Seth Rollins Believes Fans Don’t Have Patience For Long Stories, Says WWE Planning Is Week To Week

Seth Rollins has grown into his Monday Night Messiah gimmick during the COVID-19 era with many believing he’s doing the best character and promo work of his career.

Rollins joined the Gorilla Position podcast to discuss the work he’s done as the Messiah and the planning that has gone into the character since his heel turn in December 2019.

“It’s very much a week-to-week thing. I definitely don’t have a timetable on how things are going to go or where they’re going to shift to or anything like that. It’s nothing set in ink or set in stone for months. It’s different than any way I’ve approached putting a character together. It’s certainly more calculated, as far as like, even though we’re making adjustments week-to-week, I’m still thinking about how I see it moving forward and making sure it doesn’t jump off the page in a bad way, so it doesn’t become like ‘This week he was bad, now it’s something totally different.’ It’s something I’ve thought about and been careful to cultivate and craft, but it’s not something that’s been perfectly planned out for months in advance,” he said.

Rollins has taken aim at the Mysterio family in recent months and the feud will continue through SummerSlam as Rollins battles Dominik Mysterio in Dominik’s first official match. Rollins has pointed out in past interviews that the feud with Mysterio dates back to the night after Survivor Series 2019 when Seth chastised Rey and his son for failing to get the job done against Brock Lesnar.

When discussing long-term stories in WWE, Seth said, “I think it’s a lost art across the board in entertainment. Not that it’s a lost art, but audiences, as we get into this age of instant gratification, they don’t have the patience for long-term storytelling. When you can binge-watch your favorite series in two days as opposed to two months, it creates a different precedent in how to intake our entertainment. It’s the difference between watching a full match and seeing the highlights. People are intaking their entertainment on a different level. That shift, wrestling is not immune to that, so we have to do it as well to keep up with our audience. The storytelling I grew up on was a little longer form and that’s what I enjoy. If our younger audience can learn to appreciate it, it might be something they are into, but it might not be how their brains are wired or how we’ve re-wired how people think. It’s an interesting time in entertainment and that shift.”

Rollins shifted the skin of Dominik on Monday night, caning him and leaving him with welts all across his body.

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