WWE: The Big Mistake WWE Is Making With The Shield Reunion

The Shield reunion was far from flawless. Can it be fixed?

After what seemed like an endless amount of teases towards a reunion of The Shield, the WWE Universe’s wishes finally came true on Monday night.

Roman Reigns stood in the center of the stage, staring down at The Miz, Miztourage and The Bar. He was then flanked by Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins. On sight, it was awesome. If you missed Raw, but saw that picture, you might have freaked out. However, it wasn’t as special a moment as it might have seemed.

Reigns came out to his music, Ambrose to his and Rollins followed suit with his own music. No walking through the crowd. No “Sierra, Hotel, India, Echo, Lima, Delta…” None of it. They proceeded to beat up the heels, which gave us a triple-powerbomb, but other than that, The Shield were stripped of many of the little things that made them cool.

All this comes after multiple weeks of TV had been spent teasing a reunion. It was almost too much teasing. Everybody knew it would happen. Especially when they ended the previous Raw standing together, it seemed like we were about to get a full-blown Shield relaunch. It didn’t happen that way.

It was announced that they will wrestle together at TLC. It will be their first match as a team since June 1st, 2014, the infamous clean sweep of Evolution. That night will probably be the return of their version of the music and the vests for Rollins and Ambrose, but it feels cheap.

What made The Shield so special was the fact that they came up together. None of them had appeared on main roster TV before. They weren’t an established entity as a unit prior to being in WWE. There was no veteran pillar in the middle of the group. They were three guys, all unproven, that figured it out together.

Their individual identities were fleshed out over time, but everything that made each of them different contributed to what made them such a great unit.

On Monday night, they were three individuals standing together. They weren’t the same unit they once were. That wasn’t an accident. They were very careful to make sure they all stood out in the same ways they have since the breakup.

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It might be the same three guys. They might have gone by the same name, but that wasn’t The Shield. That was a way to get Reigns cheered for the next few weeks and, maybe, more.

That plan is extremely flawed. They’re just masking the problem. It’s like a person taking aspirin when their back hurts: the pain goes away, but there’s still something wrong with their back.

WWE can salvage this. They just need to recognize all the above reasons for why The Shield was cool.

Looking back to their original breakup, all three members of The Shield were red-hot after their breakup. Rollins was getting booed like crazy, while Ambrose was a definitive fan-favorite feuding with him. Meanwhile, Reigns did his own thing. He was thrust into the title scene and was the obvious fan-favorite in a WWE Championship Fatal 4-Way with John Cena, Randy Orton and Kane.

It wasn’t until Reigns missed a few months with an injury and came back as “the guy” that fans started to turn on him.

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If WWE can recapture that Shield magic for a couple of months, they might be able to get Reigns back to where he was immediately after the breakup.

If they continue to do things halfway, it may be another failed attempt to get one of WWE’s most talented stars over.