The People vs Dean Ambrose

In-ring Flaws

Not Pictured: Dean’s career strapped to a gurney in the back of the ambulance.

We all know being a high-flyer or a technical wizard is a large part of what draws us to a wrestler, especially these days, but it’s not the only thing. Joe “Crap Brains” Briggs has famously gone on record saying “physicality isn’t everything” and I believe him.

Wrestlers across history have hit the very top of their field, and pop culture as a whole, being able to barely wrestle at all. Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold...all of them hit dizzying heights in spite of the fact that they were mostly color-by-numbers in the ring.

That’s not a dig at any of those guys, it speaks to how good they were even when they weren’t blasting people in the face with chairs to cover up their ho-hummedness when it came to wristlocks and limp transitional moves.

To get to their level they used emotion and wordplay that connected universally with the audience. While those guys were Dave Chappelle on steroids at the office Christmas party, Dean’s a broken Charles Bukowski on his 9th whiskey, sitting alone in a booth at a dive bar. And he seems kinda fine with that.

This is not the Dean Ambrose I had envisioned when we chose him as the true leader of The Shield. It didn’t make sense and seemed almost purposefully designed to backfire. What if one of the owners of the cars he hid in got off work early and just like, drove home with a sweaty tank topped guy in the back?

Now one of them is wanted for kidnapping and the other missed out on a possible tag team match to headline that night’s Raw. That match was probably penciled in an hour before Raw went live.