After listening to Drew McIntyre deliver an impassioned speech about the pain he felt winning the WWE Championship at the Performance Center in 2020 without the exultation of fans cheering him on to victory against the “Beast Incarnate,” Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins marched down to the ring for his tune-up match against JD McDonagh ahead of Crown Jewel.

Would Rollins secure the win over the “Irish Ace?” Yes, frankly, it's not even a Paul Heyman-esque spoiler to call a win for the “Visionary” ahead of his WWE World Heavyweight Championship match at Crown Jewel, but what was newsworthy was the promo he cut beforehand, and not just because he referenced Jack Perry's infamous “cry me a river” line from All In Zero Hour multiple times for good measure.

“Greenville, I'm feeling like getting a little loose out here tonight! So I have graciously agreed to beat the bejesus out of the Judgment Day's little bag boy, JD McDonagh, right here tonight. And I will do that in preparation for this Saturday night, Crown Jewel, Drew McIntyre versus Seth Rollins for the World Championship. And I am a fan of Drew McIntyre, so I'm going to say this as respectfully as I can, after hearing what Drew had to say just a few minutes ago: Boo-freakin'-hoo,” Seth Rollins told the WWE Universe as the crowd visibly gasped.

“Boohoo, cry me a river, you big Scottish baby. No, you want to flash back to 2020, right? All of us were suffering in some way, alright? All of us were fighting our battles in some way, alright? There were people out there who had it a lot worse out there than you did, okay?  They didn't know when they were going to get their next paycheck; they didn't know where they were going to get their next batch of groceries. They didn't know when they were going to see their loved one again; some of them never got to. So, excuse me for not feeling sorry for you because you didn't get to win the WWE Championship the way you dreamt it. And you want to go blame everything after that on The Bloodline? All of your failures, all your shortcomings, well, I say again, cry me a river, get in line.

“Get in line with guys like Sami Zayn, get in line with guys like, I don't like him, Cody Rhodes; you don't hear those guys asking for any pity, do you, Mr. McIntyre? But I will tell you this, Drew, you were a h*ll of a champion, and this Saturday at Crown Jewel, if you can take this title from me, if you can pry it from my waist, I will be the first man there to shake your hand and call you champ just like I did in 2020. But I ain't the same guy you beat back then, man; the ‘Messiah' is long gone, I am no longer the ‘Architect.' There is a reason why these people sing my song!”

Dang, so looking past the CM Punk references – Rollins notoriously doesn't like Punk, so maybe he's just winking at fans at this point – Rollins really does make a good point, as trying to play up the “woe is me” of McIntyre's championship reign is in rather poor taste, considering the real world struggles the entire world had to deal with over multiple years. If that's the angle Rollins wants to take things in, it's hard to see a world where fans don't side with Rollins on this one, as the “Scottish Warrior's” thought process is more Thanos than Erik Killmonger in terms of relatability.

Seth Rollins comments on the duality of the human experience.

Stopping by Mythical Kitchen's Last Meals to discuss his forthcoming appearances at Crown Jewel and in the new Captain America movie, Seth Rollins was asked about morality in both professional wrestling and entertainment as a whole and how, at this point, fans aren't looking for black and white, good and evil in their storytelling.

“Life is not black and white, and so good and evil aren’t always so black and white,” Seth Rollins said via Sports Illustrated. “There’s a lot of gray area. The other thing is that it always changes. The same thing goes with wrestling, right? So to figure out how that applies to a large crowd, what they want or what they want to cheer, the difference between a good guy and a bad buy – a heel and a babyface – I think figuring that out and being able to put it into practice teaches you a lot about people.”

On paper, Rollins versus McIntyre is more or less a babyface versus babyface title match, with the latter probably coded as a heel but the sort of heel who is selfish versus selfless, as opposed to a pure evil villain who wants nothing but to cause misfortune like, say, Vince McMahon during his Mr. McMahon era. That sort of moral ambiguity may not make for the cleanest storytelling, as it certainly wouldn't work for Cody Rhodes, but it does make things a bit harder to predict, which is a nice change of pace from Roman Reigns' unquestioned dominance for 11 months out of the year.