Colby Lopez was trained by Danny Daniels and made his professional wrestling debut in 2005 at age 19 in the Iowa independent scene under the ring name Gixx but that was changed after just a few months to Tyler Black. The first major promotion he joined was NWA Midwest, where he won the tag team championship, and also made a one-off appearance in TNA in 2006. 2008 was the year when Black’s wrestling career legitimately got off the ground. In 2007, he began performing for Full Impact Pro (FIP) and won the promotion’s World Heavyweight Championship in December 2008, while also capturing the Pro Wrestling Guerrilla Tag Team Championship with Jimmy Jacobs.
Tyler Black was best known for his time with independent promotion Ring of Honor (ROH) before signing with WWE in 2010. He came to ROH in 2007 as part of the Age of the Fall stable, and their segment at ROH’s pay-Per-View in September 2007 was so controversial that the footage was removed from the event before it aired (the segment involved the hanging of Jay Briscoe with a “noose”).
Black and Jimmy Jacobs won the ROH World Tag Team Championship twice and spent much of 2008 with the titles. After getting several opportunities at the ROH World Championship in 2008 and 2009, Black won the 2009 Survival of the Fittest Tournament, thus giving him one more match for the title. At Final Battle 2009 – ROH’s first live Pay-Per-View – Tyler Black wrestled Austin Aries to a 60-minute time limit draw. Because of this, the commissioner at the time Jim Cornette booked a rematch between the two men, then another in which Black finally captured the ROH World Championship in early 2010.
He was champion for 210 days until he left ROH for WWE and posted seven successful title defenses. Black signed with WWE in August 2010 and debuted the following month as Seth Rollins. His first major feud with Dean Ambrose was orchestrated in 2011, which planted some early seeds for the formation of The Shield about a year later. Rollins entered the Gold Rush Tournament to determine the first NXT Champion after FCW was rebranded to NXT in August 2012 (led by Jim Ross among others). He defeated Jinder Mahal in the finals of the tournament on August 29, 2012 to become the first ever NXT Champion. What was perhaps most impressive about that title reign was that Rollins was able to continue to defend the title even while simultaneously making a name for himself on the main roster with The Shield. He finally dropped the NXT title to Big E Langston in January 2013.
Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, and Roman Reigns made their debut on the WWE main roster in November 2012 at Survivor Series. What is so ironic is that Ambrose was originally the leader, yet he is the only one not with the company presently. The Shield had their first match on the main roster at TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2012 in a victory over Daniel Bryan and Kane (Team Hell No) and Ryback. Each member of The Shield won titles while the group was together and they won both WrestleMania matches as a stable. Their most significant rivalry came during their final months together as a group when they engaged in a rivalry with the recently reformed Evolution (Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista).
In fairness, a few months before that there was also a fantastic six-man tag match between The Shield and The Wyatt Family. Rollins turned on his Shield brothers on the June 2, 2014 episode of Monday Night Raw and won the Money in the Bank ladder match shortly after that with assistance from Kane. In October 2014 Rollins delivered a memorable performance with Dean Ambrose inside (and outside) Hell in a Cell; Seth delivered another incredible performance at Royal Rumble 2015 in a triple threat WWE World Heavyweight Championship match against Brock Lesnar and John Cena. A few months later in March 2015 at WrestleMania 31, Rollins became the first man to ever cash-in the Money in the Bank contract when he used it during the match between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar to turn it into a triple threat match and win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship (after Rollins had already participated in a match against Randy Orton earlier in the night).
Seth Rollins held the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for over seven months until he suffered a gruesome knee injury in which he pretty much blew out his entire knee at a house show for WWE in Dublin, Ireland on November 4, 2015 in a title match against Kane. He attended a sunset left into a buckle bomb which he has done religiously for years. Even though the title reign was cut short, it still did its job of ensuring that Rollins would be a pivotal part of the future of WWE. He headlined SummerSlam with John Cena and in the process became the first WWE superstar to hold the United States Championship and the WWE Championship simultaneously.
Rollins was treated well by the company in terms of booking on his return in 2016 and was the first overall pick in the 2016 WWE draft in July of that year. At SummerSlam in August, he was put in a match with the debuting Finn Balor to determine the first Universal Champion but was defeated in the match. A rivalry throughout the remainder of 2016 with Kevin Owens/Chris Jericho kept Rollins busy until a feud with Triple H was kickstarted to keep both men occupied through WrestleMania 33. Rollins defeated Triple H at Mania in 2017, which served as the payoff to the long history between both men as Triple H served as a mentor to Rollins since This Shield originally split in 2014.
The Shield reunited temporarily in 2017, and in February 2018 Rollins lasted over an hour in a gauntlet match on Monday Night Raw, earning him the longest performance in a match by any wrestler in the history of the program (since 1993). This was the official start of the Monday Night Rollins gimmick and he also pinned the top two superstars in WWE in Roman Reigns and John Cena. This gimmick lasted until January 2019 when Rollins won the Royal Rumble and set his sights on Brock Lesnar and the Universal Championship. 2018 for Rollins was good for multiple reigns with the Intercontinental Championship, however. He captured the Universal Championship from Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 35.
The Beastslayter delivered a phenomenal match with AJ Styles at Money in the Bank in May 2019 before defeating Lesnar again at SummerSlam 2019 in August in Toronto, Canada. His next notable appearance came at Hell in a Cell in October against The Fiend in a match that was received very poorly. However, The Fiend managed to capture the Universal Championship a few weeks later at the Crown Jewel event in Saudi Arabia. After this losing of the title for Rollins, WWE recognized that the WWE universe was becoming disillusioned with his character, so the company decided to lean into it and present him in unlikable fashion after Survivor Series 2019. Seth Rollins began to call himself “The Monday Night Messiah” and formed a stable with AOP and Murphy.
Rollins and Murphy won the RAW Tag Team Championship (Rollins’ record sixth time holding the titles) in 2020 and the Monday Night Messiah engaged in a very personal rivalry with Kevin Owens which culminated at WrestleMania 36. The most memorable match he participated in during 2020 was a physical encounter with Drew McIntyre at Money in the Bank in May for the WWE Championship in which Rollins was unsuccessful. He took a hiatus in November after Survivor Series (in which he sacrificed himself “for the greater good”) to go on paternity leave with his fiancée Becky Lynch. Their first child, Roux, was born in December and The Messiah has just returned to SmackDown, where he was drafted in October 2020.