Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and Jon Moxley have all gone on to become major stars in their own right, but there was a time when they were collectively known as The Shield. Together as The Shield the trio became a force to be reckoned with and their breakup sent shockwaves throughout the wrestling world when Seth Rollins turned on his brothers.
While talking about his time with The Shield on Club Shay Shay, Seth Rollins made it clear that the breakup wasn’t something that the members of the group were ready for. The Visionary explained that they wanted to be good guys, and they felt trio had a lot left in the tank.
“That was painful. They had pitched the story to breakup The Shield a few months earlier. We were like, ‘No man, we’re not ready for that.’ Like, we had been bad guys, the crowd was really starting to get behind us. We wanted to be good guys. We wanted a longer run. We felt like we had a lot more in the tank.
So, we have a match with The Wyatt Family at the Elimination Chamber in February, and then we go to WrestleMania, we’re full good guys at that point. We do two six man tags with Evolution right after that. Like, we were awesome. We were on cloud nine, we’re feeling great about things, the three of us.
We show up to Raw the day after and they knew if they gave us a heads up we would say no, and we would find a way to try and fight out of the breakup. So, they brought us into the office and they said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do tonight. This is what we’re going to do, and Seth is going to be the one to pull the trigger.’ And I remember like, in the room, just the silence. And when we walked out of the room it was like, ‘What do we do? Can we stop this? Are we doing the right thing?’
There was a lot of tension in there, and it was mostly we had found our comfort zone as a trio. We were really relying on each other, and we enjoyed the process, we enjoyed performing together, and we did feel like we had more legs. But at the end of the day it was one of the most shocked betrayals, and one of the most shocking moments in the history of our industry. And what it set in motion over the last ten years, it has been a complete paradigm shift in our industry. If you look at myself, Roman, and Jon Moxley, we’re at the very tippy top. And if we had stayed together it just wouldn’t be possible.”
If you use the quotes in this article please credit Club Shay Shay with a H/T to StillRealToUs.com for the transcription.