Parkour, Yahtzee, pole vaulting, FarmVille, wrestling … Hennigan tells Rollins to bring it
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To call John Hennigan a competitor would be a massive understatement.
He is, after all, one of the most athletic and physically flawless performers in professional wrestling. He’s a multiple time champion during a lengthy run with World Wrestling Entertainment. And he’s a fearless high flyer who was a pioneer when it came to creative ways to avoid elimination at the WWE’s Royal Rumble.
Outside of wrestling, he’s a budding actor and the man behind Out of Your Mind Fitness.
Yeah, he’s competitive. So it should come as little surprise that Hennigan’s competitive fires burn when it comes to friendly public spats with others within the world of sports entertainment.
During intermission at his recent appearance at House of Hardcore, Hennigan took a moment to address the online match with the current WWE World Heavyweight champion.
During a recent interview with PodNasty Podcast, Rollins was asked to respond to Hennigan’s claim that he would “destroy Seth Rollins at everything.”
Said Rollins:
“If I’m not mistaken, I believe John Morrison is a zero-time WWE World Heavyweight champion. Mind you, zero. As in never once did he win the big one. And I’m, what, not even three years into my WWE career and I’ve already won Money in the Bank, won the WWE title at WrestleMania, first-ever NXT champion so there’s a lot of things that I’ve already destroyed John Morrison at and if John Morrison thinks he can take me in any of those endeavors, I would love for John Morrison to step up and say something like that to my face.”
For his part, Hennigan said his comment wasn’t meant to take anything away from the WWE champ.
“I was not saying I want to compare wrestling accolades with Seth Rollins,” Hennigan said. He’s a talented guy. I just believe that I’m more talented. I’m not trying to take anything from him. He’s the WWE Heavyweight champion, that’s about as big of an accomplishment as you can achieve in professional wrestling. I was more just saying personally I could destroy him at pretty much everything: wrestling, fitness, certainly Parkour, Yahtzee, karaoke … whatever. That’s what I meant. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or take anything away from his accomplishments. I just meant in life, in general, I would destroy him,” Hennigan added with a laugh.
In fact, Hennigan’s competitive fires burn so intensely, he isn’t done there. Far from it.
“Okay, so I don’t want to brag, but people have told me from time to time that I have great hair,” he said. “Seth has long hair also. If you compared a picture of Johnny Nitro’s hair in 2006 to Seth Rollins’ hair currently, you would see they’re almost the exact same haircut. The bad ass blonde streaks are very similar, but I would have to say that that’s another example of something I destroy him at. I mean, c’mon Johnny Nitro’s hair is far superior to Seth Rollins’ hair.
“Actually If you look at him, he’s slowing becoming a now version of me. His gear is becoming more like my gear, his hair is like Johnny Nitro’s hair 2006 … I guess I understand why he’s taking this very seriously,” Hennigan said, also adding he could destroy Rollins at “a FarmVille contest, a foot race … I could pole vault higher than him …”
As for Rollins’ challenge to Hennigan to say something to his face, Hennigan, ever the competitor, said he would be happy to.
“I’d love to say it to his face,” Hennigan said. “I would say it to his face. It’s pretty easy for him to say that because he’s working for a different company than I am and I’m sure that he knows Muriel & Scott (the security at WWE) would prevent me from saying it to his face if he asked them to. (Hennigan laughs) Hiding behind security, classic Rollins.”
Hennigan coughs: “The Shield.”
Hennigan coughs again: “J&J Security.”
All joking aside, Hennigan said, he does respect his peer.
“Let me get serious for a minute about the whole thing. He is where he is because he’s talented and hardworking and he rose to the top of FCW/NXT, which is not easy,” Hennigan said. All joking aside, he works hard and he’s on top of his shit. it’s a really cool thing to see somebody do what he did.”
As for where this friendly rivalry ends, Hennigan believes it it’s over and done.
“I think this ends here” Hennigan said, before his competitive nature bubbles to the surface once more.
“Seth knows if he doesn’t shut up about me, I won’t shut up about him and he knows deep down what I’m saying is true, we’ll end up having a wrestling match or something and he’ll look like good wrestler in the ring with a great one.”
