This feud needs a shot in the ass

Intercontinental championship match

Seth Rollins (c) vs. Dean Ambrose

On the Oct. 22 episode of Raw, Roman Reigns announced that he needed to indefinitely leave WWE in order to go home and kick leukemia’s ass. His fellow Shield brothers, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, dedicated their tag team championship match later that night to Roman Reigns. Ambrose and Rollins did indeed go on to win the belts, but then the unthinkable happened during their emotional post-match celebration:

Dean Ambrose picked the most despicable night possible to burn The Shield down to the ground. As he was mercilessly pummeling Seth into the mat, it was almost like Seth knew this was the price he always had to pay for his own betrayal of The Shield back in 2014.

From that point on, this upcoming war between Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins should have been the hottest feud on Raw. How can you possibly screw this story up?

Well for starters, you can have Dean Ambrose cut wacky promos while being inoculated in a doctor’s office so that he can withstand the filthy germs in Houston.

Or you can have Dean Ambrose come out as Bane for no apparent reason:

Or you can constantly use Roman Reigns’ leukemia as a focal point of this story.

It doesn’t help that Dean’s explanations for his actions have been inconsistent from week to week. At first he seemed to blame it on the fact that Seth and Roman didn’t take him seriously and instead treated him like an imbecile or silly lunatic. Then he talked about how the burden of watching their back every week made him weak. After that he claimed that The Shield were always rotten to the core, particularly off camera, and what goes around comes around. That’s why Roman has to answer to the man upstairs.

Dean’s talking points shifted to how the audience is filthy and smells like garbage. He said The Shield used to stand for something, but then all Rollins and Reigns cared about was sucking up to the audience.

Dean’s latest promos are focused on Seth’s giant ego and how the Architect always thinks he has the answers, but this time Ambrose is the one in full control of the situation. He will cause Seth to lose his mind once the Intercontinental championship slips away from him at TLC.

This feud has had some bright spots, but it’s been an uneven presentation at best. Maybe the whole point here is that Dean has a new explanation every week for his actions simply to drive Seth mad for not really knowing what the definitive answer truly is. But the bottom line is there has been way too much rambling on the mic in this feud. Dean turned heel on October 22 and has yet to wrestle a match on Raw since that night. That’s seven episodes of Raw without a match for Ambrose, which is a ridiculously long time by today’s standards.

The former Shield brothers will finally go to war at TLC after a wait of nearly two months. Seth has been completely owned by Dean every single time there has been a physical confrontation during that time. It seems far too one-sided for that trend to keep up at TLC, yet it would be strange for Ambrose to lose his first televised match since turning heel.

Find out which Shield member walks out as Intercontinental champion by tuning into TLC and keeping it right here at Cageside Seats!