FOCUS YOUR FEUD: Colohue evaluates the Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler dynamic, the history and the highs and lows so far

The one constant in all of WWE programming is that there will always be feuds. Sometimes over titles, sometimes over prestige and sometimes over coffee. Here, we celebrate the highs and lows of WWE feudage and, hopefully, will only ever focus on a feud once.

I’m Tom Colohue and this is Focus Your Feud.

Follow Tom Colohue at @Colohue for updates.

Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler

On the surface this looks like a brief feud to get Dolph Ziggler some of his long lost heat back and continue to build Seth Rollins as the Best Bout Machine that he is by feeding him talented performers with which he can have tremendous matches. However, if you look a little deeper, Dolph Ziggler might be Seth Rollins’ perfect opponent since the beginning of Seth’s big break as the Undisputed Future.

That’s turned out to be fairly accurate, hasn’t it?

When The Shield first debuted, Dolph Ziggler was just reaching top star billing, to the point that if The Shield hadn’t debuted, Ziggler might well have taken Rollins’ push. Both are smaller built high fliers who can sell incredibly, talk smoothly and have that slimy heel nature that just makes them so delightful to watch get beat up.

His world championship runs in the past and finally free from injury, Ziggler was in a good position on the card. He was putting on good matches with all and sundry, was a reliable winner and was very popular with the crowd. Smartly, WWE was using him primarily for hot tags in multi man tag matches – a blueprint that they still follow today as recently as the weeks after Wrestlemania with Braun Strowman.

When it came to Seth Rollins though, that feud was something special.

It started with a simple choice. Dolph Ziggler, a champion of the people, made the decision to stand with John Cena against the evil of Team Authority at the 2014 Survivor Series. At this point The Shield had already been in WWE for two months and, while Ziggler and Rollins had crossed paths before, this was the first time that they had really come nose to nose.

The story was supposed to be about Cena but, seemingly sensing the way the wind was blowing, the match was built up with Cena largely as a mouthpiece. Meanwhile Seth Rollins, the entitled, whiny, corporate stooge was placed against the bullied, physically overmatched and constant underdog Dolph Ziggler. It was the role of a lifetime.

Rollins and Ziggler, about three and a half years ago, would engage in a brief but memorable feud over the Intercontinental title, well before Rollins ever actually won it. The title would eventually be won by Luke Harper, with Authority intervention, to cap a ride to the bottom that saw Dolph Ziggler briefly become one of the biggest baby faces in the wrestling world.

This was the absolute height of Ziggler. He didn’t just rise, he rose to the very top. A feud with Luke Harper never really materialised, instead it was all about Ziggler and Rollins, a matter that was almost perfectly reinforced at Survivor Series the same month.

The only problem of course was that WWE did what WWE always does. Triple H decided he had to get involved personally and, even more monumentally in the terms of historical wrestling misfires, Sting would debut and entirely consume Ziggler’s thunder.

Dolph Ziggler’s heroics; fighting from three to one down to come back and actually win the match, are often forgotten due to the involvement of Sting and this would be the beginning of the end for Dolph Ziggler’s time in the main event.

Things got messy after that. There was a firing, a re-hiring and a firing again. The part timers were back, with Triple H and Sting reliably taking up considerable TV time without doing much to actually further their feud. Bray Wyatt was spending a long time talking to an Undertaker that seemed to have no interest in appearing in person. Along the way there was a Dolph Ziggler that was largely forgotten. Daniel Bryan would return, however briefly and, of course, Roman Reigns won the Royal Rumble.

To this day it’s still a popular opinion amongst fans that the Royal Rumble that year was turned on by the crowd as soon as Daniel Bryan went out and everybody else in the match, particularly Roman Reigns, was soundly booed from then on. The one brief exception would be Dolph Ziggler. He was in the match for a very short time but for one glorious moment, the fans had hope. To this day I still believe that that Royal Rumble would have been remembered much more fondly had Ziggler taken the win and Wrestlemania played out exactly the same.

Rollins would go on to become WWE champion. Meanwhile, Ziggler would go on to do not very much for a considerable length of time until he reached the sharp lows of last year on Smackdown Live.

Now, however, Ziggler is back to his best. You know who’s just reached his absolute peak at the same time? One Seth Rollins.

When Dolph Ziggler answered the open challenge for Seth Rollins’ Intercontinental title, magic was at the tip of their fingers. Like Rollins vs Balor beforehand we had two men in the ring who were more than capable of one day putting together an unmissable world beating bout. Throw Balor in there too in the near future and I’m basically already drooling.

Later, to keep the feud fresh, we’d see Roman Reigns involved to try and equalise Drew McIntyre but at best McIntyre was a distraction that people didn’t want to be distracted by. McIntyre was hardly involved in the title match, interfering in the barest sense as a means to protect Seth Rollins.

I’ve mentioned before that the best feuds have history. Even better when you revisit a feud years later to find both men on opposite sides. When Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels first met in the first ever WWE ladder match, Bret was the face and Shawn the heel. At Wrestlemania 12 they were both the face. By Survivor Series the following year it was Michaels who was the face to Hart’s heel. This is not so different at all.

May the magic never cease. Iron Man match ahoy. WWE clearly know they have something special on their hands.

NOW CHECK OUT THE PREVIOUS COLUMN: FOCUS YOUR FEUD: Colohue evaluates the Bayley vs. Sasha Banks dynamic, the history and the highs and lows so far