8 Nuances That Make Seth Rollins So Great
The blueprint for The Architect...
In 2019 it’s pretty clear that Seth Rollins (the Architect of the Shield, the Kingslayer, Beastslayer - whatever eighties fantasy movie he’s cosplaying this week) is the modern WWE’s secret weapon.
He’s the all-rounder who can do it all, be any character the company need him to be, one of the few wrestlers that has been allowed to beat the biggest and the baddest on the block clean as a whistle.
But, as talented as he is, he’s not a prodigy like Kurt Angle or Brock Lesnar, materialising on the world stage with world class skills already in place like Athena springing from the head of Zeus. The real life Colby Lopez worked his tail off to get where he is today - to become the wrestler and performer that can take the WWE into the next decade.
So what got him there? Here’s how to become one of the greatest professional wrestlers in the world, in only eight steps: the qualities, experiences, support and training it takes to be Seth Rollins.
8. Understand That Self-Belief Can Move Mountains
Lopez began the same way hundreds of other midwestern American kids dreaming of pro wrestling stardom do: in the backyard, performing incredibly dodgy spots with little or no training.
By fourteen years old, he was actually running backyard wrestling shows with his friends once a month, finding that he was naturally gifted at the kind of crowd-pleasing high spots and aerial moves he’d seen on TV.
By sixteen years old, he’d dismissed the idea of college completely; he wanted to be a pro wrestler, and that was that. He started at Scott County Wrestling in Iowa the following year, under the odd name of Gixx, working for IWA South at the same time. Supposedly, this is his first ever match, for SWA in 2003:
In 2006 he attended WrestleMania 22 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois, and vowed to himself that it'd be the last WrestleMania he attended as a fan. Next time, he'd be on the card.
That’s pretty ambitious for a twenty-year-old Armenian American kid from the midwest, right? That’s nothing. Remember that sixteen-year-old backyarder who dreamed of wrestling for a living? His character’s name was God, and he hit a 630 splash through a table for his finish.
Colby Lopez was ambitious before he could spell the word.