There has been talk for months that WWE is planning to break up The Shield. So to the question: should it be done?
Short answer: no. Slightly longer answer: hell, no.
Answer in the form of a question: Was Crockett dumb enough to break up the Four Horsemen when they were hot as firecrackers?
No group in recent memory has been hotter than The Shield – Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns. First over as monster heels, now the group is pushing john cena as the top face entity in WWE.
So of course WWE is going to kill the goose that’s laying a lot of golden eggs in terms of ratings and ticket sales, right?
Don’t be so sure. Back around the first of the year, the buzz was that creative was already working on the breakup, and that Reigns was going to emerge as the breakout face star destined for main-event status. Notice how quickly that plan has been put on the backburner, though, with the face turn of the group in its feud with the Wyatt Family, who also got megawatt heat out of its part in that matchup.
Now The Shield is feuding with the reformed Evolution – Triple H, Randy Orton and Batista. Yeah, talk about getting a push; The Shield goes from Splitsville to main-eventing a pay-per-view with three of the biggest stars of the last 15 years of WWE.
It’s inevitable that at some point the group will have to break apart, because at some point it will be hard to keep the storylines fresh. But creative could string it out by anointing Reigns as the Ric Flair of the group and letting Ambrose and Rollins become the Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson, doing the dirty work to elevate Reigns and in the meantime dominating the tag-team division in their own right.
That could extend the shelf life of the group until that breaking point occurs, as it did with the Horsemen, as it did with the nWo. Unlike with those groupings, which were composed of veterans in the later stages of their careers, the members of The Shield will be around for quite a while, and it’s easy to see the members feuding with each other at various stages of their next few years before the also-inevitable reformation that will come maybe multiple times in the years to come.
But for now, there’s no need to rush it. Ride The Shield as far as this hot run takes them, and that could be for the remainder of 2014 and into early 2015, if not longer, beyond WrestleMania 31, even.
Patience. That’s the operative word here.
– Column by Chris Graham
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