Sheamus recently spoke with the UK Mirror about his career. Here are the highlights.
We spoke with Cesaro last month about your Best of Seven Series and discussed how it’s not often that two WWE stars get to be involved in this type of programme. Do you enjoy wrestling him?
Oh I love it man. I have to say the only other person who was as physical as him or who I’ve enjoyed wrestling as much as him was Daniel Bryan, and we wrestled a ton of times, on TV and off TV. I love wrestling him. The competition between me and him is great. It’s been an interesting couple of weeks since Mick Foley put us together as a team. We’ve had a lot of fun. Somebody asked me the other day ‘do you want to be Universal Champion or WWE World Champion?’ and I basically said ‘I’ve done all that sort of stuff, I’ve won the titles many times, a Rumble and stuff like that, but for me at this stage it’s more about exploring my character and having fun’. I feel like with the League of Nations, we didn’t have that range or that opportunity to delve into our characters or the interplay between us all, it was mainly just having matches, with no character stuff. Already there has been a ton of that with this. I’m really enjoying it and having fun – we’re bouncing off each other.
You have held most of the titles on offer in WWE and are a four-time world champion. Looking back on your last WWE World Heavyweight Championship reign, which was obviously short-lived at 22 days, how did you think it panned out? Were you put in a fairly tough situation because it was a storyline that was helping to get Roman Reigns from one place to another, in terms of his feud with Triple H?
Yeah, you know, it’s not like anything else, obviously Seth Rollins got hurt so things changed, as they do in this business because people get hurt all the time. That’s why we say ‘don’t try this at home’. I really thought I was finding myself, I really thought I was finding how to get into this character. I had a lot of heat, you know? I had a serious amount of heat. It was real. There are a lot of heels out there who want to get a babyface reaction, but I was determined when i came back never to get a babyface reaction. I wanted to be a heel man, I wanted to be that guy that people hated. It ‘s funny, I look at the thing with Roman and it was great for me, because when we went to Philly [Raw took place in Philadelphia on December 14, 2015, the night after Sheamus retained the title against Reigns at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs], almost a year before at the Rumble [also at the Wells Fargo Center] they booed him out of the building. But when we were having a match, they were chanting ‘Roman Reigns’. So at that moment I knew I was doing my job. I had a job to do and that was to get Roman back where he needed to be you know. Do I feel like I could have gone a lot longer with this? Absolutely, I kind of felt like my legs were cut from underneath me. To be honest. I felt like I was really starting to get some steam, to get some momentum. But ultimately my job was to get Roman back to where he needed to be with the fans behind him and as a heel I was able to do that. Which was for me I guess a special moment.
Had you ever been in the ring with Vince McMahon during a match before? His interference, which led to him taking a Superman Punch from Reigns, took fans back to the evil Vince McMahon character of the Attitude Era.
I don’t think I ever had. After the Elimination Chamber in 2010, I was supposed to wrestle John Cena in a one-on-one match. I lost the title in the chamber match [which Cena won] and then Vince McMahon brought out Batista, who beat John. Vince McMahon was supposed to referee that match. But what happened was I got a concussion, so they basically changed the whole show. So I would have been in there with him in 2010, but it’s all swings and roundabouts and they always come back, so we ended up doing the match with Roman together, which was a lot of fun. There were a lot of bits and bobs – I can’t think of the word I’m looking for here – a lot of aspects to it and fun parts, so it was definitely a lot of fun. Those are the moments you look for when you want to be a WWE wrestler, getting the crowd reacting to certain things you do in a match, the way they react and chant, and if you’re the bad guy and they are cheering the good guy, your job is done. You’re kosher.
