WWE Raw: Why The Impending Shield Break Up Isn’t Interesting

The Shield got the band back together the Monday after this year’s Summer Slam, and by the looks of it in the beginning, this could have been it, a real, long-term reunion for Shield. Now, WWE is teasing a Dean Ambrose heel turn, and I am beyond over it.

The one sure-fire, straight-to-the-point way I can describe the initial manifestation of The Shield is this: they were awesome, man. There was never a time where you wouldn’t search feverishly around any given arena to see where they’d be making their entrance as soon as you heard “Sierra”. Shield was something special, as were the three men bound together by the fight for justice.

Flash forward to today, and we’re in our technical third round with Shield, but this one looked like a good one. When the group, well, regrouped on the Monday after Summer Slam decked out in tactical gear to aid former member Roman Reigns, now the Raw Universal Champion, it seemed like WWE had finally committed to pushing the gimmick again, unlike the second round, where the three men just happened to be on the same side for a while.

As of late, however, it seems like WWE is sowing seeds of discord for The Shield once again, this time in the form of the Lunatic Fringe, Dean Ambrose. The “Dogs of War”, Braun Strowman, Drew McIntyre, and Dolph Ziggler, have began planting ideas in Ambrose’s head that because he doesn’t have a championship like his brothers Seth Rollins and Reigns, he’s the weak link, and he needs to assert himself as top dog.

There are hints that it’s working, as now Dean Ambrose seems to be taking a little too long to join in with Rollins and Reigns and is showing signs that maybe he believes what the Dogs of War have been saying. It looks like Ambrose may be on the path to a heel turn and be the one to initiate the breakdown of the Shield this time around.

I. Am. Over it.

Rewind again to June 2nd, 2014, and a moment I love to refer to as “The Chair Shot Heard ‘Round the World” – Rollins betrays Ambrose and Reigns by leaving them in a pulp in the middle of the ring. There’s a very particular shot featured in that moment (and the video below) where Dean Ambrose’s facial expression perfectly encapsulates the sentiments of everyone watching: pure, unadulterated shock.

To put it bluntly, we are never, ever going to be able to recreate that moment ever again. That was wholly and truly a one-of-a-kind moment for The Shield, and for us as an audience. The sense of betrayal the even we felt just watching it was so pure that I could consider a moment like that to one of those questions you’d ask any other wrestling fan, “where were you when Seth Rollins turned on The Shield?”

It wasn’t all for moot though, as it resulted in very successful singles runs for the Hounds; I would go so far as to say that it benefited Rollins, who became the top heel in the company following his Wrestlemania 31 World Heavyweight Championship win, the most. You probably hoped, as I did at one point, that with all their momentum as singles performers, a possible reunion would make them stronger than ever.

It really hasn’t, and if WWE is going to go ahead and break them up again courtesy of Ambrose, I don’t think it ever really could.

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It isn’t the fault of either Ambrose, Rollins, or Reigns, rather mostly WWE creative. We’re now expecting a Shield break-up every time they get back together. We’re expecting this not to last, and even if there’s drama involved and one goes rogue, it will never have the effect that their initial break-up did.

Even if the reunion served primarily to set up an Ambrose heel-turn, it still doesn’t allow that turn to pack as big of a punch as it could. Dean Ambrose simply could have returned as heel; the added Seth Rollins partnership and eventual Shield reunion quite frankly is making the turn more monotonous than it deserves to be.

What we’re left with in my eyes is a shadow of the moment given to us in 2014, and all three of the men involved are way too talented and way too critical to Raw as a whole to be stuck in their own shadows.

The destruction of the Shield has been done, and no matter how many times WWE puts them back together and tears them apart, and no matter how strong each of the men involved become individually, the crack in the foundation will always there. It would better for WWE just to move on from the Shield, regardless of how popular they are while they’re together, because they would only find themselves in a redundant story-line with very, very little (if any) room for creative growth.

What do you think of the Shield reunion this time around? Comment your thoughts below, or tweet them to us at @FansidedDDT!