Seth Rollins and Riddle were set to face off at SummerSlam, but the match was postponed the week of for kayfabe reasons. In storyline, it was announced that Riddle was not medically cleared to compete after being laid out by Rollins. In reality, there were other factors at play.
Rollins told Ariel Helwani of BT Sport about the match being postponed,:
“It was one of those situations where we had a regime change in the midst of the build to SummerSlam, I believe a week out, we had the biggest change in the history of our industry. When Triple H took over the creative process, he was looking at the hand that was dealt to him. They ended up having to add what I believe was the Mysterios match based on a sponsorship agreement, I believe Rey and Dom have some sort of deal with an alcohol company, a beer company, there was some money involved and they had to add the match on. To do that, you either have to take out a whole match or you have to cut time from other matches to keep the show at a reasonable time. I think the runtime ended up being almost four hours anyway. Anything beyond that is a little ridiculous in my opinion. You were looking at the card and you look at the title matches, which we weren’t. You look at the celebrity matches that you only get one chance to do, which we weren’t. We kind of fell into that spot where it was, ‘we could use more weeks to build this story.’ They made the choice to ax our match and make sure all the other matches were maximized with time and story and all that. Totally understood that and respect it, I was a little upset we advertised the match and not given that to them [the fans] and at the level I have been performing for really the last year, I felt it was a bit of a slap in the face to me as a performer that I wasn’t able to be on what is essentially the second biggest show of the year for us,”
Seth Rollins to BT Sport
Seth would go on to defeat Matt Riddle at WWE Clash At The Castle in a barnburner of a match.
H/T to Fightful for transcription
Follow Corey at @CoreyBrennanBS on Twitter
If you enjoy Bodyslam’s content, you can help donate to the site here. You can also visit our PWTees store and buy Bodyslam official merchandise here.
You can listen to all of Bodyslam’s podcasts by following us on Spotify and subscribing to our YouTube Channel, or any of your favorite podcast platforms.ⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘⓘ
