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What's the story?
Every WWE fan who has watched the product over the past few years is aware of who The Shield is and how they went their separate ways in 2014, but Seth Rollins has recently admitted that this wasn't actually the original plan.
In case you didn't know...
The Shield split back in 2014 after an impressive feud with Evolution which saw them pick up huge wins over Batista, Triple H and Randy Orton at consecutive pay-per-views. This was off the back of a feud with The Wyatt Family, which saw Bray Wyatt's team established as the dominant stable that went on to conquer WWE.
The split also led to one of the of the greatest feuds of all time between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose which culminated at Hell in a Cell back in 2014 when Ambrose picked up a feud with Bray Wyatt once again that led into 2015. Whilst The Shield have reformed numerous times since fans always remember that their original run was the best.
The heart of the matter
Seth Rollins recently appeared on the E&C Podcast of Awesomeness where he revealed the original plan for The Shield's split could have changed the face of WWE history.
“[The break up] was not our idea and we were not ready for that. We [The Shield] hadn’t had a run as babyfaces at the time, we had just done the heel stuff and we came off this program with [CM] Punk, where it was like Punk against The Shield. And I remember we did this three-on-one handicap match at TLC in December [2013], and we lost to him, I think, in the three-on-one match, and they were ready to split us up then. Like, within the next month.
I remember that was the plan, we were gonna break up and [Dean] Ambrose was gonna turn, and it was just gonna be, almost, thrown away. I remember we went to Hunter, or Vince, or somebody – we talked to somebody that makes decisions, and we were like, ‘We can’t do this, we’re not ready for this right now. It’s not the right time and we’ve got so much more to offer. It’s not the right time! We need to pull back on this a little bit.’
From there, we moved in to a bit of a babyface run. We worked with The Wyatt family in February. So we did the Rumble and, whatever, and then we did The Wyatt Family in February, which, they squeezed in because they thought they were gonna break us up. So there was a never a plan to work with The Wyatts, it was never gonna happen. And they’re like, ‘Well, I don’t know if we’re gonna break ’em up, we should get this match in.’
And the electricity of the two factions that had been so beautifully built up over the last few years, coming together to go to war was – the electricity for that was insane. We had a hell of a six-man tag team match with them and we had a few of them after that, but the first one at Elimination Chamber was off the charts,” he said via WrestlingInc.
This means that The Wyatt Family could have drifted away and never been given the rivalries that they later acquired. It also means that heel Seth Rollins may never have become a thing since Ambrose was originally supposed to turn heel and potentially could have become the star of the group.
What's next?
Dean Ambrose's contract ends in April where he is expected to leave the company, Seth Rollins is currently struggling with a back injury heading into his WrestleMania match with Brock Lesnar whilst Roman Reigns remains on the sidelines.
Do you think The Shield's split would have been better if WWE had their way? Have your say in the comments section below...
