with the ability to work ****1/4 matches.