Fans of professional sports know it is important to appreciate a consistent performer on their favorite team. He or she may not be a superstar who grabs all the headlines, but at the end of the day, they show up in a way that the team’s needs are met more often than not. That is who Sheamus is for the WWE. He’s always been a reliable performer, but in recent years, he’s truly become a guy who lives up to his catch phrase of putting on “banger, after banger, after banger.”
Sheamus’s near two-decade tenure with the WWE doesn’t need much of an introduction or retrospective. He’s won nearly all there is to win. Multiple-time champion and a clear first ballot Hall of Famer. But what is especially interesting about Sheamus is how he’s suddenly become a top-match generator for WWE well past what many would consider his “prime” as a performer. Sheamus is not only having the best run of his career, but he is consistently putting out some of the best matches in WWE at an amazing clip.
According to Cagematch, Sheamus has participated in a total of 1,937 matches in his WWE tenure. Diving into that data, especially looking at his matches during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, shows an interesting and delightful trend for Sheamus fans.
The COVID-19 pandemic nearly shut down all of professional wrestling. Many promotions were forced to shut their doors, unable to hold events. WWE shifted to a format that did not include fans at shows, to setting up staged fans with WWE talent, and eventually developing the “Thunderdome.” All of which were a horrible way to watch wrestling but kept the promotion alive and functioning.
Something else also happened during that time. Sheamus started to put on some absolute gems of matches. Fans raved after his match against Rusev on the June 30 episode of WWE Monday Night Raw. That’s just one of several entries that are must-see matches. According to Cagematch, Sheamus has 26 different matches that are rated at a score of 8 or higher. Of those 26 matches, 16 occurred in 2020 or later.
Not only is this great run occurring at a late point in Sheamus’s career, it is occurring after not one, but two serious bouts with injury that many believed would be the end of his time in the ring. Sheamus not only found a way to overcome them, but he found a way to remind fans that he’s one of the best performers to ever step foot in a WWE ring.
It is important to give performers their flowers while they are around to smell them. Sheamus is certainly one of those WWE superstars who deserves all the praise he’s getting at this point in his career.