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The Shield's reunion, Drew McIntyre's rise to the top and Dolph Ziggler's resurgence have been great to watch, and RAW has predominantly been focused more on the craft than on the art. For months now, we've seen some combination of these guys including Braun Strowman involved in some sort of big clash, but the real meat has been missing from arguably RAW's only relevant storyline.
Why has Braun turned heel all of a sudden? Why have The Shield reunited? What's in this for the only non-champion Shield member, Dean Ambrose? Questions like these have been ignored by the WWE for the most part, in order to give space to more action and carnage between these guys.
Thankfully, all that changed on the most recent episode of RAW. In a genuinely intriguing opening segment, Ziggler and company targeted Ambrose in a verbal spat to make him realize how he's being used by his Shield brethren and how there's nothing in this for him. They brought up Rollins' betrayal from a few years back and how an inevitable Shield breakup is on the horizon.
This triggered The Architect, Seth Rollins, to play some mind games of his own when backstage, he approached McIntyre to turn the tides on him and his association with Ziggler and Strowman. He mentioned how Strowman doesn't care if it's Drew or anyone else fighting alongside him and how Ziggler is using McIntyre to basically bring himself out of the mid card mediocrity.
These exchanges of words spread throughout the broadcast brought emotion, excitement and intrigue to the main event, something that has been missing in this second coming of the Shield. Add to that the closing moments of the broadcast where Ambrose took some time to join his brothers in arms in their tag match victory celebration and we have an all-around focused RAW after a very long time.
We just hope things only get better going forward with the Shield, which will also help WWE position the inevitable Shield Triple Threat in the main event at Wrestlemania. You can read about that here.
