Seth Rollins Recalls When Fan Attacked Him On Raw In 2021

Seth “Freakin” Rollins has commented on the wild moment on WWE Monday Night Raw when a fan attacked him during the live broadcast.

It was on November 22, 2021 when Raw was at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. After Rollins left Finn Balor laying in the ring, Rollins was attacked by a fan. While Rollins was taken down because he wasn’t expecting it, WWE officials quickly arrived to pull the fan off Rollins, who wasn’t injured during the incident.

Following the attack from the fan, WWE issued a statement saying that the 24-year-old that attacked Rollins was turned over to the New York Police Department.

During a recent interview with Ariel Helwani of BT Sport, Rollins talked about that shocking moment. Rollins said that the man had a handful of Seth’s hair, but thankfully WWE personnel pulled the man off Rollins quickly:

“It was so fast, though, that I didn’t really have any time to process it until, like, I only remember, the only thought I remember having is when he was on top of me. And kind of they were, I mean, they were already pulling him away. But he had a handful of my hair, and I was just trying to kind of punt him off me with whatever foot I had underneath it to get to, maybe my instinct was to grab his head, just to control his head and I have no jujitsu training at all.”

“So whether I did anything right or wrong is completely instinctive. But yeah, my instinct was just as soon as I knew that someone was upon me, just to control his head as best I could. Because if he couldn’t posture up, then he probably wasn’t going to get anything done. Hoping that he didn’t have any weaponry in his hands, which thankfully he did not so yeah, it just was like, it happens so fast. He was on me quickly, he is a little bowling ball of a man.”

“And I just remember thinking, ‘What is happening when he’s underneath me and then get off me.’ And then you know, ‘Who is this person?’ I gotta look at him. And then it was like, ‘Alright, be done with it.’ You know, they’ve got it under control. So let’s just move along.”

Rollins recalled his reaction when he saw this man running by a WWE crew member and how he didn’t have time to react to it.

“But yeah, man, it was so weird, because the way I was, you know, I’m leaving the ring. I just think I had had a match with Finn Balor and I had hit him with an extra Stomp. And, you know, there was a bit of heat. So they were booing and whatever. And I’m walking away. And I remember just turning to our cameraman Stu, who’s usually, he’s the guy on the aisle there and he’s falling and he follows me so when I turn he turns so you know, I turn to face and he’s got my shot with the ring in the background.”

“And there’s always people when they’ve got that shot, there’s always people running behind whether they’re setting up pyro or you know, just moving wires or whatever they’re doing, so this guy just…I didn’t even think twice that he wasn’t just someone working because he just comes running around the corner out of the darkness and then before I even have time to react, he’s by Stu and just on me, it happened like in the blink of an eye it felt like when you watch it, obviously like fancams or something, you can [be] like, ‘Oh there he is running at Seth, why doesn’t Seth see him, right?'”

It could have been a scary incident, but thankfully WWE’s personnel was quick to respond and saved Rollins from being harmed by the crazy man attacking him.

“But yeah, dude, I was just thankful that security was there. I was thankful that he wasn’t armed in any way that could have gone very badly. And then I, in the aftermath, I just felt bad for him. You know, when I kind of saw online what his situation was and he had been catfished out of some money and you know, his mental capacity wasn’t great.”

“I just felt bad, I felt bad that there wasn’t anybody in his life that could kind of help him out and so it was an unfortunate situation that I think was handled as best as it could all the way around and then honestly, coming out later with it I didn’t even think twice about it. Yeah, it [fear of it happening again] was there, was just like in some ways, like, ‘No way it’s going to happen again.’ So I had, I had the extra safety net there that I was like, [If] it happens again, somebody’s getting fired.’”

“So I felt pretty confident that having to go back out there, we weren’t going to have any repeat offenders. And so, yeah, just making light of the situation. And the cool thing about this character is like, he can really get away with anything, right? Now he can do anything you want to do. And so that’s one of those things where I can, I can poke fun at myself or poke fun at the situation. Even if it is completely dangerous and scary. It’s just this, this guy can do that.”

H/T Inside The Ropes for the transcription.