Looking forward to the Punk-Ryback-Shield Storyline

In this week’s RAW, the stable name of the group of Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns were revealed as “The Shield” during an off-stage interview segment with Michael Cole. The interview segment was very sharp and useful in taking the story-line forward. It is also refreshing to see new talents step up into the main roster, especially Seth Rollins. Seth Rollins, aka Tyler Black, has been doing the rounds independent scene for a long time and is currently part of the NxT 3. He’s a former ROH champion and also the last FCW champion. At the very tender age of 26, he already has 7 years of main stream pro-wrestling experience in his kit. Who knows, he might me be the next CM Punk.

Dean Ambrose is no different. He is easily the best talker of the group, and probably the younger lot of the roster too. We could look forward to a lot of great promos from him. Roman Reigns, a former Canadian Football player, is the muscle of the group. He just broke into pro-wrestling, and is also under a WWE developmental contract.

WWE have done a great job so far maintaining the mystery behind the involvement of the stable during Punk’s matches. But then, WWE have killed some of the hottest properties like Straight Edge Society and Nexus. So, one has to take this development with a pinch of salt. The Shield beat down Ryback, Daniel Bryan and Kane, with Punk looking clueless as to what they were doing. Ryback was laid down for the third time in a row by “The Shield”. I have closely followed the trend of wrestlers trading wins or coming off strong, before the PPV. Whenever this happens, you see the person getting the beat down, coming out with the win in the PPV.

But with Rock versus Punk at Rumble almost said to be on the cards, one might think otherwise. This can happen only if Punk remains the champion at the end of TLC. If Punk has to remain the champion, it has got be a clean finish. I personally don’t think WWE are interested in Ryback losing cleanly to Punk. It will neither do any good to the Ryback character if his aura of invincibility is lost. On the other hand, if it ends in a murky finish where the Shield would assault Ryback and triple power-bomb him through the table, it would lead to a Punk versus Rock feud. I believe all feuds should end with a clean victor. This makes sense for the wrestler to move on to the next feud.

It would be compelling for the WWE to go with a murky finish at the TLC match and a Rock versus Punk match at Royal Rumble because that will draw a lot of money. But that might need Ryback to have a match against the Shield at Rumble, with his feud with Punk still unsettled. We can also see a shocker, if Ryback actually manages to beat CM Punk and goes on to face the Rock at Rumble. Let’s sit back for once and watch as the story unravels.