EXCLUSIVE: Seth Rollins explains all about how WWE had Rey Mysterio’s eye pop out – ‘99.9% of the match’ didn’t involve Vince McMahon
Wrestling has gotten creative during 2020 where the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that no fans could attend shows.
For all the cinematic matches we've witnessed, it might be fair to say that nothing pushed the boundaries like Seth Rollins extracting Rey Mysterio's eye on live TV.
That's exactly what happened at WWE's last pay-per-view Extreme Rules and now, it seems like Rollins is on course with Mysterio's son, Dominik.
By all accounts, Dominik is a rookie in WWE but his showing in the segments with Rollins have been stellar thus far.
But, how did we get here? talkSPORT spoke to Rollins this week about the storyline and he opened up about how WWE managed to pull off the eye-for-an-eye match, the reaction to it and debunked a couple of reports on it.
So first of all, how would Rollins possibly prepare for such a unique, never-been-done-before match?
"Obviously it's a match that has never been done before. I think people maybe tuned in out of morbid curiosity to see what would happen.
"I certainly did not expect to be in that match at any point leading up to it. When the stipulation was given to me, I was definitely caught off guard and didn't even really know how to prepare for it.
"I've watched back a fair amount of Rey Mysterio matches over my lifetime and going into the match I tried to study First Blood matches because that was kind of the only thing and the only match type that I could understand was akin to an eye-for-an-eye match.
"I went back and studied some of those matches and saw how they were and how they went and stuff like that, so going into the eye-for-an-eye match, I knew it was going to be a mix of us trying to gauge each other's eyes out and getting one another in a position to do such a thing which would involve some actual professional wrestling."
The match itself was widely well received as Rollins and Mysterio clearly had some phenomenal chemistry. But the finish is what got everyone talking.
So how did Rollins feel about it? Did the finish handicap the match?
"At the end of the day, was it ideal? No. Did it catch people's attention? Sure. It ended up on TMZ.
"I think we sort of accomplished what wrestling wants to accomplish and that is we told a very interesting story and there was some outside interest in the finish even though it was very weird - and that's OK.
"I think pro wrestling can just be one-on-one, hold-for-hold wrestling or it can be storytelling like any other form of television and I think that when you start to look at it too critically, especially stuff like that... I dunno, to me it reeks of 2020 trying to pick everything apart.
"If you like the Lake of Reincarnation in AEW but you hate the eye-for-an-eye match... you know what I mean? Then where are we really at here?"
Reports surfaced after the match suggesting that WWE chairman Vince McMahon had played a heavy role in the layout of the match and had final decision on the finish.
Rollins confirms there was multiple finishes, but says Vince played next to no part in the actual match.
"A lot of the time, Vince says 'here's what we want to do' and he gives us the ball and let us figure out how to take it to the end zone.
"Again, when the idea was presented to me, I was aghast. I thought it was ridiculous and a bit of a joke. But the more I thought about it and the more it came to pass I was like 'OK, this will be different.' And it can be good and we don't have to scoff at everything right out of the gate - I don't want to be that person.
"Vince wasn't as hands on as people think that he was. If I'm going to break the fourth wall here, so to speak, it was really 99.9% myself, Rey Mysterio and Jamie Noble.
"At the end of the day, you had Vince who made the final call on what the last shot was going to look like and that's pretty much it.
"There was a couple of versions of what that final shot would look like and we went with the one that we thought made the most sense. It was a joint-decision on everybody's behalf.
"So at the end of the day, it was a product that I was pretty proud of. It was the first time I'd been able to be out there in the ring with a legend like Rey Mysterio for an extended period of time and, like I said, we had a really good wrestling match with a provocative finish and I was not upset about it one bit."
The saga will continue this Monday with Rollins making it clear to talkSPORT that Dominik is his focus right now.