Seth Rollins is one of WWE’s top stars, and over the last few years he’s accomplished a lot while competing for the world’s largest wrestling company.
But there was once a time when Rollins was considering signing with TNA prior to joining WWE.
The 2019 Royal Rumble winner recently appeared on E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness and explained that the company made him an offer for a three year deal.
“Terry (Taylor) calls me and offered me a three-year deal to come to TNA for substantially more money and far less dates than what I was having to do in ROH and a much easier style. I was like, ‘Oh, this sounds fantastic.’ Dixie Carter is calling me and is like, ‘You know Tyler, we want to have you, we’re looking to revamp the whole division and the whole company and we want to make you the face of TNA.’ I’m like, ‘This might be okay. I have friends there and they are on TV.’ I get this contract from TNA and I basically agree to it verbally on the phone with Terry Taylor.”
According to Rollins, he sent the contract to Jim Cornette, who didn’t have anything good to say about TNA, and Cornette made some changes to the contract.
Rollins went on to say that he had been calling John Laurinaitis about possibly working with WWE, but he hadn’t received a response.
Before signing with TNA, he decided to give Johnny Ace one last call, and the rest is history.
“I called Johnny Ace one last time, he doesn’t answer. I leave him a voicemail saying, ‘I got this contract from TNA. If I don’t hear from you, I’m going there.’ Ten minutes later, he calls me back. He makes up all these excuses and is like, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow around lunchtime.’ Cornette gets the contract back to me and changed some things in it. I send the new contract to TNA so they can re-write it and I’m waiting on this call from John Lauranitis. He finally calls me back, meanwhile, Terry is trying to force me to sign this contract. Lauranitis says, ‘We don’t give out jobs, we give out opportunities. We have this opportunity in Florida, it’s a developmental deal. Nothing is guaranteed.’ Immediately, I’m like, ‘I’m in.'”
In the end it looks like Seth made the right decision, as he’s currently scheduled to challenge Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship in what will surely be one of the biggest matches on the WrestleMania card this year.
H/T Fightful
