Has Seth Rollins Lost His Status as a Main Event Star for WWE Raw?

There once was a time when Seth Rollins became the breakout star of The Shield, winning a WWE world title before his brethren and headlining every event as the focal point of the company.

An injury in November 2015 put a stop to that for quite a while, but when he returned in May 2016, he went straight back into the main event scene and even temporarily regained the WWE Championship.

However, 2017 was not kind to Rollins in terms of being a top star in the company, and 2018 has not got off to a good start in changing that for the better.

In fact, this is the lowest on the totem pole Rollins has appeared to be in years. Even when he was out with injuries, he was poised to make an important return, and the gap created by his absence was felt.

It's starting to look as though he won't be anything more than an afterthought when it comes to the WrestleMania 34 card.

Is this just a bad deal, or is Rollins in danger of no longer being a main event player?

What went wrong along the way, and how can he turn things around to salvage his spot among the upper echelon of competitors?

First off, one of the problems is that since WrestleMania 33, Rollins' activity can be summed up with essentially three moves on the board.

After defeating Triple H, he picked up where he left off with Samoa Joe and had several matches against him, for better or worse.

Following that, there was The Shield's reformation, which got underway when he and Dean Ambrose agreed to put their differences aside and become friends again, earning the Raw Tag Team Championships in the process.

From the end of the summer until now, Rollins has been feuding pretty much solely with the same people: Cesaro and Sheamus.

Ambrose and Rollins dethroned The Bar at SummerSlam and had some great matches. It seemed like the two of them could spark a new life into the tag team division.

Unfortunately, WWE dragged this feud on far longer than it should have—and it is still happening.

When The Lunatic Fringe picked up an injury in December, The Bar recaptured the titles, halting Rollins' momentum and forcing a change to the script.

Instead of having him return to a singles career, WWE opted to keep Rollins in the same feud with The Bar and paired him up with Jason Jordan—someone the promotion seemingly couldn't figure out what to do with.

Jordan had bounced around between feuds with Elias, The Miz, Samoa Joe and others for weeks with nothing clicking, which isn't the most inviting situation.

Suddenly, instead of being back in The Shield and re-establishing the hottest stable for years as the dominant force of Monday Night Raw once more, Rollins was saddled with a midcard pet project in desperate need of direction.

Credit: WWE.com

It became The Architect's responsibility to play the foil to a character WWE couldn't commit to having as a true heel or a babyface, leaving him stuck in limbo.

Rollins went from an equal player at the top to second fiddle in a team with someone who wasn't anywhere near as established.

In a way, Rollins turned into the straight man in a comedy routine, so to speak, wherein his job wasn't to look strong but to purposely play off someone else in way to put them over instead.

Since Jordan is a good guy who gets booed, Rollins can't be the hero or the villain, as both would take some of the spotlight away, defeating the point of teaming them up.

Jordan gets more flak than he should, but since he's the source of tension in this storyline, this is turning into a gimmick WWE has done numerous times in the past.

WWE has a fascination with putting two random wrestlers who don't get along together, telling the audience they can't get along, giving them the tag team titles anyway for shock value and then hoping there is enough chemistry to keep things interesting while the two butt heads.

Obviously, that isn't the case here since they have already lost the titles, dropping them back to The Bar and resetting the picture to what it was before Rollins and Ambrose reformed.

Credit: WWE.com

Essentially, Rollins has accomplished nothing since beating Triple H at WrestleMania, as he has jobbed out in the main event scene before being demoted to a tag team that failed to shift the momentum away from Sheamus and Cesaro.

Since all of the bigger players on the red brand like Braun Strowman and Roman Reigns aren't coming anywhere close to Rollins, it seems he's being cornered into three potential matches for WrestleMania.

In one scenario, he and Jordan are too angry at each other for losing the titles and face off in a midcard match.

This would assuredly fall into the pre-show realm, as it couldn't possibly be a hot enough angle to take a spot on the main card from more important things like the title bouts, Ronda Rousey, Kurt Angle, John Cena and so on.

If he and Jordan stick together, they will either still be fighting The Bar in a feud that will be roughly eight months long or they will be one piece of the puzzle in a multi-team tag titles match with The Revival, The Balor Club and others.

Alternatively, if the split between he and Jordan is over quick, Rollins could end up as another face among the sea of forgotten Superstars in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal.

Sure, he would be the most noteworthy competitor, but being a big fish in a small pond because WWE doesn't prioritize you enough to give you something better than being a cog in the machine of the pre-show charity match is a far cry from what Rollins is used to.

In two of the past three years, Rollins was a major player heading into WrestleMania season. This year, it's as if he has no steam at all.

This experiment with Jordan is failing. Unless something magically upgrades it considerably, Rollins faces a massive drop from winning a world title and then fighting Triple H to being in danger of getting bumped from the WrestleMania card as part of the least important match of the night.

Perhaps at the last minute, Rollins can jockey for a shot at the Intercontinental Championship if there is another opportunity for a handful of men to fight for that title in a ladder match. But that would be a lucky break rather than something planned with any attention and care.

Rollins is popular and a two-time world champion, yet if you only started watching Raw in the past few months with no prior knowledge, you would never think he had been on a higher level than someone like SmackDown Live's Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin—talented Superstars who sometimes aren't even important enough to make an appearance.

How do you feel about Rollins and his status in the company? Do you have faith he will become a main event star soon enough, or is he going to struggle in the lower part of the card for a while longer?

Tell us your thoughts and predictions in the comments section below.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.