Seth Rollins Recounts Conversation With Vince McMahon About Banning ‘Curb Stomp,’ Triple H Being Hesitant To Let Rollins Use Pedigree

A detailed story from Rollins.

There was a period of Seth Rollins’ WWE run when he could not use his signature ‘Curb Stomp’ finisher because former company Chairman Vince McMahon decided to ban the move.

Rollins spoke candidly about that during his and Becky Lynch’s appearance on Complex News. He detailed the conversation with McMahon about the move being banned. The main talking point from McMahon was that children could perform the move too easily. Rollins believes someone got in Vince’s ear about that specific probability.

The idea for Rollins to use the frog splash as a finisher was suggested, but Rollins said he was not doing that every time he wrestled. He remembers asking Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque to use the Pedigree and said Levesque was hesitant about it.

“Ah, it sucked. I was given no heads up and it was right after I won the World Title for the first time, with that move that I’d been using for years as a finish, and that had built up a ton of equity, and then all of a sudden, ‘I mean, so I don’t think we’re gonna use that anymore.’ ‘What the –’ ‘You know, it’s too dangerous. I know you’re not dangerous. Very safe.’ If anybody can tell, it’s my Vince McMahon impression. ‘Kids can do it too easily at home.’ I don’t know what happened. Somebody got in his ear and said it was a problem. I’m like, ‘Dude, it’s wrestling. If any kid imitates any wrestling move, they’re gonna hurt –’ your armbar,” Rollins said to Becky Lynch. “They just snap a shoulder off. It’s like, c’mon. A Rock Bottom, any of it, all of it, anything. It’s silly. A punch to the nose, you know what I mean? If they know how to do it, of course it’s gonna hurt somebody. So I thought it was so silly but whatever, you know? It was on a whim. Literally, I did the move Sunday, won the title, beat Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar and then fly to New York from San Francisco, do the TODAY Show, pet a couple dogs, say hi to Katie (Couric) and Matt (Lauer), fly back to Santa Clara to do Raw and I go and Vince is like, ‘Come in. I gotta talk to you about something.’ He’s like, ‘Ah, we’re not gonna do that anymore.’ I was like, ‘Well, what do you want me to do?’ And then they wanted me to do a frog splash and I’m like, ‘Absolutely not. I’m not doing that every single night.’ I like my knees and I like my elbows. It’s not happening. So then it was the process of trying to figure out a new finisher, and thankfully, I was in the mentorship of Triple H at the time in The Authority and no one else had ever used the Pedigree as a finishing move and he was not an active performer at the time so I was like, ‘I think this would be the perfect –’ he was hesitant about it too. He didn’t like it. I think he really hates it now because people kick out of it sometimes,” Rollins laughed. “Yeah, fully, fully diluted it but I think it worked for the time being. It got the desired reaction and it already had the 20 years of equity to it which is the hardest thing to do with a finisher because anything can be a finisher. You just have to beat people with it for a while.”

Rollins is sidelined after undergoing shoulder surgery in the fall of 2025. An update on Rollins can be read here.

If the quote in this article is used, please credit Complex News with an H/T to Fightful for the transcription.