Seth Rollins: 'I Was Ready to Strangle Vince McMahon' After HIAC Match vs. The Fiend

The highly-anticipated Hell in a Cell match between Seth Rollins and The Fiend in 2019 ended with a ref stoppage, and fans were extremely upset with the finish.

It turns out Rollins wasn't a fan of the creative decisions in the match, either. Rollins said his vision for the match was "a lot different" than what WWE wanted, and he was "ready to strangle" Vince McMahon after the match. 

“I put a positive spin on it now that I can look back at it a year and a half later, but at the time — I came through that curtain and I was ready to strangle Vince McMahon,” Rollins said on the Broken Skull Sessions. “I’m not kidding you. I’m not kidding you, TJ Willson was there to hold me back. I stared right into Vince’s eyes — you know where he sits in that chair over there [in Gorilla] — I look at him, he looked at me, we didn’t say a single word to each other and he walked out.

“I sat there with Paul Heyman — and also, he was Creative Director at the time of RAW — so I sat down there with him and we had a conversation. He was ‘Paul Heyman’ing’ me, if you will. Then, the next day I went into Vince’s office — much calmer — and I said, ‘Let’s talk about this. We need to figure out what we’re doing here, because that can’t happen again.’ It was civil, but it took me a night [to calm down], but I was ready to go. Man, if somebody wasn’t there making sure  I was okay — my temper, I mean, the adrenaline. In my head, if you go back to that match, I’m convinced if it would have went our way, this wouldn’t be on that [worst matches] list.”

The finish to the match saw Rollins use weapons and repeatedly use The Stomp on The Fiend, who was over as an unstoppable heel, to win and retain the Universal Championship. A babyface at the time, Rollins was loudly booed by the crowd, who clearly wanted The Fiend to win and were perplexed by the wild no-selling in the match.

WWE quickly rectified the situation and had The Fiend go over and take the Universal Championship from Rollins a few weeks later at Crown Jewel, but the damage was done. 

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