Finn Balor Has Never Rewatched His 2016 SummerSlam Match With Seth Rollins

Ten years removed from one of the most bittersweet championship wins in WWE history, Finn Balor has admitted he has never once gone back and watched it.

In a conversation with Chris Van Vliet, Balor opened up about his clash with Seth Rollins at SummerSlam 2016 — the match that made him the first-ever WWE Universal Champion and, within 24 hours, left him without the title after a dislocated shoulder forced him to relinquish it. Asked simply whether he had ever rewatched the bout, his answer was equally simple: “No.”

It’s not just the full match he avoids. Clips regularly circulate on social media, and Balor says he scrolls past them before he has to see the moment the injury occurred. “I get tagged in tweets daily of that spot, and I’ll scroll away before I hit the wall. I don’t like seeing it.”

What makes the behind-the-scenes story remarkable is how much was improvised after the shoulder gave out. Balor revealed his shoulder actually dislocated multiple additional times throughout the match — every time he raised his arm to hit the ropes. Despite that, he and Rollins managed to rebuild the match on the fly, communicating throughout. “The match that we’d done wasn’t actually the match that we’d laid out,” Balor said, crediting Rollins for keeping things together. “Seth is an absolute pro.”

Balor also disclosed a detail he said he hadn’t previously shared publicly: mid-match, he suggested switching the finish so Rollins would leave as champion, figuring he’d be out of action for a prolonged stretch. Rollins told him to stick to the plan. Balor said he still turns that decision over in his mind. “I could have been let go six months later before I even came back. Who knows?”

He’s also grown tired of the “injury prone” label that has followed him. Balor pushed back firmly, pointing out that in 24 years of wrestling, he has suffered one major injury — plus a broken jaw he described as a pure accident.

The SummerSlam moment remains one of the great what-ifs in recent WWE history, and based on Balor’s own words, it’s a question that still doesn’t have a clean answer — even for the man who lived it.