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Shocking Reason Why Big Seth Rollins Match Got Scrapped On RAW

By Monika Thapa • Published Dec 31, 2025 07:32 EST
Seth Rollins WWE

Seth Rollins once had a major match opportunity derailed by executive meddling during WWE’s transitional creative era.

According to Ibou of Self Made, Seth Rollins was scheduled for a high-profile bout in 2023, during an episode of Raw in Cleveland, where Johnny Gargano was set to challenge The Visionary while Tommaso Ciampa planned a return.

Instead, the match was scrapped, and Ciampa made his surprise return and confronted The Miz on the show.

Vince McMahon’s Scrapped Seth Rollins Big Match

During the time, Triple H led creative as head of WWE programming, but Vince McMahon retained ultimate decision-making authority. Therefore, McMahon interfered and scrapped the match entirely.

Ibou also noted that McMahon exerted heavy-handed control over numerous other storylines beyond this incident, shaping WWE’s direction despite Triple H’s oversight.

Ibou tweeted:

On major decisions. The way it worked in practice on a week to week basis is he would edit the TV rundowns that Hunter and co put together and it would typically be things like shortening a Bronson Reed vs Shinsuke Nakamura tv match, or taking Tegan Nox and Johnny Gargano off the show.

The most heavy handed Vince interference was a Cleveland RAW where Gargano was going to wrestle Seth Rollins and Ciampa was going to return. It was turned into Ciampa returning to face Miz. Vince’s presence is what delayed Bronson Reed’s push, JD McDonagh joining judgment Day and DIYs reunion.

McMahon and Levesque were on the same page on Cody, Roman, Rhea, the Judgment Day, Bloodline, Charlotte. They didn’t see eye to eye on a couple of the projects/ex Black and Golders. The creative team would essentially have to work around this when it came to the midcarders and they’d get creative with it.

Vince had some sort of surgery late in the summer and it lead to the post SummerSlam 2023 TV being untouched. This coincided with the Gable vs Gunther stuff and when the Endeavor WWE transaction closed McMahon was asked to stay away from creative fully. This would’ve been around October.