Finn Balor says he has been thriving as a heel, and the kind of run he’s currently on has been the goal from the start.
For the majority of his WWE career, Balor had been a babyface until he turned heel in June 2022, when he joined The Judgment Day alongside Rhea Ripley and Damian Priest. The group, which later added Dominik Mysterio to the lineup, has been a featured part of WWE programming ever since. Balor specifically has gained a lot of momentum, and he is now feuding with WWE World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins.
Speaking on WWE After The Bell with Corey Graves and Kevin Patrick, Balor was asked to describe how The Judgment Day has changed the trajectory of his career, and he described how his heel run has reinvigorated him.
“I feel like it’s reinvigorated me on a personal level. I don’t really want to speak too much from a professional level because I haven’t completed that stage of the journey yet,” Balor said. “I feel personally that I’m back enjoying my work. I feel refreshed, I feel invigorated, I feel creative again, and it’s something that I haven’t really had a chance to fully explore this type of character on RAW or on SmackDown.
“It’s something that I wanted to really do on a second run in NXT, but when we lost the interaction of the crowd, we kind of had to tweak and adjust course to kind of change the character because the dynamic of the no audience in the arena is very different when you’re performing a match and the cadence of the match. This is kind of the version of The Prince that I wanted to deliver in NXT three years ago.”
Balor went on to describe how he was born to be a heel, and his role as a babyface had been a WWE directive, as the company viewed him that way. He described how he has been exploring working as a heel, and in doing so, he has been doing what makes him the happiest.
“This has been the goal since I first put on a pair of wrestling boots,” Balor said. “I was born to be a heel. When I started this at 18 years old, I was a heel for years upon years, and it wasn’t until I came to NXT in my first run that I started to learn or to he thought of how to be a babyface.
“It was something that was very much a WWE directive, that’s how they saw me, but that’s not really how I see myself. So it’s been very much an exploratory couple months for me and kind of getting back to what I feel I do best, or at least what makes me happiest in the ring. I don’t know if it’s actually what I do best, but it’s what I enjoy the most. So I’ve really thrived personally in the last couple months, I feel.”
Balor will challenge Seth Rollins for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WWE Money in the Bank. WrestleZone will have coverage of the show as it airs on July 1.
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