Seth Rollins will take on Matt Riddle at the upcoming Clash At The Castle premium live event, and the two performers have done an excellent job building their feud with virtually no WWE television time. That's been by design. Their situation has been portrayed as too volatile to have the two men in the same room simultaneously. The lack of air time might frustrate some talents, but it's been played exceptionally well by Riddle and Rollins.
Especially over the last few weeks, Triple H and Co. have had a lot of new faces to introduce, which could have cost ongoing feuds momentum. Karrion Kross has emerged as a top heel on SmackDown, Dakota Kai and IYO SKY went all the way to the final of the women's tag-team tournament, and Johnny Gargano suddenly showed up on Monday Night Raw last week. Tack on Dexter Lumis' detailed introduction and subsequent kidnapping of The Miz and the reintroduction of Hit Row, and there's been a ton of storyline to cover. There just hasn't been much unutilized air time over the last month.
However, Riddle and Rollins have made the most of the opportunities they've been given. They didn't have a match at SummerSlam. One of the first creative choices attributed to Triple H was moving this bout from the Biggest Party Of The Summer to Clash At The Castle. It seemed like they had taken the beef about as far as it could go at that juncture, and to some degree, that's accurate. No stakes have been added to the fight. Instead, Rollins and Matt Riddle have been given a bit more time to make things more personal than they were. It didn't take them long to get there, either.
Matt Riddle Gained A Badly Needed Edge
Matt Riddle desperately needed this kind of interaction to enhance his character. He's got the affable stoner gimmick down pat, but eventually, he would need to be elevated to a role beyond Randy Orton's best bro. Triple H gave him that opportunity during a segment on the go-home episode of Raw, and Deep Waters cut his most firey promo yet. Don't sleep on how gnarly the stuff Rollins said to Riddle was to elicit this reaction, either.
These two might have spent six or seven minutes on television together since SummerSlam, mostly doing pull-apart interactions, fighting in the crowd to open Raw, and scuffling in the parking lot before the show. Rollins started to cut a promo on the August 15 airing of Raw but was chased off by Riddle. With issues swirling in AEW about wrestlers being upset about a lack of airtime, Rollins, Riddle, and WWE put on a clinic on how to build a feud without multiple lengthy talking segments, backstage interviews, and online interactions.