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On 18 November 2012, CM Punk successfully defended his WWE Championship in the main event of Survivor Series against John Cena and Ryback.
However, the pay-per-view is best remembered for the debut of three up-and-comers from NXT who rushed through the crowd, dragged Ryback out of the ring and sent him crashing through an announce table with a thunderous Triple Powerbomb.
The three men were revealed to be Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, later known as The Shield, and they would go on to become one of the most dominant and popular factions in WWE history.
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Also read: 5 years of The Shield: Roman Reigns' best and worst moments in WWE
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To mark their five-year anniversary on the main roster, we decided to look back at the five best and five worst moments that each Superstar has had during their time in WWE.
In this article, we focus on Ambrose – a man first known to us as the unstable, unpredictable member of The Shield who is now a former WWE champion and two-time holder of the Intercontinental title.
Also read: 5 years of The Shield: Seth Rollins' best and worst moments in WWE
#1 Best: Undertaker match
Between 2011 and 2015, The Undertaker only had seven televised matches for WWE – five at WrestleMania, one on Raw and one on SmackDown – and Dean Ambrose was involved in two of them.
The most memorable for Ambrose fans will be the singles match he had with “The Deadman” on SmackDown in April 2013. Just four months on from his main-roster debut, the Shield member went close to beating the iconic former WWE champion on a couple of occasions before submitting to the Hell’s Gate submission.
#2 Worst: United States title reign
A record-breaking United States Championship reign is something that should be celebrated, not mocked, but if you ask anyone to mention something memorable about Dean Ambrose’s 351-day reign with the title, they’ll point out that he hardly defended it.
“The Lunatic Fringe” successfully retained the title on 14 occasions, against the likes of Dolph Ziggler, Kane and Rob Van Dam, but he would regularly go 2-3 months without putting it on the line.
In fairness, it was during a time when WWE didn’t hold the title in the high regard it does today, but it was reigns like this that made the championship feel irrelevant in the first place.
#3 Best: 2014 babyface run
It’s difficult to put any of today’s WWE performers in the same bracket as greats like Stone Cold Steve Austin, but it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that Dean Ambrose was getting Austin-esque reaction for a short period of time in 2014.
Shortly after The Shield split up, Roman Reigns was set to face Seth Rollins at the Night of Champions PPV. Reigns required surgery the day before the event, so it was ruled that Rollins won the match by forfeit.
However, he was interrupted by a returning Ambrose, who received one of the biggest reactions of his career, and he would go on to earn huge ovations on Raw in the weeks that followed ahead of their main-event match at Hell In A Cell.
#4 Worst: WrestleMania 31 ladder match
A lot of the momentum that Dean Ambrose had post-Shield seemed to disappear by the time 2015 came around. He had been involved in an underwhelming feud with Bray Wyatt and it was clear that he was behind former partners Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns in WWE’s biggest storyline plans.
At WrestleMania 31, Reigns was in the main event against Brock Lesnar while Rollins faced Randy Orton before cashing in his Money In The Bank contract to close the show. As for Ambrose, he was just one of seven people involved in a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship.
#5 Best: 2016 Royal Rumble
By January 2016, Dean Ambrose’s popularity had risen again to such an extent that, out of all 30 men involved in the Royal Rumble match, he was the one who the majority of people wanted to win.
In the end, he was eliminated last by Triple H, but his greatest moment on the PPV came earlier in the event when he fought Kevin Owens in a Last Man Standing match. The two opened the main show with a brutal 20-minute encounter which Ambrose won to retain his Intercontinental Championship.
#6 Worst: WrestleMania 32 loss to Brock Lesnar
You know when Daniel Bryan was so popular that WWE eventually gave in to their original storyline plans and had him win the World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania XXX? Well, Dean Ambrose, though not quite that popular, was in a similar position after the 2016 Royal Rumble.
WWE capitalised on that by inserting him into two WWE Championship storylines in the next month – but, unlike Bryan, he didn’t get to compete for the title at WrestleMania.
Instead, he lost a one-on-one No Holds Barred Street Fight with Brock Lesnar, who Ambrose later accused of “laziness” for not wanting to listen to any of his ideas for the match.
#7 Best: 2016 Money In The Bank win
One of the best nights of Dean Ambrose’s WWE career came at the Money In The Bank PPV in June 2016. In his third MITB ladder match at the event, he defeated Alberto Del Rio, Cesaro, Chris Jericho, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn to earn the right to challenge the WWE champion at any time for a title opportunity.
Ambrose being Ambrose, he didn’t wait long, and just an hour later he cashed in on new WWE champion Seth Rollins to win the company’s biggest prize for the first time.
#8 Worst: WWE title reign
If Dean Ambrose’s WWE Championship win was spectacular, his actual reign with the title was anything but. He defended it at Battleground against Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins, and then again at SummerSlam against Dolph Ziggler, before losing it at Backlash to AJ Styles.
During this time, he also appeared on the ‘Stone Cold Podcast’ on the WWE Network. The interview felt awkward from start to finish as if Ambrose didn’t want to be there, and it didn’t help that Steve Austin accused him of “resting on his laurels” as WWE champion.
There hasn’t been a ‘Stone Cold Podcast’ since, and one assumes the quality of the Ambrose interview is a major reason why.
#9 Worst: WrestleMania 33 kickoff show
When it comes to WrestleMania, Dean Ambrose hasn’t had the best of luck. At WrestleMania 31, he was put in a seven-man ladder match while his Shield partners were main-eventing; at WrestleMania 32, he had a match with “lazy” Brock Lesnar; at WrestleMania 33, he was demoted to the kickoff show.
Originally, Ambrose was set to defend his Intercontinental Championship against Baron Corbin on the WrestleMania 33 main show, but it surprisingly started 15 minutes before the broadcast and was included at the end of the kickoff show.
The match itself was disappointing, at least for WrestleMania standards, and Ambrose retained in a regular encounter that you would expect to see on Raw or SmackDown Live.
#10 Best: 2017 feud with The Miz
Dean Ambrose and The Miz’s feud over the Intercontinental Championship on SmackDown Live was good but nothing special. Fast forward a few months to their rivalry on Raw and it was some of the best work we’d seen from “The Lunatic Fringe” for close to a year.
The segments that introduced Bo Dallas and Curtis Axel to The Miz’s Miztourage were some of the most entertaining of 2017, and the 20-minute match they had to kick off the Extreme Rules PPV is among both performers’ best in WWE.
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