5 Best WrestleMania matches involving The Shield

Ever since their first appearance at The Showcase of the Immortals way back in 2013, The Shield have played a huge role in The Show of Shows – both individually and together. Their first two WrestleMania matches occurred as a trio, when they were able to defeat Big Show, Randy Orton & Sheamus at ‘Mania 29 and Kane & The New Age Outlaws at ‘Mania 30.

However, you won’t be seeing any of those matches on this list. Why? For one very simple reason: the five we’re about to list all came across as better matches in our eyes.

Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose are all fantastic competitors in their own right but as you’ll come to see, they’ve all had varying degrees of success when it comes to having great bouts on their own at WrestleMania.

The feud between Seth Rollins and Randy Orton was obviously very personal, with the two men building towards their WrestleMania showdown for months on end. It was the last time we can remember fans legitimately being invested in Orton as a top tier babyface, which was strange because prior to that, everyone had been clamoring to see him turn heel for such a long time.

The match itself was decent, and it always seemed as if they were building towards a big finish. In the end, that big finish came in the form of potentially the greatest RKO we’ve ever seen.

Orton wanted his own WrestleMania moment, and while some will argue he got that against The Undertaker, he managed to pick up the win this time around.

Seth, on the other hand, went on to have a very good night – which we’ll come onto later.

The best part about an elaborate feud in WWE is that more often than not, the blow-off will take place on the Grandest Stage of Them All. For Triple H and Seth Rollins, they were given that honor at WrestleMania 33 in Orlando.

Some will say this match was a bit slow at times, and they’re well within their rights to do so. Still, when watching it back, there’s a real intensity to it that you only get when the story has been told this well.

Rollins was made to look like a star and that’s clearly what they were shooting for the whole time. The Game accidentally sending Stephanie McMahon through a table was the perfect exclamation mark at the end of a great rivalry, and while it took longer than expected, it did give Seth the boost he needed in order to become a top tier babyface.

WrestleMania is all about creating a spectacle, and few can argue that they did exactly that.

The streak continues for Mr. Rollins as we take ourselves a year into the future in New Orleans. The rivalry between these three men was built well, even if it wasn’t the most personal of feuds on the show, and it gave us the chance to see them battle over the Intercontinental Championship – a title that was in desperate need of salvation.

Logically speaking it would’ve been easy to see any one of these three men come out on top with the win, but in the end, Rollins deserved the right to hold the IC belt up high. We saw great reversals, fantastic sequences, and an ending that brought justification to the decision to make this a triple threat showdown.

All three came out of this looking like stars in their own right, and that’s hard to do on a stage like that. 12 months on from this, Seth finally got back to the top of the mountain when he beat Brock Lesnar for the Universal Championship.

We find ourselves at the number two entry in this list, which also marks the first appearance of Dean Ambrose.

While his match against Brock Lesnar one year later would certainly qualify as being notable, things just didn’t really work out for those guys on the night, with Ambrose essentially being squashed.

In Santa Clara, however, Ambrose was able to take the spotlight and run with it in an incredibly entertaining ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship. From his dive off the top of the ladder outside the ring to Luke Harper trying to end his career with a vicious powerbomb, he truly did put his body on the line in the name of entertaining the masses.

If he’d have been given the chance to do the same against Brock, then there’s a decent chance that match would’ve played a starring role on this list, too.

Now, he’s over in All Elite Wrestling, where he seems to be finding his feet in the ring more than he did with WWE.

One thing that needs to be clarified before we go into this match is that Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar are responsible for playing a huge, huge role in making this main event what it was.

Nobody expected them to go out there and have such an enjoyable slugfest, but that’s exactly what they did. Reigns refused to be put down by The Beast Incarnate, whereas Brock couldn’t quite believe that he wasn’t able to get the job done.

Then, with both men laid out on the floor, Seth Rollins created a truly iconic WrestleMania moment when he cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase to turn the match into a triple threat.

Before fans even really knew how to react, Rollins had already Curb-Stomped his way to the title before running up the stage and out of California as the new champion.