Seth Rollins knows you miss The Curbstomp. He misses it too.
Rollins was a guest on the Sam Roberts wrestling podcast recently and he talked about how the move came to be banned by Vince McMahon himself, and even though Seth thinks it's 'silly' that he was forced to change finishers, he acknowledges that it's not his decision to make.
Still, he says, he misses it.
“The Curbstomp is gone, guys. It’s not my fault. Trust me. It’s not like I said, ‘Oh yes, I want a new finisher.’ No, they snatched it from me. They took it from me.
"So this is what happened, okay? After WrestleMania, I had won the title, and I flew across the country to do the Today Show. For the Today Show, they put together a package of all of Seth Rollins’ awesome maneuvers. At the time, my finish was The Curbstomp. So Vince McMahon is sitting wherever Vince McMahon sits on a Monday morning and he’s seeing me on the Today Show and I look good in a suit. I’m representing the company. I look good in a suit. And I’m wearing the title and then he sees this package of me stomping another man’s head into the ground and it being called The Curbstomp on national television. And he thought to himself, ‘well, that’s not a good representation of what I want my top guy to do,’ so he just had a meeting with some of his people, and they decided, ‘well, we don’t need it – we can figure out another finish for you’ and the rest is history.
"I get it. I hate it. I think it’s silly, but it is what it is and it’s not my company. I’m doing the best I can with it. I get it from a marketing standpoint. I totally understand it. I hate it because it was such a great finish. It was easy and could do it to everybody, but, hey, so it's my cool knee now, so let’s start liking that.”
You heard the man. Let's all get behind Seth's "Cool Knee." Let's start liking that.
Incidentally, a week after the offending video package aired on the Today Show, Rollins used his Curbstomp finisher on Neville in the match at the top of the page, but eventually he traded the move in and opted to start using The Pedigree, sticking with that finisher for almost two years. He debuted the "Cool Knee" (which has never been given a formal WWE name) back in the spring.
You can listen to the entire podcast at this link.
