Despite many labelling Raw’s new top prize as the work-rate title, its current holder, Seth Rollins, believes that to be underselling the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
On May 27th at WWE’s Night of Champions show in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Seth Rollins defeated AJ Styles to become the inaugural WWE World Heavyweight Champion, with the title having been created to serve as Raw’s top prize whilst Roman Reigns continues to hold the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship on Smackdown.
Speaking with Mark Andrews on My Love Letter to Wrestling, Rollins responded to the notion that the WWE World Heavyweight Championship will be the work-rate title, stating the overall goal is for the championship to feel as important as any other title in wrestling.
“I think just kind of calling it the work-rate title is a little bit underselling it. At the end of the day, the title exists because our roster is so chock full of talent. There’s just too much to have one champion that’s not around very much, and so I think the fact that we had so many worthy contenders, people that could hold this championship, I think that is the reason the title exists. If we had a weak roster and things weren’t good and stuff wasn’t hot, it might be fine just to have one champion who wasn’t around, didn’t want to make live events, but that’s just not the case. We’re selling out left and right, we’re hot, from here to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Paris, France, Mexico City, it doesn’t matter. We’re just selling out left and right, and we need to have a World Heavyweight Champion on the men’s side to represent that level of competition. So I think we’re going to put in the work to build this title to be as big as any championship in wrestling. We’re not naive and think that we don’t need to put that work. We know that it needs to happen. But we’ve got the roster, and the guys and the crew who are willing to put in the time to make it feel as big as it is,”
-Seth Rollins
Rollins successfully defended the title for the first time during this past Monday’s episode of Raw, defeating Damian Priest of The Judgement Day.
It appears as though Rollins’ next challenger has already announced himself, as this week’s episode of NXT saw former NXT Champion Bron Breakker call out the red brand’s top star.
H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
