WWE in Danger of Undermining Seth Rollins' Title Reign with Recent Results

There's a fine balance in professional wrestling between making a champion look unbeatable and making them look too weak, and right now, WWE is doing the latter with world heavyweight champion Seth Rollins.

Rollins' title reign has been one of the most enjoyable to watch in recent years. He has taken on a variety of opponents with a huge range of different storylines and supporting casts, yet over the past month or so, WWE has undermined Rollins' dominance with some questionable results.

All of this means that the champion is currently stuck in a bit of a rut, and he's going to need something impressive to pull himself out of it.

We can examine the results in more detail later and pick apart the finer points of this argument, but for now, let's take the results at face value. Simply put, they don't make great reading for Rollins.

His win against Sting was perhaps expected, as was his loss to John Cena at Night of Champions. There's no great issue with both of those, but when you factor in that Rollins has now lost three out of his last four major battles with Cena, you start to see where the problem lies.

The most recent two, at Night of Champions and on the following night on Raw, also don't sit well with many people because Rollins was beaten cleanly on both occasions.

For a guy who's supposed to be in possession of the biggest title in the company, these kinds of defeats only add weight to the arguments that Cena's treatment by WWE Creative and those booking his matches is completely different to anyone else's.

There's simply no way the WWE world heavyweight champion should be losing cleanly to the same guy twice within the space of 24 hours.

If they're controversial losses or defeats that have an element of surprise to them, fair enough. But these were straight, plain defeats to keep Cena looking strong. Unfortunately for WWE, what it's done in the process is weakened Rollins' standing.

The one time Rollins did beat Cena in a big match, he needed outside interference. And at SummerSlam, it wasn't even a professional wrestler who helped him—it was none other than Jon Stewart.

When taken as a standalone incident, that doesn't sound so bad, but when you throw all his recent results with Cena into one longform book, the fact that Rollins has only won with the help of a former TV show host doesn't seem right.

Rollins' overall results on Raw over the last two months make for even more hideous reading:

• Sept. 21: Loss to John Cena
• Sept. 14: Loss to John Cena and Sting (w/Big Show)
• Sept. 7: Loss to The Prime Time Players and John Cena (w/Big E and Kofi Kingston)
• Sept. 7: Loss to Ryback
• Aug. 10: Loss to Randy Orton (via disqualification)

Rollins' last win on Raw? The August 3 taping, when he beat Neville in an impromptu open challenge in the style of John Cena's United States Championship challenges. How has the champion been forced to go this long without winning?

Granted, champions shouldn't win every week or storylines would become devalued, but for the sake of momentum, Seth needs some wins on his record to help him along.

And as mentioned earlier, when you pick through the finer details of some of the results, particularly the ones against Cena, his booking just looks even worse and begins to threaten his whole position as champion.

Clean defeats are bad enough, but why did WWE have to make Cena hit Rollins with an Attitude Adjustment on the floor outside the ring after their match at Night of Champions? We know it was in order to set up the next match against Sting and make Seth look vulnerable, but it could have been done in a different way to not cheapen Seth's standing as much.

Surely Seth could have just been rolling around on the mat beaten and bruised after a pretty decent match, only for Sting's music to hit straight away.

Then the following night, Cena completely no-sold a frog splash from Seth off the top rope, flipping him up and hitting him with the winning AA to secure another clean win.

It's all pretty ugly when you analyse it close up, and a change is needed fast.

Rollins' probable feud with Kane does offer a glimmer of hope for his title reign. The likelihood of him losing the belt to the Director of Operations is slim, so it's a great opportunity for Rollins to build up some momentum and move forward in a stronger position.

The booking of his matches and storylines have dug a pretty deep hole for Seth as champion. There's still time to address it, but right now, the champ looks weaker than he has for quite some time.