Seth Rollins is right, we didn’t want to see Dean Ambrose turn heel
Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose are, in the Kingslayer’s words, “wrestling soulmates”, so when the latter turned on The Shield in October, the WWE Universe was absolutely heartbroken.
Given that WWE actually made a statement saying that Dean Ambrose would be on his way out of the company upon the expiration of his contract after WrestleMania 35, it truly does seem like The Shield’s final farewell came at Fastlane 2019 in Cleveland.
And if it was goodbye, what a final match that was from The Shield. Roman Reigns gave us a vintage performance in his first match back from injury, and both Seth Rollins and Ambrose were incredibly impressive, too, as always. Even with Ambrose set to leave WWE, he’s still given it his all, as he doesn’t have a setting other than “full throttle”, regardless of what Vince McMahon made Stone Cold Steve Austin say on that infamous podcast episode.
Ambrose’s willingness to go to extreme lengths to entertain the fans has made him one of the most beloved wrestlers in the world, and there’s no doubt WWE fans will follow his work after WWE if he does leave.
When Ambrose turned heel on Rollins in October on the night Reigns announced his battle with leukemia, the WWE Universe couldn’t have been more upset. And perhaps a big reason why they didn’t buy into Ambrose as a heel was both because of the portrayal of his heel character and the fact that nobody really wanted the man to turn on Rollins either; they wanted Seth and Dean to continue to fight side by side, even without Reigns.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Rollins, who told Yahoo! Sports’s Anthony Sulla-Heffinger that nobody wanted Ambrose to turn heel that night. By nobody, Rollins is including both himself and Dean as people who didn’t want this break-up [H/T to Fightful.com’s Jeremy Lambert]:
"“The way that affected Ambrose, that wasn’t really his best look. No one wanted to see us fight each other, we had been through that, it didn’t feel good. I was upset, he was clearly upset and people didn’t want to see it, they wanted to see us be brothers and care about each other.”"
Dean and Seth had a feud over the Intercontinental Championship shortly after Ambrose’s turn, but the crowd just wasn’t into their match at TLC or the feud as a whole. They wanted to get into this renewed rivalry – with Rollins playing the babyface this time – but WWE completely botched Ambrose’s heel character, and it was a difficult character to book given that, again, fans weren’t interested in the turn either.
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At WrestleMania 35, Seth Rollins will look to “Slay The Beast”, Brock Lesnar, in a Universal Championship match, while Roman Reigns must defeat the increasingly formidable Drew McIntyre, who looks like a future Universal Champion himself. That leaves Dean Ambrose without a thing to do at WrestleMania, but there’s a chance of him helping Rollins against Lesnar or having one final moment with his Shield brothers before leaving. Heck, maybe Dean isn’t really leaving after all, and many fans of The Shield will be crossing their fingers for one final swerve.