Back in the ’80s and ’90s, pro wrestling was teeming with big, freaky characters wearing even bigger, freakier ensembles: Think Ric Flair in his WOOOOO!-inducing furs; Macho Man Randy Savage’s floor-grazing fringe and neon-sequin cowboy hats; Bret Hart’s searing pink singlets and matching RoboCop wraparounds. At some point in the 2000s, though, the sport began to trend—from a sartorial standpoint, anyway—a little self-serious. A lot of plain dark ring gear and cool-guy leather jackets. More Oppenheimer, less Barbie.
For a long time, WWE superstar Seth Rollins fell in line with that grimmer, starker status quo. “A lot of black T-shirts and black jeans,” the 37-year-old says. But in 2021, after returning to TV from a stint on paternity leave, Rollins decided his onscreen persona needed a major shakeup. He officially changed his ring name to Seth “Freakin” Rollins, affected a Joker-esque cackle, and, with the aid of his stylist Troi Anthoni, began dressing more and more unhinged. His fashion evolution began slowly—a tie-dye suit here, a flame-covered blazer there—but then quickly took on a wildly audacious, wholly unrestrained life of its own. Long before Cillian Murphy sported the look, there was Rollins strutting to the ring in sensual sheer blouses. At both April’s WrestleMania and this month’s SummerSlam, Rollins rolled up in monstrous puffy-sleeve marvels worthy of Haute Couture Week. And fittingly enough, given his character’s sometimes troll-like persona, he was also one of the earliest adopters of MSCHF’s divisive Big Red Boots, going viral after brawling in them on WWE Raw in February.
Notably, Rollins’s OTT reign as the Drip God—as he’s rightfully taken to calling himself on occasion—has coincided with arguably the hottest streak of his career: earning Sports Illustrated’s Wrestler of the Year honors in 2022, capturing the newly minted World Heavyweight Championship in May, and causing an absolute frenzy every time he steps into the arena to his electric, endlessly beltable entrance music.
Fresh off delivering a nasty Superkick in a pair of MSCHF x Crocs boots on last week’s Raw, Rollins hopped on Zoom with GQ to talk about his ascendance as wrestling’s new menswear king.
Seth Rollins: Well, I had just come off paternity leave, and the character I’d been portraying before I had my child—this kind of cult-leader-esque, religious-zealot-type person—that guy was gone. I needed a new angle, something that was going to be more approachable. I looked around and we were in the ThunderDome [WWE’s bio-secure bubble during the pandemic] and there were no fans. Everything was kind of drab and quiet and soft, and I just wanted to have fun. I wanted to do something different and shake it up.
It’s very much a throwback to the era that I grew up watching wrestling, which is the late ’80s. You’ve got your Macho Mans and your Ric Flairs and guys like that who are loud and brash—or even your Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels. Their costumes were bigger and louder and crazier, and I just didn’t see that going on anymore. So [my new] character, it started with some suits and sort of just snowballed from there. The end game was always to get to where we’re at now. But I wanted to get there slow, and luckily my stylist was on board with that, so it’s been a fun transformation.
My wife, Becky Lynch, was using Troi as a stylist and he wanted to work with me. I figured, why not? If you’re going to do something new, you might as well go all the way. I’d never had any help previously—to be fair, I didn’t need it just wearing black jeans and black T-shirts. But now I needed help sourcing materials. I had no idea where to start, where to look, and so I enlisted the help of Troi. And really it was just the suits at first—that was my initial directive. And then we talked about going bigger.
Honestly, the main inspiration for the style wasn’t wrestling related. I looked at Hollywood. I looked at rock stars and movie stars and red carpet looks, and I said, “That’s eventually what I want to get to.” Machine Gun Kelly was actually the first one that jumped off the page—not because I loved his style so much, but because it was so ridiculous. It was so hateable, it was so obnoxious. He just looked absurd, but he owned it. Machine Gun Kelly’s got a lot of confidence. He’s got a lot of presence, obviously. And so I was like, I think there’s something there. Nobody in the male demographic [of WWE] is touching on this. Let’s see what happens as we evolve.
Gosh. The one that really I think started it, even though it was still all black, was an all-leather suit: It was a leather tie, a leather shirt, a leather jacket, leather pants, all of it. That felt different for me, and I remember wearing it and feeling comfortable and thinking, Okay, well, let’s see what happens if we start popping some color in here.
And then as the personality of the character grew—and you’ve got the obnoxious laugh and the bigger, less subdued promos—it made sense to have louder colors and patterns and all that stuff. So we started bringing in different options for suits and seeing what I felt comfortable with until it ballooned.
Funnily enough, it was the other way around. At some point, I became the one that was asking. I was like, “All right, let’s go crazy.” And Troi was always the one to pull me back a little bit: “Let’s tame it down. We’ll save that for later. We’ll get there. We’ll get there.” At some point, and I don’t know what the turning point was, but I dove in headfirst and he was the one that was kind of lifeguarding me in the fashion sense, so to speak.
It just screams opulence, right? That was Troi’s idea—I don’t know what possessed him. The giant WrestleMania gown, I guess you would call it, was on another level. It was the first time I wore those big shoulders, and he fell in love with a look, and no one else was rocking it. It just felt like the right thing to kind of keep doing.
I haven’t asked for it—he just finds new ways to incorporate it into different outfits. Most recently at SummerSlam, we had the multicolored one with the big puffy shoulders. And then like you mentioned, at Night of Champions we did the cheetah print and the kind of shorter coat. It just reminds me of the bigness of the moment. It’s eyeroll-y and eye-catching all at the same time.
Oh, man, I felt like a star, baby. I felt some type of way in that thing. I mean, that was wild. When Troi showed me it…. He kind of keeps it a secret until the last second. So, he finally showed it to me like the week of [WrestleMania]—he sent a video of it and I was just like, “Oh, my God, you have outdone yourself, my friend. We have reached the mountaintop.”
I just felt fantastic in it. Putting it on and wearing it out there…I mean, it was something. There were a lot of layers to that thing.
The first time I’d even heard about the Big Red Boots was the day I wore them. Troi shows up at my hotel in Brooklyn and pulls out this giant bag. And I’m wondering, What could this be? Does he have a new jacket for me? What’s going on? Then he pulls out these Mario-looking red boots and I’m going, “What? How? Can I walk? What is the functionality? What is this?”
He was like, “Nah, dog. These are so hot right now. These are the It thing. They’re the shoe of the moment. You got to wear them tonight.” So I’m like, “All right, I’ll put them on. I mean, whatever.” And, as you know, that thing took off like wildfire.
The brand got a lot of traction off me wearing those the first time, so they were kind enough to send me some of the backwards shoes and then the Crocs boots early. I think, like you said, it’s just a beautiful synergy [with MSCHF] because our mission statements are very aligned: We’re both trying to steal the show.
Shockingly, they’re quite comfortable and functional. They feel like regular shoes when they’re on, but they give you an added bit of stability because there’s so much extra on the sides. There’s no wobble. I mean, if you were to miss a step, it’s game over. The risk-reward ratio is high. But for me, as a seasoned athlete, once I got moving around in them a little bit, I felt pretty good.
And I like them, man. They give me kind of a bigger target space. It’s like shooting buckshot. I get a wider net to cast, so to speak, when I’m aiming for somebody’s head.
I think now that it’s become my thing, it becomes hard to start dipping your toe in that water. People might start looking at you like you’re a copycat, and that’s the last thing you want. So I’m not sure if there’s been any influence.
I do know, at least to my face, I get a lot of compliments. Who knows what everybody’s saying behind my back, but people seem to dig it. My favorite is when I show up in a slightly more subdued outfit, and some of the guys will be like, “Dang, dog! I’d rock that in real life, man! That’s a nice fit right there.” They don’t expect it. They expect me to roll up in a baked potato suit or something like that.
But I have had a few people reach out just about Troi in general. They want to know, “Where do you find this stuff? Who’s your guy? Could I work with them?” All that kind of stuff. So there’ve been a lot of questions, but like I said, I don’t think anybody’s…. They don’t want to take a chance, you know? I’m in the deep water already. They’d have to jump right in and it’d be a tough swim. It’s an interesting vibe backstage, but I think everybody—just like the audience—is mostly just anxious to see what I’m going to pull up in next.
Well, I won’t lie: She’s a little jealous. When she was in her Big Time Becks era, she was rocking some wild fits too. But now that she’s back to being [her in-ring persona] The Man, she’s a little more subdued. She has a lot more fun in real life: She’s got a crazy shoe collection, and she loves dressing like a crazy person.
I had a sequined tracksuit the other week on Raw, and she was so upset. She said she’d been trying to hound one down for months and couldn’t load it up, and then it showed up in my care package from Troi. So, she gets jealous, man. We got a good competition going on to see who can out-crazy the other.
Well, now that I’ve got this stockpile of clothes, I might as well wear them. I’m not really going to wear anything twice on TV, but some of the stuff fits real good. Or I can modify it and kind of pair it with something a little more toned down. I got a lot in all my closets. I’ve donated a bunch of it as well, lost some of it to being ripped up or whatever. But the other stuff that I’ve kept, I definitely try to repurpose and use if we ever go out to a nice dinner or something like that. So, it’s all there. It’s all at my disposal.
Yeah, yeah. The stuff I can’t give to Goodwill, if I don’t know where to get rid of it, I send it to the archives. Just because, you never know. I think at some point in the future there’s a market for a physical WWE Hall of Fame, and I’m lobbying for my own wing.
I’ve definitely become more educated on myself, that’s for sure. And I’m more aware of what’s going on around me. Now, am I following the runways, checking up on the latest trends? Probably not. That’s what we pay Troi for. But I’m definitely more aware when I see something. Now that it’s something that’s a part of who I am, I’m hyperaware of it. So, if something pops up, I’ll suggest it to Troi to see if he can go find it. I’m definitely a lot more aware of what I’m wearing these days or what I could be wearing in the future.
Oh, hands down. I mean, look, you want to go back a dozen years, it probably rivals the energy of [Rollins’ iconic WWE faction] The Shield’s entrance. There’s something special about coming in right through the people—that really riles you up, because you’re just in there with it. But for me as a solo performer, the energy and the relationship I have with the audience at the moment is on another level. It’s 13 years into my WWE career now. It’s something I could have never expected. So, it’s really fantastic to be at this point, to be having so much fun, and to feel like everyone’s out there having fun with you. As soon as the “Burn It Down” hits your ears, it just feels like a party out there. And I’m very, very, very humbled to be at the center of that.
Man, the beautiful thing about fashion is that nobody knows what’s going to be next. You just ride the wave. You just jump on and go, and it’ll take you where it takes you. Once you become open to all the possibilities that there are in the fashion game, the sky’s the limit. Literally, there’s nowhere I won’t go. I’m on this ride with Troi, wherever he wants to take me, wherever the trends take me. I’m just trying to have a good time, enjoy it, and represent fashion in a space that has never really been pushed this far in. So we’re going to keep pushing the limits, and whatever’s next is next, man. You can’t predict the future, and that’s the best part about it.
Oh, man. I think we’ve hit a lot of the big ones. I do want to give a special shout out to my gear guy and gal as well. I have a combo team of Jolene and Sarath, who have done an incredible job of adapting as my character has evolved. The gear has evolved alongside the character, alongside the fashion. They’ve done such a great job making the kick pads and the tights all fit where Seth “Freakin” Rollins is at this point in his career. So a big shout out to them, to Troi—I mean, I couldn’t do it without the team. I’m lost without these people.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
