Seth Rollins Says He “Was Ready to Strangle Vince McMahon” After HIAC Match Against Wyatt

On the latest episode of Steve Austin: The Broken Skull Sessions, Seth Rollins said that he was so mad after his 2019 Hell in a Cell match against The Fiend Bray Wyatt that he “was ready to strangle” Vince McMahon.

The match, which ended in a “referee stoppage” after Rollins repeatedly hit Wyatt with weapons, was widely panned and was voted the “Worst Match of the Year” by readers of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The crowd in attendance loudly booed a large portion of the match and began chanting “AEW.”

During the interview, Austin asked Rollins about the match being voted “Worst Match of the Year.”

“My vision for what that match was going to be was a lot different than what we had to go out there and do,” Rollins said. “We went out there and we did what we were told to do to the best of our ability. Obviously, as it was ongoing, I felt… I mean, you watch it back, it’s boos piled upon boos piled upon boos and at the end of it, the reaction when the audience didn’t get the result they wanted, that’s a real tough pill to swallow. And man, God, it sucks. It’s a sucky feeling.”

Rollins said that he can put a positive spin on it now, since it led to his current character.

“You go back to it now, we talked about the Drip God character, that character doesn’t exist without that match. Cause that’s really the catalyst for what happened later that year. Cause that was in October. By the time December, January rolls around, I’m no longer ‘Burn It Down’ Seth Rollins, I’m a totally different being. Things happen for a reason, they happen the way they’re supposed to happen. So it was what it was, but here we are. Where we’re at now, being able to talk about this cool character, doesn’t exist without that match. So a lot of good came from it.”

But at the time, he said that he was “ready to strangle Vince McMahon.”

“I put a positive spin on it now that I can look back on it a year and a half later, but at the time, I came through that curtain and I was ready to strangle Vince McMahon,” Rollins said. “I’m not kidding you. I’m not kidding you. Tyson Kidd, TJ Wilson was there to hold me back. Dude, I stared right into Vince’s eyes. You know where he sits in that chair. I looked at him, he looked at me, we didn’t say a single word to each other and he walked out. Then I sat down there with Paul Heyman, who was also at the time creative director at Raw, so I sat down with him and we had a conversation. He was ‘Paul Heyman-ing me,’ if you will. And then the next day, I went into Vince’s office, I was much calmer, and I said, ‘Let’s talk about this. We need to figure out what we’re doing here because that can’t happen again.’ And it was civil, but it took me a night. I was ready to go, man. If somebody wasn’t there making sure that I was okay, my temper… I mean, the adrenaline, you know. In my head, if you go back to that match, I’m convinced that if it would have went our way, it wouldn’t be on that [Observer worst match] list.”

This is fascinating. Fair play that the Hell In A Cell 2019 booking drove Seth Rollins nuts. Oh to be a fly on the wall for him and Vince back there 😂 pic.twitter.com/vdEgkWJXoj

— Kenny McIntosh 🏳️‍🌈 (@KennyMcITR) September 26, 2021