Looking at Rollins’ Two Night of Champions Title Matches

A POST MORTEM- NIGHT OF CHAMPIONS 2015- JOHN CENA VS. SETH ROLLINS FOR THE UNITED STATES CHAMPIONSHIP; STING VS. SETH ROLLINS FOR THE WWE CHAMPIONSHIP

The Background: At Night of Champions, Seth Rollins was tasked with defending both his WWE World Heavyweight and United States Title straps in the space of one evening, against two bona fide professional wrestling legends in Sting and John Cena respectively. Rollins has been a weaselly, grating and obnoxious figure during his stint on top of the WWE mountain, but this still seemed a needlessly fiendish and unfair challenge to set him, one that symbolizes the erratic and frequently self destructive relationship the Authority have with their supposed Chosen One. Astonishingly, Rollins’ task was made even harder on the Night of Champions pre-show, when Sheamus revealed that he had persuaded an unidentified WWE higher-up to schedule the two title defenses back to back. This was an absolutely blatant attempt by the Celtic Warrior, angling for an easy Money in the Bank cash in, to put Rollins in the most vulnerable position possible. Seth’s constant bickering with Triple H and Stephanie McMahon may be tiresome to watch, but he has every reason to be angry that his supposed allies would willingly place him in such a dreadful situation, solely to appease another wrestler.

The most obvious strategy Rollins could have employed in order to make the best of things would have been to sacrifice one of the two bouts and deliberately lose it quickly via disqualification or count-out, thus preserving his championship, retaining some much needed stamina for the other scheduled match, and perhaps convincing Sheamus that cashing in the briefcase would be a little bit too risky on this occasion. Seth and Sting are hardly the best of pals, but taking into consideration Rollins’ long standing animosity towards Cena, and the insecurity he obviously feels in the face of Cena’s fifteen world championships, the most likely plan of action for the double champion seemed to be to give his all in the U.S. Championship match and hope to get a clean victory over his nemesis, and then simply do whatever it takes to escape his defense against Sting with the WWE Championship intact, even if that meant taking the easy way out with a blatant chair shot. Alternatively, the allure of decisively pinning Sting while his presence in a WWE ring is still a relative novelty might have persuaded Rollins to focus his attentions on that match, and write off a tactical defeat to Cena as insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Either way, there seemed a strong chance that WWE Network viewers would not get quite what they were hoping for in at least one of the two big championship matches.

John Cena is such a fixture of WWE main events that he probably didn’t spend too much time thinking up a particular strategy for the big title match- if he went out there and did the usual, he’d have a very good chance of victory. Sting, on the other hand, needed to approach the bout very carefully indeed. Even in the prime of his career where he wasn’t a dissimilar sort of wrestler to Cena, he lacked the invulnerability that made the frequent ‘Champ’ such a, well, a frequent ‘Champ.’ And Sting is very much not in the prime of his career- he is, in fact, 55 years old, by which point in your life it is sensible to give up your dreams of playing in the Superbowl or the World Cup Final. In the build up to the bout many had assumed that Rollins would wrestle the match on the back foot, but in fact the exact opposite made more sense on paper. Sting is too old to be the exuberant competitor many people remember him as from his WCW days, and Rollins has proven in the past that he can be completely vicious given the chance- Edge obviously hasn’t forgotten the way Seth threatened to break his neck with a Curb Stomp unless John Cena acquiesced and reinstated the Authority. One wrong move, and Sting could quickly have found himself back pedaling and in serious difficulty, since of his arsenal of signature moves only the Scorpion Death Drop works from a defensive position, unless you can really catch your opponent off guard with a Stinger Splash. Things didn’t bode well for the Vigilante.

The Match- John Cena vs. Seth Rollins: Curiously, John Cena began the match as if he was the one with another title defense to prepare for, throwing a flurry of strikes and optimistically trying to pin Rollins off a mere back elbow. If that was the game Cena wanted to play, Rollins at first seemed more than happy to go along with it, his first offensive move being an impressive Blockbuster off the second rope that could conceivably have been enough to put away a weaker opponent. After Cena kicked out, Rollins clamped on a sleeper hold, and then took his opponent to the top rope so he could wrap him in a Tree of Woe and double-stomp him. It was a very crafty strategy from Seth, astutely bridging two high impact, higher risk moves with a slow, conservative one. Clearly Seth wanted the match over quickly, but couldn’t afford to make a costly error- applying the sleeper gave him time to think, to assess what kind of position Cena was in, and to correctly predict that the double stomp would be worth the risk.

From there, Rollins task was to suppress John Cena as he tried to best to rally, to keep him subdued with short, sharp, painful moves- a quick neck breaker here, a snap across the top rope there. Cena had no time to counter these, and Seth didn’t have to expend precious energy setting them up- when he did attempt more complex moves, like the Pedigree and the Buckle Bomb, Cena countered them with relative ease. Seth’s impatience to move on with his night was starting to show.

Rollins got extremely lucky when his Tope Con Hilo connected reasonably well, as it could easily have gone disastrously wrong, to the tune of costing him two championships. He was not so fortunate with his Five Star Frog Splash, which met nothing but canvas, and at this point it became clear that Seth had lost control of the match. John Cena has become the most successful professional wrestler of the modern era because he is freakishly strong, has unwavering self belief, and, as much as it’s a cliché, simply never ever gives up. Having those kind of attributes means that the chaotic, almost random nature of near falls in professional wrestling suits him down to the ground, since even in the most desperate of situations he’s still perfectly capable of rising up out of nowhere and hitting the Attitude Adjustment and winning the match.

Rollins was still determined to win, though. When locked in the STF he persevered and dragged his way to the sanctuary of the ropes, when it would have been easy and understandable to tap out. Strategy had gone out the window by this point, it was two men throwing bombs at each other. Seth’s arrogance seeped into his offense when he tried to hit the Attitude Adjustment, but Cena countered it with ease, and from there Rollins had no way back. Cena hit a Reverse Suplex, followed it up with the Guillotine Leg Drop from the top rope, and polished off the bout with the Attitude Adjustment. Rollins 0-1 The World.

The Match- Sting vs. Seth Rollins: So, Rollins had expended a lot of energy in attempting to beat John Cena, and had absolutely nothing to show for it. At this point, the temptation to take the disqualification against Sting must have been almost overwhelming for him, but there was one telling sign that Seth intended to at least have a go against the WCW legend. In most big match situations, Cena can no longer rely on his opponents staying down after a solitary Attitude Adjustment, but Rollins was subdued suspiciously easily from just one rendition of the move. Either he’d hurt something, or he’d decided that he wanted to try and garner a legitimate victory over Sting. Perhaps it was the former, as Seth initially tried to limp to the back before the Stinger had even made his way out to ringside, only for John Cena to thwart him, Adjust his Attitude on the floor, and roll his carcass back into the ring. Personally, however, I suspect that Rollins wouldn’t have followed through with his threat to leave, and his stated intention to do so was just cold feet before the second match, cold feet which he paid a heavy price for.

Despite the champion being decidedly worse for wear, Sting clearly still had concerns about his own ability to withstand a long match, as his first action once the bell rung was to crush the dazed Rollins with a Stinger Splash and try and lock in the Scorpion Death Lock. Unfortunately for the challenger Rollins quickly made the ropes, and then countered a Scorpion Death Drop with a snap mare. With that, Sting’s best chance of winning the WWE Championship evaporated.

Having said that, the Icon was still in control, bouncing Rollins off the announce table and the steel steps on the floor. But as Jerry Lawler pointed out on commentary, the match was unwinnable on the floor for Sting, and he urgently needed to get Rollins back in the ring and pin his shoulders to the mat. When Seth was returned to the squared circle, Sting inexplicably decided to toy with his foe instead of beat him, clamping on an arm wrench and whipping him head over heels into the turnbuckles. This was all effective if Sting’s goal was simply to demean the champion, but it wasn’t going to win him the ultimate prize, and it proved an embarrassing error for the veteran to make. Rollins scrambled back out to the floor and clung onto the announce table for security. Sting climbed up to join him, but with a sudden burst of energy, Seth shoved Sting over, sending him tumbling through the adjacent Spanish announce table. Suddenly, the United States Championship match seemed a long time ago, and Rollins and Sting appeared physical equals. Of course, they weren’t; one of them was in the prime of his career and the other wasn’t far off 60.

Back in the ring, Rollins hoisted Sting up and sent him snapping off the turnbuckles with his trademark Buckle Bomb. This was a huge test of the state of Sting’s ageing bones, because the Buckle Bomb hurts. I mean, I’m not a professional wrestler, and I’ve never been in a car crash, but it still doesn’t take that much imagination to think of what a hideous kind of instantaneous whiplash the Buckle Bomb must cause as the tendons and ligaments in your neck smash against a deceptively unforgiving surface. Initially, it seemed as if Sting had passed this test surprisingly comfortably- of course it hurt him a lot, but he still had enough about him to lunge at Rollins as the champion climbed to the top rope and send him flying out to the floor. From there, Sting himself took to the skies, soaring out onto Rollins with a shockingly adept and graceful crossbody. The Stinger had fought his way back from the brink, taking full advantage of a slight miscalculation from Rollins, and had seen a huge risk maneuver completely pay off. Again, Sting should have won the match from here, but for the second time in the match, he made a bizarrely simple mistake for a competitor of his experience. He flattened Rollins back in the ring with the Scorpion Death Drop, but showed no ring awareness whatsoever and attempted to pin the champion far too close to the ropes. Offering Seth Rollins an easy way out in that situation was a foolish thing to do, and predictably the Architect didn’t even expend energy kicking out of the pin, choosing instead to drape his leg across the bottom rope to save the match.

Sting was moments away from absolute disaster. He successfully landed another Stinger Splash, but then made another mistake, this one catastrophic and potentially career ending. He lingered in the corning, firing punches at Rollins, completely unaware that he was putting himself in perfect position for another Buckle Bomb. On this occasion, Seth was swift and ruthless, seizing the Stinger and crashing him into the turnbuckles again. This time, something was seriously wrong. From the very moment the challenger reeled away from the buckles, he seemed broken both physically and emotionally, carrying the demeanor of a man who knew at that point that his championship dreams had gone up in smoke. He ducked a wild clothesline from Rollins, but then simply slumped dejected to the canvas. Seth knew the match was all but over, and decided to finish Sting off with the Pedigree, but in by far his most impressive moment of the match, the challenger showed remarkable guts to sweep Rollins’ legs away and lock in another Scorpion Death Drop. Rollins inched his way to the ropes and caught Sting with a smart kick to the back of the head that should have killed him off, but thoughtlessly the champion then tried to hit the Pedigree again, mere seconds after Sting had demonstrated that he had a counter for it. Again, Sting was able to summon up the mojo to take Rollins down and try for another Deathlock, but this time he didn’t have enough to do it, and Rollins bundled him over into a not especially convincing roll-up that was nevertheless enough for the three count.

The Conclusion: In some respects, Seth Rollins is extremely lucky to still have one championship belt in his possession. If Sting had wrestled even a slightly smarter match and had pinned Rollins’ on the two separate occasions when he had a golden opportunity to, then we would surely now be talking about the historic Night of Champions in which the wrestler who bled W, C and W more than anyone else finally captured WWE’s most prestigious title. Much like at WrestleMania though, and at Starrcade 1997 for that matter, the enormity of the occasion seemed to get to Sting, and his lack of composure gave Rollins the second and third chances he needed to capitalize on the time-ravaged body of the ‘Icon’ and retain his title. In a strange way, Rollins is also fortunate that Kane came out to beat the heck of him after the WWE Championship match. Sheamus had of course Brogue Kicked Seth’s head off almost immediately upon that match’s conclusion and seemed certain to cash in his briefcase and walk away with the championship. If The Celtic Warrior had kept himself to himself during Kane’s beat down he could have had an even easier route to the gold, but instead he got in the ring to try and cheer the Big Red Machine on, and predictably Kane didn’t appreciate being patronized. Still, Sheamus only sustained one chokeslam in comparison to Rollins’ chokeslam, tombstone, and two consecutive matches’ worth of wear and tear, so maybe he’ll be cursing his decision not to still go ahead with the championship match anyway, the odds still very much stacked in his favor.

Yet it does seem unfair simply to brand Seth Rollins ‘lucky-‘ the fact is that he fought two of the all time greats in back to back matches and, by hook or by crook, he survived. Yes, he lost one championship, but he kept his grasp on the most important one. Sting made some silly errors but you can only beat the man who is in front of you, and Rollins managed it. Somehow, he still doesn’t feel like a particularly impressive champion, even as his reign nears the half a year mark. It seems quintessential Seth Rollins that he almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against Sting, obstinately going for a Pedigree that Sting clearly had the answer to and in the end winning via a vaguely shambolic roll-up. Rollins should have looked dominant, and instead looked anything but. For people to truly consider him a great WWE Champion, he has to stop eking out victories in these big defenses- it happened against Ambrose at Money in the Bank, at Cena at Summerslam, and it happened again against Sting. He should have crushed Sting. He should have brought back the Curb Stomp and sneered at his fractured body. In the end, it felt like a younger, early nineties Sting would have had enough power and energy about him to overwhelm the tired champion, and Rollins escaped because pre match concerns about Sting’s physical condition were sadly realized. If this is Sting’s final match it was a disappointing way to go out, knowing that he should really be WWE Champion by now. Seth Rollins won’t care, but he should, because eventually someone is going to take advantage of his inability to pick up decisive victories.