Seth Rollins Gives WWE Return Update, Recalls Triple H Being Hesitant To Let Him Use Pedigree, Reveals Vince McMahon Talk
Seth Rollins and his wife, WWE Women’s Intercontinental Champion Becky Lynch, recently sat down for an in-depth interview with Complex News.
During the discussion, “The Visionary” and “The Revolutionary” of WWE gave an update on his injury recovery, talks about bad neck issues he dealt with last year, and reflected on Vince McMahon banning the Curb Stomp and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque being hesitant to let him use the Pedigree.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts. Also embedded below is a complete video archive of the discussion.
On his injury recovery status: “It’s coming along. It’s coming along. I had surgery about almost three months now. So, I can do most normal things like wash my hair and scratch my armpit and all those things so it’s good. You still got time. I don’t know exactly when we’re gonna come back but, I’m making progress in the right direction.”
On the neck issue he dealt with in the last summer in 2025: “Last year, my neck was destroying me. That was really bad… During the summer last year… I couldn’t go 30 seconds without fidgeting. I had to get in a different position, I had to jam my thumb into my neck. I mean, it was not fun and then had to try to go to work and wrestle and be normal and stuff like that and the worst part is when your daughter wants to play and you’re like, ‘Ah, daddy needs a minute…’ It’s seeing her disappointed is the worst feeling in the world. I can get through wrestling stuff, whatever. But seeing my daughter disappointed and the sadness on her face because daddy can’t pick her up. That hurts. That sticks with you.”
On conversations with Vince McMahon about banning the Curb Stomp finisher and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque being hesitant to let him use the Pedigree: “Ah, it sucked. I was given no heads up and it was right after I won the World Title for the first time, with that move that I’d been using for years as a finish, and that had built up a ton of equity, and then all of a sudden, ‘I mean, so I don’t think we’re gonna use that anymore.’ ‘What the –’ ‘You know, it’s too dangerous. I know you’re not dangerous. Very safe.’ If anybody can tell, it’s my Vince McMahon impression. ‘Kids can do it too easily at home.’ I don’t know what happened. Somebody got in his ear and said it was a problem. I’m like, ‘Dude, it’s wrestling. If any kid imitates any wrestling move, they’re gonna hurt –’ your armbar’ [Rollins said to Becky Lynch]. They just snap a shoulder off. It’s like, c’mon. A Rock Bottom, any of it, all of it, anything. It’s silly. A punch to the nose, you know what I mean? If they know how to do it, of course it’s gonna hurt somebody. So I thought it was so silly but whatever, you know? It was on a whim. Literally, I did the move Sunday, won the title, beat Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar and then fly to New York from San Francisco, do the TODAY Show, pet a couple dogs, say hi to Katie (Couric) and Matt (Lauer), fly back to Santa Clara to do Raw and I go and Vince is like, ‘Come in. I gotta talk to you about something.’ He’s like, ‘Ah, we’re not gonna do that anymore.’ I was like, ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ And then they wanted me to do a frog splash and I’m like, ‘Absolutely not. I’m not doing that every single night.’ I like my knees and I like my elbows. It’s not happening. So then it was the process of trying to figure out a new finisher, and thankfully, I was in the mentorship of Triple H at the time in The Authority and no one else had ever used the Pedigree as a finishing move and he was not an active performer at the time so I was like, ‘I think this would be the perfect –’ he was hesitant about it too. He didn’t like it. I think he really hates it now because people kick out of it sometimes [laughs]. Yeah, fully, fully diluted it but I think it worked for the time being. It got the desired reaction and it already had the 20 years of equity to it which is the hardest thing to do with a finisher because anything can be a finisher. You just have to beat people with it for a while.”
