{"id":133431,"date":"2025-04-10T07:00:40","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=133431"},"modified":"2025-07-09T15:19:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T19:19:38","slug":"the-shield-in-wwe-chronicles-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/04\/10\/the-shield-in-wwe-chronicles-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shield in WWE Chronicles: Believe"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the late 2000s to the mid-2010s, I\u2019d fallen away from professional wrestling. If you\u2019ve followed my work long enough, you\u2019d 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\u2026awkward.<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have it in me to invest in new people. Therefore, I missed out on a lot. CM Punk\u2019s rise in popularity, his feud with John Cena, and this article\u2019s topic, the story of The Shield.<\/span><\/p>\n

I missed out on Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose. <\/span>Of course, it wasn\u2019t as though they were foreign to me. <\/span>I\u2019d watch the occasional big pay-per-view events.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019t on my screen, I didn\u2019t care. I didn\u2019t care about Daniel Bryan, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, or whoever I\u2019d come to adore later.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019d have a passing, yet growing, knowledge of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, thanks to having watched WCW as a child. WWE was all I knew.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve grown as a fan since; I\u2019ve learned, loved, and disliked with time. My understanding of storytelling certainly helped with that.<\/span><\/p>\n

With how professional wrestling has changed and evolved since then, how would I take to The Shield?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Rise of The Shield in WWE<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I don\u2019t need to wax poetic about The Shield. Their history has been well-documented. Their careers since then have also been extensively covered. So, I\u2019ll 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019d run roughshod over the company.<\/span><\/p>\n

Seth Rollins is the brain. Dean Ambrose is unpredictable. Roman Reigns is the muscle.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, Rollins grew tired of the increasingly frequent failures of Ambrose and Reigns and defected to Triple H\u2019s Authority stable. The group reunited<\/a> at a few points, but it would never last. What\u2019s more is that lighting cannot be bottled more than once.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ask any fan what The Shield was like in their prime, and they\u2019ll 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

If one got hurt, they\u2019d care for them. When one successfully landed a move, they\u2019d celebrate like goofballs. Each time they won, they\u2019d share this victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

Combined with their mere presence, it spat in the face of what WWE promoted, aside from CM Punk. It was the company\u2019s way of selling these wrestlers as ones to watch out for by crafting them from a different mold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fall of The Shield<\/strong><\/h2>\n

That implosion from Seth Rollins\u2019s infamous chair attack set in motion a wave that would determine the rest of each man\u2019s career going forward. It\u2019s still reverberating like mad ripples through a disturbed puddle. A betrayal that sowed seeds of greed, hate, and hurt.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why each reunion they\u2019ve had has rung hollow for me. There\u2019s no way to recapture that feeling in that way, especially for that period. This was as close as fans could get to something different.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, changes would ripple through WWE like a rock cast into a river. CM Punk\u2019s firing and Seth Rollins\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only hot part of WWE in the latter half of the 2010s could be found in Triple H\u2019s NXT brand. Though The Shield combined forces time and again, they ultimately wouldn’t last and disbanded on Ambrose’s departure in 2019<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the main roster, things grew bland. Sure, the rise of KofiMania, Daniel Bryan\u2019s WWE Championship reign, and Becky Lynch\u2019s meteoric rise as The Man, but little else could grip fans the way WWE used to. Then came All Elite Wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Originating from Japanese, Lucha Libre, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, Ring of Honor, the territories, and even WWE\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n

But these are stories for later. We\u2019ll get into the individual impacts of each Shield member and how they shaped wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n

Their story did not end with Seth\u2019s chair shot, nor their subsequent reunions. Even though Dean Ambrose is Jon Moxley<\/a> outside of WWE, the story follows him.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story that has touched the wrestling world inside and outside of WWE. I\u2019ll touch on each man\u2019s contributions post-Shield in their articles. This is a series. One that will look at their impact as they\u2019ve influenced the industry\u2019s future time and again.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s because The Shield was there. When Jon Moxley does a curb stomp, Seth Rollins is there. Shield references will always continue.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s because we\u2019ve always believed in The Shield.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the late 2000s to the mid-2010s, I\u2019d fallen away from professional wrestling. If you\u2019ve followed my work long enough, you\u2019d 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\u2026awkward. I didn\u2019t have it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5361,"featured_media":133519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2192,4,3],"tags":[140,147,4395,77,76,725,47],"class_list":["post-133431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wrestling","category-wwe","category-wwe-universe","tag-cm-punk","tag-dean-ambrose","tag-jon-moxley","tag-roman-reigns","tag-seth-rollins","tag-the-shield","tag-wwe"],"modified_by":"Marilee Gallagher, Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133431"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133518,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133431\/revisions\/133518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}