Credit: Nick Schwartz, USA Today (For the Win)

Seth Rollins will defend his WWE title Sunday night in the main event at Battleground in St. Louis on the WWE Network, facing Brock Lesnar in a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
With just a few days to Battleground, Rollins talked to FTW about Todd Frazier lifting the WWE title at the Home Run Derby, Brock Lesnar’s title reign as a part-timer, and his favorite promos.

FTW: You’ve had an amazing run since becoming the WWE World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania in March. How does your life change going from a regular guy on the roster to being the champ?
Seth Rollins: There’s a lot of pressure involved. Everyone looks at you to anchor the show every night. You’re the guy that’s drawing the houses. You’re the guy that everyone wants to beat, and you’ve got the spot everyone wants to take. The bullseye on the back of your head gets a little bit deeper and darker every night. It’s certainly an interesting line to walk, but it’s been fun and I’m enjoying the process of being champion.

FTW: Is there anything that has caught you by surprise in your role as the WWE World Heavyweight Champion?
Seth Rollins: How welcoming everyone else has been. With that bullseye comes a level of competition, but I think it’s healthy. I think everybody else in the locker room is pretty happy to have a full-time champion on the roster again. A guy who’s defending the title in Peoria, Illinois, as well as WrestleMania. I think it’s cool for the boys to see a champion in the locker room every day and not just every few months like it was for the past year.

FTW: Do you think that the champion should be at every show?
Seth Rollins: Traditionally it’s important for the champion to be on the live events and draw the houses. We’re not living in traditional times. It’s 2015, Brock held the title through 2014. Certainly his lack of appearances makes the ones that he does have very special, but I am more of a traditionalist, and I enjoy being a champion that’s on all the shows. I enjoy being the guy that’s on the marquee every night, the one they come to see. So, for me, I like that business model better than the Brock Lesnar business model.

FTW: Physically, Brock Lesnar is in a class of his own. What’s the hardest thing about wrestling an athlete like Brock?
Seth Rollins: Well he’s the strongest human being I’ve ever been in the ring with, for one. He’s uniquely quick for his size as well. He’s got a few weaknesses here and there, but overall his game is pretty well rounded. He’s a good striker, a submission expert, he can wrestle you to the ground or throw you around. You have to find those weaknesses and capitalize on them, and you have to basically go into this match knowing you’re going to take a lot of physical punishment. The other guys I’ve been in the ring with during my title run, I’ve had very physical matches — a ladder match with Dean Ambrose, a fatal four way with Roman [Reigns], Dean [Ambrose] and Randy Orton — but Brock Lesnar’s physicality is on another level.

FTW: You tweet out photos from your workouts all the time and have a reputation as a gym rat, but fans can’t see the work you put into things like cutting promos and improving your skills on the mic, which for a WWE superstar is kind of equally as important. How do you work on that side of your job?
Seth Rollins: For me I’ve been fortunate enough to get a lot of opportunities to cut promos, long and short, backstage and in front of a large crowd on Raw over the past three years. So that has been my practice, not everybody gets those opportunities. Sometimes you have to come up with ideas and talk to yourself in the mirror, or sometimes in those long car rides when you’re driving by yourself you talk into the rear-view mirror. At the end of the day, you just have to be comfortable talking to people. I’ve been lucky enough to get the opportunity to do that every Monday night, to the chagrin of most.

FTW: Do you have a favorite promo that you’ve done?
Seth Rollins: I did one on SmackDown ahead of my match with John Cena [at TLC]. It didn’t really get talked about too much. That one was really good, where I went head-to-head with John.
There was one that I did with Paul Heyman [before the Royal Rumble], and I got right up in his grill. He didn’t appreciate that.

FTW: 2015 has been a massive year for NXT, with Kevin Owens becoming a huge star on the main roster, the success of NXT events on WWE Network and the NXT Divas taking over Raw last Monday. As someone who came to WWE from NXT, what is it like to see that growth?
Seth Rollins: When I got to developmental, NXT didn’t even exist. The concept wasn’t around, it was FCW [Florida Championship Wrestling] and we were in a warehouse in Tampa. We were doing shows in front of 30 people, and the talent level was bleak. Now you’ve got an incredibly talented roster of men and women. They’re going to run the Barclays Center in New York [at NXT Takeover in August]. You’ve gotta think about that. From Largo, Florida, in front of 30 people at Minnreg Hall to the Barclays in front of upwards of what could be 10,000. It’s cool to have been a part of that legacy as the first NXT Champion.

FTW: Is it weird for you at all to see athletes in other sports with the WWE title?
Seth Rollins: It’s cool to see athletes look at our title as the title. We have an iconic belt that symbolizes our championship that’s so well renowned in other walks of life that these other athletes think it’s cool to have their own WWE title. I think that says a lot about WWE’s legacy. It’s pretty sweet.