From the late 2000s to the mid-2010s, I’d fallen away from professional wrestling. If you’ve followed my work long enough, you’d know where I fell off and where I came back. The mounting deaths in the 2000s and the retirements of wrestlers I had followed since childhood, retired, and things felt…awkward.
I didn’t have it in me to invest in new people. Therefore, I missed out on a lot. CM Punk’s rise in popularity, his feud with John Cena, and this article’s topic, the story of The Shield.
I missed out on Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose. Of course, it wasn’t as though they were foreign to me. I’d watch the occasional big pay-per-view events.
And what little I saw of Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins left me utterly despising them, while seeing something different in their loose cannon in Dean Ambrose. But otherwise, if The Undertaker, John Cena, or Bray Wyatt weren’t on my screen, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about Daniel Bryan, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, or whoever I’d come to adore later.
I had only known of TNA Wrestling (at the time known as Impact Wrestling), which had been under the unpopular direction of Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff. I’d have a passing, yet growing, knowledge of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, thanks to having watched WCW as a child. WWE was all I knew.
I’ve grown as a fan since; I’ve learned, loved, and disliked with time. My understanding of storytelling certainly helped with that.
With how professional wrestling has changed and evolved since then, how would I take to The Shield?
The Rise of The Shield in WWE
I don’t need to wax poetic about The Shield. Their history has been well-documented. Their careers since then have also been extensively covered. So, I’ll touch on it briefly and then discuss my thoughts on the trio and add anything I can that can deviate from what has already been said.
It’s Autumn of 2012. WWE Survivor Series is live. John Cena and Ryback are challenging CM Punk for the WWE Championship. Three men in black invade the ring, dismantling Cena and Ryback, thus handing Punk the victory.
Known to NXT audiences and unknown to the wider public, both crowds had something new to be excited about. Over the next two years, they’d run roughshod over the company.
Seth Rollins is the brain. Dean Ambrose is unpredictable. Roman Reigns is the muscle.
In 2014, Rollins grew tired of the increasingly frequent failures of Ambrose and Reigns and defected to Triple H’s Authority stable. The group reunited at a few points, but it would never last. What’s more is that lighting cannot be bottled more than once.
Ask any fan what The Shield was like in their prime, and they’ll gladly reminisce. There was a unity with them that went beyond a band of thieves with no honor amongst them. These were men who had a shared vision and a brotherly love.
If one got hurt, they’d care for them. When one successfully landed a move, they’d celebrate like goofballs. Each time they won, they’d share this victory.
Combined with their mere presence, it spat in the face of what WWE promoted, aside from CM Punk. It was the company’s way of selling these wrestlers as ones to watch out for by crafting them from a different mold.
The Fall of The Shield
That implosion from Seth Rollins’s infamous chair attack set in motion a wave that would determine the rest of each man’s career going forward. It’s still reverberating like mad ripples through a disturbed puddle. A betrayal that sowed seeds of greed, hate, and hurt.
That’s why each reunion they’ve had has rung hollow for me. There’s no way to recapture that feeling in that way, especially for that period. This was as close as fans could get to something different.
However, changes would ripple through WWE like a rock cast into a river. CM Punk’s firing and Seth Rollins’s infamous chair swing set in motion different paths for the Shield members and a different direction in the company. There were fewer goofy gimmicks and kiddie jokes, but very little could claim to be enticing.
The only hot part of WWE in the latter half of the 2010s could be found in Triple H’s NXT brand. Though The Shield combined forces time and again, they ultimately wouldn’t last and disbanded on Ambrose’s departure in 2019.
On the main roster, things grew bland. Sure, the rise of KofiMania, Daniel Bryan’s WWE Championship reign, and Becky Lynch’s meteoric rise as The Man, but little else could grip fans the way WWE used to. Then came All Elite Wrestling.
Originating from Japanese, Lucha Libre, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, Ring of Honor, the territories, and even WWE’s styles, wrestling stories converged. As the influence of The Shield permeated through WWE, it flowed into the confluence of the wrestling world. Even for lunatics on the fringes of paradigm shifts.
Conclusion
But these are stories for later. We’ll get into the individual impacts of each Shield member and how they shaped wrestling.
Their story did not end with Seth’s chair shot, nor their subsequent reunions. Even though Dean Ambrose is Jon Moxley outside of WWE, the story follows him.
It’s a story that has touched the wrestling world inside and outside of WWE. I’ll touch on each man’s contributions post-Shield in their articles. This is a series. One that will look at their impact as they’ve influenced the industry’s future time and again.
The way Moxley, Rollins, and Reigns have carried this brotherly love for all these years will never die. When a Triple Powerbomb in WWE, AEW, or NJPW happens, it’s because The Shield was there. When Jon Moxley does a curb stomp, Seth Rollins is there. Shield references will always continue.
And that’s because we’ve always believed in The Shield.
