In August of 2022, Seth Rollins is on top of the world, or at least on the top of the WWE Universe. He's the proud holder of the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, main events shows all over the world whether they're televised or not, and is about to take part in a choice match at SummerSlam in Detroit, Michigan, even if his defense may take a backseat to the other world title match booked on the show.

In the first quarter of 2022, however, Rollins wasn't feeling so good.

After a promising enough end to the 2021 calendar year, Rollins went from a scheduled bout with Big E for the WWE Championship at Day 1 to a five-way bout also featuring Brock Lesnar, Kevin Owens, and Bobby Lashley, and things didn't get much better from that point on, as he landed his now-infamous “Freakin'” moniker, lost at the Elimination Chamber, and was thrust into a storyline where he just couldn't secure a match at WrestleMania 38, even if that ultimately ended in a very memorable match with a returning Cody Rhodes at the “Showcase of the Immortals.”

Discussing what went wrong at the top of 2022, Rollins explained to Jimmy Traini on the SI Media podcast that said period was the most frustrating of his professional career.

“I would say the beginning of 2022 was the most angry I've ever been. There is like two to three different instances that I'm not going to get into specifically, but essentially from the Day 1 pay-per-view to getting the match with Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania, that process was very frustrating for me. It ended in a good way, and we got into a good place, but getting there was not ideal, and I very much voiced my concerns at that point in time,” Seth Rollins said via Fightful.

“What I was told, leading into the Day 1 pay-per-view, changed drastically after Day 1 and every single week following that pay-per-view, all the way up to Elimination Chamber. There was like a six-week window where everything I was told was changed from week to week to week. When you're trying to do something creatively, and you have a vision in your head of how you see it, you're trying to piece things together to tell the best story you can. When that consistently gets changed, and the rug keeps getting pulled out from underneath you, and the goalposts keep moving, and finally, the goalposts get ripped out completely, and now you're looking at the biggest show of the year with possibly nothing on the table or possibly some bastardized version of what could be good, it leaves you very frustrated with the process. I was very frustrated with the process. Cody Rhodes coming over, us having the story at WrestleMania, having the match, to the last month, like March, I was solid. Everything leading up to that was a difficult time for me, creatively speaking.”

On paper, it's understandable that Rollins was frustrated with how things went in the first quarter of 2022, as it was frustrating to watch for his fans too. And yet, as Rollins noted later in the podcast, there's nothing much he could do about the situation except express his frustration, as he's not the one booking the shows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5uFXTkKwi0

Seth Rollins sheds light on the WWE creative process under Vince McMahon.

Despite being one of the most tenured and prolific performers of his era, even Seth Rollins isn't above the law in terms of WWE's booking decisions, especially when Vince McMahon was still holding the book.

Peeling back the curtains on what it was like to try to work his way out of a post-Day 1 funk, Rollins noted that he did feel heard by his former booker, even if his ideas weren't always incorporated.

“Everybody is listening. I've gotten to a place where my opinion is valid, and people are hearing what I have to say,” Rollins noted. “Whether or not that opinion goes into the decision-making process is a different story. I'm not privy to a lot of meetings that happen or other conversations with other talent or other executives, but I will voice my concerns to who needs to hear them. Whether or not they take that information and utilize it the way I want them to isn't up to me. It's not my sandbox, I don't make those rules. At the end of the day, I have a job to do, I go out and do it to the best of my ability, but I want to make it the best it can be, not just for me, but for the entire show, the product, everything. You do your best, at the end of the day, you have a job to do, and you make the best of it. That's part of any work environment, really.”

Is the situation different for Rollins and WWE's other 100 or so Superstars with Paul “Triple H” Levesque holding the book? It's impossible to know, but after winning the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at Night of Champions, it's safe to say the dog days are over for Rollins… at least for now.