WWE: Seth Rollins on His WWE Contract Has “Four or Five Years Left”, Randy Orton on How Joe Hendry Was Chosen for His WrestleMania 41 Opponent, Steve Austin on His Issues with WWE Unreal Series

May 7, 2025

Seth Rollins Comments on His WWE Contract Has “Four or Five Years Left”

A recent episode of the Chicago Bears’ Bears Etc. podcast featured Seth Rollins as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Rollins’ thoughts about if he feels like he can find success into his late 40’s in pro wrestling and how the schedule for WWE talent shifting has been a part of him feeling good.

“I feel really good. Our schedule has toned down drastically since 2020. Obviously, COVID shut everything down. We were still doing weekly television shows, but we stopped doing our non-televised events. Our non-televised event schedule was pretty nuts. Then we got back to it in 2021. But WWE merged with UFC over this past year. They started a new company called TKO, and TKO is really focused on making as much money as they can, which they’re a business. I get that. But one of the things that they’ve really cut back on are non-televised events. Our non-televised events used to happen every weekend before our standard Monday Night Raw or after our Friday Night Smackdown, and that would happen every week throughout the entire year. So I would wrestle like 200 matches a year sometimes, which was crazy. Wouldn’t recommend, would not recommend. I loved it as a young man. when you’re in your twenties guys, you do whatever you want, right? You’re invincible. You wake up the next day, nothing happened. As, as the years start to go on, the injuries start to pile up. It’s just.. sleeping with the wrong pillow can be a three day injury. So it’s like yeah, I’m at, I’m at my place now where I feel really good. The schedule is tightened up. I’m not falling down nearly as much as I used to.”

Rollins also gave his thoughts about how the information for aging athletes is much better today than for past generations in sports and revealed that he has four or five years left on his current contract with WWE.

“Look, the information is better now, man. I firmly believe that players of past generations in whatever sport you were in, had the information been as available as it is now, you guys could have played longer too. You know what I mean? Dan Marino could have been Tom Brady. It could have happened if the information was available. Tom has just taken advantage of every little bit of information available um, that is out there. Every data point that he can find and figure, he figured out a way to, you know, beat time back a little bit and I feel that way as well as wrestlers, you look at what we’re able to do and we’re able to do it better, longer, men and women. So I very much feel like I got about four or five years left on this current contract. I feel like I could do it, into my mid forties and we’ll see what happens, but I feel, I feel very good.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Randy Orton Comments on How Joe Hendry Was Chosen for His WrestleMania 41 Opponent

This past April’s WWE WrestleMania 41 Night 2 event in Las Vegas featured current TNA World Champion Joe Hendry being revealed as the mystery opponent for Randy Orton’s match, which was won by Orton.

Billboard held a recent interview with Orton. One of the topics discussed included Orton confirming that he had pushed for Hendry to be his opponent for WrestleMania 41 and the reasons why WWE did not want to use the spot for a surprise return or debut wrestler in the company.

“It kind of came down to, ‘OK. We need to get Orton an opponent. Who’s it gonna be?’ And there was a very short list of guys on our own roster, but we had some new guys coming in — and it was one of those things where I needed to win, but considering we knew where I was going to be going thinking about Backlash, we needed me to look good coming out of Mania. It couldn’t be one of our new guys, because when we debut a new talent into the show [we couldn’t] have him start with a loss.
So we put our heads together and it was actually my idea [for it to be] Joe Hendry. I kept pushing for it, and a couple people were unsure, but I was able to talk everybody into it. I’m really glad that they went with him. It was perfect. It was different from anything else on the card. It was a legitimate surprise, and we were able to keep it a surprise for the most part. We got that really cool, ‘Holy s–t’ moment when his music hit, and it was great. He was great. It was actually a stress-free fun Mania for me, because I didn’t have this crazy 30 minutes balls-to-the-walls match with all this high-risk s–t. I had this cool little segment with Joe, and we didn’t have to do much to have fun out there. So I was really able to enjoy the week and just soak it all up.”

Steve Austin Comments on His Issues with WWE Unreal Series

A recent episode of The Ariel Helwani Show featured WWE Hall of Famer Steve Austin as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Austin’s thoughts about his issues with having cameras in the writer’s room for WWE’s upcoming new WWE Unreal documentary series for Netflix.

“That’s where I’m a little old school on that. I’m a big magic fan, but if Harry Houdini is still around, I don’t want him to tell me how he does it, I want to figure out how he does it. If I can’t, then I’ll keep wondering and keep watching. Don’t tell me how he’s doing it, let’s see if I can figure it out myself. I know it’s not magic, it’s an illusion, but let me keep wondering about that illusion.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com