Jason Jordan and Seth Rollins are the WWE Raw Tag Team Champions, and while the initial reactions to their partnership was overwhelmingly negative, the dynamics between these two characters have created one of the show’s more interesting long-term storylines.
Ever since reuniting over the summer, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose formed one of the best tag teams in all of professional wrestling, and they managed to consistently have sensational matches with their biggest rivals for the WWE Raw Tag Team Titles, the Bar, despite facing them just about every week.
Unfortunately, Ambrose suffered a severe triceps injury that will keep him out of action for several months, leaving Rollins in a bit of a bind. The WWE decided to move forward with Rollins as a tag team wrestler, but they decided to give him a new partner in Jason Jordan.
The long-term game with Jordan is likely the same – turn him heel. Nobody ever bought into Jordan as a babyface singles star after it was announced that he is Kurt Angle’s son, and his sense of entitlement has grown with each passing week. The fans clearly do not like Jordan, even if they do respect his prowess inside the ring.
Lately, Jordan has been acting as if he’s replaced Ambrose in the Shield, which hasn’t exactly endeared him to either Rollins or Roman Reigns. The two see him as an annoyance, either covering their faces or trying to set Jordan straight whenever he tries for a fist-bump or tries to talk up his standing.
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But Jordan has been slightly more sinister than just a pest hovering around Regins and Rollins; he could help break apart the Shield for a second time.
That sounds like a bit of a stretch, but it’s a possibility worth exploring. The smart money is on Ambrose returning and turning heel, giving the fans a Jon Moxley-lite character that they have been hoping for.
We’ve haven’t seen Ambrose as a heel in a long time, and while he’s undoubtedly one of the WWE’s most effective babyfaces, there’s just something magical about a heel Ambrose, especially if he feuds with a babyface Rollins.
However, what if the darkness in Rollins is just too much to hold down? It’s impossible to forget just how diabolical the man was when he worked with The Authority. His “Curb Stomp” finisher was the most heinous finisher in WWE, and he used it to try to murder Edge on television. Rollins took every shortcut in the book, he antagonized himself against everyone on the roster, and he made it clear that he would stop at nothing to win, thanking nobody and making no apologies in the process.
Though Rollins teamed up with Ambrose and earned the latter’s forgiveness, does that type of pure evil truly die out? There’s darkness that still lives in Rollins to this day, and I wonder if Jason Jordan is about to let it out.
Last night on Raw, Rollins had a singles match with Finn Balor, and both Jordan and the full Balor Club were at ringside.
At the end of the match, Jordan distracted Balor, and that put him in the right position for Rollins to go in for the kill.
He didn’t miss a beat, smashing Balor’s skull into the canvas with a brutal “Curb Stomp” (now known as the “Blackout”, per Corey Graves’s call) to pick up the victory.
What Rollins did immediately after winning, though, spoke volumes. At first, he looked almost in disbelief, as if he couldn’t comprehend the fact that he brought back his old move in a moment of madness. But then, he seemed to give in the madness with a crazed look in his eye, and he stuck out his tongue before screaming and celebrating with Jordan, escaping the ring with this Raw Tag Team Title.
For a moment, we saw the same character traits and facial expressions of Heel Seth Rollins, and I find it hard to believe that it’s a coincidence that this happened during the same time he’s been teaming up with Jordan.
Earlier in the night, we saw Jordan interrupt a match between Titus Worldwide and the Bar for no reason, and his intervention costed the Bar the match. Rollins was visibly upset with Jordan for his rather heel-ish actions, yet by the end of the night, it seemed kind of like Rollins was willing to embrace Jordan’s underhanded tactics.
I’m not willing to predict a Rollins heel turn, and I’d prefer to see him continue to be a babyface. He’s an incredible wrestler, everyone wants to cheer for him, and he’s one of a handful of top-level, believable babyfaces in WWE.
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The point is that Rollins still has a piece of villainy buried inside of him, and the madness is never far away from bubbling up to the surface and manifesting itself in the form of a debilitating “Blackout” to finish a match.