Stone Cold Steve Austin had as good of a gimmick as any wrestler in WWE history and is an all-time fan favorite. Austin knows what it takes to get over with the WWE universe, and he took some time on his podcast, The Steve Austin Show, recently to explain that Seth Rollins hasn’t gotten completely over with the crowd yet because his character doesn’t have enough personality.
“Rollins is somewhat over, not all-the-way over, not by a long shot. Now, I don’t mean that in a bad way. That’s just being honest,” Austin said. “He [has] relied on his sequences and his athleticism to carry him. To take him to the next level, he’ll have to get more character development.
“When you say ‘Seth Rollins’ or if you want to say ‘Seth Freakin’ Rollins’, I still don’t have a sense of what or who this guy is. And so, that rests on Seth Rollins’ shoulders, as an individual, as a performer, to define or create that as well as the WWE because I still don’t get a sense of what kind of personality he is.”
Austin wants to see Rollins really define his character and give fans something to latch onto. Austin used Bret Hart as an example of someone Rollins can look to as a person who wasn’t naturally inclined to be great on the mic, but forged a gimmick that fans loved despite that.
“Bret wasn’t an over-the-top guy,” Austin said. “He was a pretty humble and a very quiet individual outside the ring, so in many regards kind of somewhat like Seth although Bret’s an entirely different animal, but there’s a case of a guy who’s not a showy kind of guy, but very conservative, but just a highly defined gimmick, a badass gimmick, and a world class worker, so Seth needs to work on this.”
Austin’s points are solid, and ones that Rollins should take to heart. He’s as talented in the ring as anyone in the company, but his character right now lacks much in the way of substance. Whether that’s on Rollins or creative or a combination of both, it’s something that Austin thinks he’ll need to work on before he can be at the very top of the WWE ladder.
(h/t Wrestling Inc. for the transcription)
