10 Things You Didn't Know About Seth Rollins' Career Before WWE

Since coming to WWE in 2010, Seth Rollins has worked his way to becoming a top star and highly decorated champion thanks to his runs with The Shield, his title wins including the WWE Championship and Universal Championship, and being popular enough that fans got sick of him enough to necessitate a heel turn.

RELATED: 5 Reasons Seth Rollins Was Better As A Babyface (& 5 Why He Is Better As A Heel)

But Seth Rollins also had a pro wrestling career before WWE, having debuted in 2005 and working not only the midwest indies, but also Ring of Honor. His indie stuff is weirdly overshadowed by his time in the majors, so let’s take a look at some aspects of these initial years that fans likely don’t know about.

10 Gixx

Many fans likely know that Seth Rollins wrestled as Tyler Black on the indie scene, but it may surprise fans to find out that he worked under a different ring name even before that -- and with a surprising source, to boot. While wrestling in Iowa-area Scott County Wrestling, the future Rollins wrestled as Gixx, a play off of Gix from the trading card game Magic The Gathering. Not a player himself, he got the name from his brother, who told him about the character.

9 Tag Team With Marek Brave

While wrestling on the indies Tyler Black had a longtime partner and rival in the form of fellow midwest wrestler Marek Brave. Teaming as The Black and The Brave from 2004 to 2007, the duo held the NWA Midwest Tag Team Title as well as the AAW Tag Team Title for All American Wrestling. Marek Brave retired in 2017 due to a neck injury, but the two still work together, running a wrestling school in Davenport, Iowa called Black and Brave Wrestling Academy.

8 Wrestling Society X

MTV’s short-lived 2006 show Wrestling Society X combined music performances and a seedy Fight Club atmosphere in what would be an underrated prototype to Lucha Underground. Like Lucha, WSX would feature a bunch of future stars, including Scorpio Sky, Matt Sydal, and Tyler Black.

RELATED: Wrestling Society X: 10 Stars You Forgot Were On MTV’s Wrestling ShowIn WSX, Black formed a tag team with fellow midwestern indie wrestler Jimmy Jacobs called DIFH (Do It For Her). Black was the aggressive hardcore guy and Jacobs the nonviolent emo, so Black had to do most of the work in matches, sometimes using Jacobs as a weapon.

7 Age Of The Fall

DIFH wasn’t the only team he had going with Jimmy Jacobs in his indie career. Tyler Black made his debut for Ring of Honor in 2007 as part of an invading heel faction called Age of the Fall. The group, which lasted until 2009, initially included Black, Jacobs, and Necro Butcher, but soon expanded to include a host of talent, including Brodie Lee, Delirious, Joey Matthews (a.k.a. Joey Mercury), Lacey, MsChif, and others.

6 The Age Of The Fall Caused a Controversial Moment

After a series of cryptic posts surfaced online, Age of the Fall made their debut at ROH’s Man Up, attacking the Briscoe Brothers after a ladder match for the tag belts. After Necro Butcher beat the brothers with barbed-wire-wrapped fists, Jay Briscoe was hung above the ring while Jimmy Jacobs, dressed in white, “bathed” in the dripping blood. The gruesome incident was controversial enough for Ring of Honor to actually cut the footage when it was time to air the show on pay-per-view.

5 Highly Decorated

After debuting in 2005, Tyler Black won his first title later that year, capturing IWA Mid-South’s Light Heavyweight Championship, which he held until 2006. In addition to other singles titles like the Full Impact Pro World Championship, he and Jimmy Jacobs held the ROH World Tag Titles twice as well as the AAW Tag Team Championship. It was in 2010 at Ring of Honor’s 8th Anniversary Show, however, that he made it to the apex of the indie scene, defeating Austin Aries for the ROH World Championship, a title he held for 210 days.

4 Rivalry With Bryan Danielson

Seth Rollins and Daniel Bryan put on an amazing forgotten gem match on the 6/10/2013 episode of Raw, but Tyler Black and Bryan Danielson also had a little rivalry going during the time they overlapped in Ring of Honor, clashing in several matches between 2008 and 2009.

RELATED: The 10 Best Seth Rollins Matches, According To Cagematch.netDanielson beat Rollins three times in singles bouts in 2008 -- including in an acclaimed bout at New Horizons -- but from March to May of 2009 they had new trilogy of matches on the weekly ROH on HDNet, including a 20-minute time limit draw and a #1 Contenders match that ended in a double countout. Finally, in their third encounter, the two went over 20 minutes, with Black finally getting the win over Danielson.

3 Wrestled For PWG

Like any buzzworthy indie wrestler, Tyler Black made some appearances for the Southern California indie promotion Pro Wrestling Guerrilla from 2006 to 2009. Amid singles bouts with Roderick Strong, El Generico, and Davey Richards, Black also teamed with Jimmy Jacobs to capture the PWG World Tag Team Championship from Generico and Strong, holding the belts for 56 days before losing them to the Young Bucks. Tyler Black also took partin the 2007 Battle of Los Angeles tournament, but was knocked out of the first round by Alex Shelley.

2 Wrestled Mustafa Ali

Lots of future WWE co-workers crossed paths on the indies, but one of the more surprising ones is finding out that the future Seth Rollins had two matches against Mustafa Ali, who would go on to become one of WWE’s most underrated guys. Back in 2009 and 2010, he performed under the name wrestler Prince Mustafa Ali, and took on Tyler Black in AAW and IWA Mid-South. This is extra interesting because Ali’s early WWE ring gear kind of resembled the Snake Plissken-esque outfit Seth Rollins wore during his initial singles run.

1 His Final Indie Matches

After signing to WWE in August 2010, Seth Rollins began to wrestle his final matches on the indie scene, putting on strong bouts with Eddie Edwards, Davey Richards, and a time limit draw with Christopher Daniels. His final ROH match would be at September’s Glory By Honor IX PPV, where he dropped the World Title to Roderick Strong in a match with Terry Funk as a ringside enforcer. His last indie match would actually happen after his debut in WWE developmental territory Florida Championship Wrestling, as he and Jimmy Jacobs dropped the aforementioned AAW Tag Team belts.