6 Ups & 4 Downs For WWE Raw (22 Sept - Results & Review)

2. Rollins’ Insecurities Show

If you’re Seth Rollins, you theoretically should be on top of the world. You lead the top faction on WWE Raw and hold their world championship. Your stablemates will protect you and your title at all costs. You’re married to the best female wrestler in the business (it’s not just her saying it; other people are saying it; Sports Illustrated said it).

But at your core, you’re always going to be an insecure dude.

Fans have turned on you multiple times when you were supposed to be the top face in the company. Your mortal enemy, CM Punk, returned and has bested you at every turn, including this past weekend in a mixed tag. And now you’re facing WWE’s other world champion, a man who has bested you three times and is generally held up as the top guy in the company – not you.

That’s got to eat at Rollins, and those insecurities came out during his verbal showdown with Cody Rhodes on Monday night when he asked the American Nightmare, “What do you think of me?”

It was a simple question, but it said a lot about what’s behind the bluster, the garish outfits, and The Vision. Seth needs validation. He needs to be the man, and to be the man, he’s got to beat the man who refers to himself as QB 1 – Cody.

Rhodes measured his response well, charting their history together and calling his answer “complicated.” He called out Rollins for hiding behind “those three goons” as evidence he wasn’t at the top of his game. Seth questioned Cody’s sincerity when he puts himself above Rollins as the World Heavyweight Champion, and then proceeded to bluster again until Rhodes pointed to their scoreboard to shut the segment down.

If you draw on all of that history, this was a pretty good – if overly long and somewhat flawed – segment to set up their Crown Jewel champions match. Rollins will inevitably lash out when he feels he’s being marginalized, and Cody will manage to do that at some point, either deliberately or inadvertently.

This still is for a silly “Crown Jewel Championship” that only gets talked about in the month before and month after the eponymous PLE, but let’s give kudos that there was a bit of depth here and not just two guys puffing out their chests and declaring they were better than the other and having a d**k measuring contest.