Finn Balor discusses his feud with WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins ahead of WWE Money in the Bank.
Balor will challenge Rollins for the title at the premium live event on July 1. The bout has seven years of history tied into it, as Balor beat Rollins to win the Universal Championship at WWE SummerSlam 2016, but he had to relinquish the title due to an injury the next day. Balor is aiming to get payback by taking Rollins’ championship on Saturday.
Speaking with Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick on WWE After The Bell, Balor was asked about the rivalry, and the way fans drowned him out by singing Rollins’ theme song on the June 12 episode of WWE RAW came up in the conversation.
“I felt disrespected,” Balor said. “Obviously, the fans are there, they pay their money to have their voice heard, and they’re entitled to that. But for me personally, after what I’ve gone through and lost over the last seven years at the hands of Seth Rollins, personally, I felt disrespected because I’d waited seven years to tell people and tell Seth, most importantly, how I felt.
“For his supporters to just drown out what I had pent up in me for seven years was disrespectful. That disrespect has now been turned into anger that I need to relieve by defeating Seth Rollins, not only for the World Heavyweight Championship, but for vengeance over what he took from me.”
When asked to describe why now is his time, Balor responded by detailing how he has waited seven years for the right time to seek vengeance on Rollins, and he dove into the reasoning behind the bad blood.
“A lot of people think that the issues between me and Seth lie in the fact that I got injured in the ring,” Balor said. “I addressed this on Raw, that injuries happen. They’re part of the business. That doesn’t really bother me. I can injure myself, I can injure someone else, someone can injure me. Accidents happen, we move past that. The issues that I have with Seth come back to the very next night on RAW after I got hurt. Not when I got hurt, not how I got hurt, not why I got hurt, but the next night after I got hurt.
” I walk out on RAW after being champion for 22 hours, 16 years of work down the drain, to relinquish the championship to Mick Foley and Stephanie McMahon. As I’m at my lowest point, Seth Rollins’ music hits. He walks out on-stage, and what does he do? He laughs in my face. He laughs. Laughs out of spite, out of jealousy, out of envy. When I’m at my lowest point, he rubs salt in the wound. That is something that I can’t forget. That is something that I won’t let go of, and that is something that I need to extract vengeance for. I’ve waited seven years for the timing to be perfect. Because now there is another new title, and now Seth is the champion, and now I can take from Seth what he took from me.”
In the same interview, Balor described how his heel run has reinvigorated him. Click here to see what he had to say.
WrestleZone will have coverage of WWE Money in the Bank as it airs on July 1.
The full interview is available here:
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