Stone Cold doesn’t think Seth Rollins is ‘all the way over’

Some interesting quotes making the rounds from a recent episode of The Steve Austin Show, wherein the WWE Hall of Famer discusses Seth Rollins. Rollins was WWE champ for much of 2015 and is clearly someone the company views as a main event star. Still, his WrestleMania 33 match with Triple H received mixed reviews and he seems to be on the periphery of the major stories on Raw coming out of ‘Mania and the Superstar Shake-Up.

Stone Cold has some thoughts on why, and they start with his evaluation of how “over” The Architect is:

Rollins is somewhat over, not all-the-way over, not by a long shot. Now, I don't mean that in a bad way. That's just being honest.

Why isn’t he more “over”? Austin thinks it all comes down to character:

... he’s relied on his sequences and his athleticism to carry him. To take him to the next level, he'll have to get more character development.

When you say “Seth Rollins” or if you want to say “Seth Freakin' Rollins”, I still don't have a sense of what or who this guy is. And so, that rests on Seth Rollins' shoulders, as an individual, as a performer, to define or create that as well as the WWE because I still don't get a sense of what kind of personality he is.

This has been a critique of Rollins’ character for a while. Some recent explanations concerning why he’s not the “me first” scheming villain who broke up The Shield and joined The Authority have made it a little easier to root for him, but they are still questions about who exactly his character is. And as Austin points out, that keeps fans from getting behind him 100% - and getting invested in a long match like his recent war with Triple H.

The Rattlesnake sees light at the end of the tunnel, however, because he sees a lot of similarities between Seth and his old rival Bret Hart:

Bret wasn't an over-the-top guy. He was a pretty humble and a very quiet individual outside the ring, so in many regards kind of somewhat like Seth although Bret's an entirely different animal, but there's a case of a guy who's not a showy kind of guy, but very conservative, but just a highly defined gimmick, a badass gimmick, and a world class worker, so Seth needs to work on this.

Agree with this, Cagesiders? What, if anything, would you do to get Rollins “all-the-way over”?

Podcast transcription via Wrestling Inc.