The following are highlights from a recent interview with WWE Superstar Dean Ambrose from TheClassical.org:
On the early days of The Shield concept, how it was pitched to him, etc: It wasn’t ever pitched to us. It was very out of nowhere. It was a secret kind of idea. I have an idea—I’ll save that for another time—[of] what the original, original idea was. It’s just been ever-evolving. One day, it was just like, ‘All right, you three are going to wear black turtlenecks and run in and beat up Ryback,’ and we’re just like, ‘Uh, okay.’ At the time, you’re like, ‘I don’t even care.’ I [had been] in developmental for over a year at that point and was just ready to pull my eyes out, so [with] any tiny, little bit of opening they’ll give me, I was like, ‘Yup, let’s do it.’ I’ll kick in that door if you crack it open, and I think we all felt that way. But doing Survivor Series and interfering in a WWE Championship match on one of the bigger pay-per-views that the company does, that’s like, ‘Holy crap.’ If you know what the deal is or not, you can’t ask for a better spotlight than [that].
We didn’t really know what the deal was, and they didn’t really know what the deal was with it. We were kind of making it up as we were going along. The name—it’s just a natural thing. A lot of times, we’re defenders. We’re defending what we perceive to be justice, or the good of the business, or somebody who paid us off. We can act as a shield, so we were The Shield.
The attire came naturally. The entrance came naturally because why would we be in the locker room with everybody when we’re acting as mercenaries? I remember being like, ‘Why would we ever come through the Gorilla position? Who would let us in the locker room after the stuff we pulled?’ so we came through the crowd. Then, that’s like a thing, too. That’s like a statement for us, separating ourselves from the locker room as far as we want to outwork everybody and outperform everybody. We’re not your typical WWE wrestlers and we’re going to make ourselves into more. It’s like a statement that we’re taking over this business and we don’t care.
On who he travels with and guys he’d like to feud with in the future: I travel with The Shield. We keep it very tight and travel together. I’ll travel with Claudio [Castagnoli] sometimes—Antonio Cesaro. I get along with pretty much everybody. I’m really easy to get along with. I can be pretty quiet and keep to myself. I’m a guy who just kind of sits in the back of a room [to] watch and learn and see what everybody’s doing. I’m a super laid-back, easy-to-get-along-with kind of guy.
As far as who I’d like to feud with in the future, there’s so many [people] it’s hard to count. I’m sure eventually, it’s going to happen one day where either any of the three of us in The Shield are going to be looking across the ring from each other. You know, when that happens, that’ll be a good day because hopefully, it’s in a position where we’re doing it in a high-profile scenario for a lot of money.
Randy [Orton] is a guy. I’m on the same side of the fence as Randy right now, but Randy’s a guy that I love watching work. He’s a guy [where] I’ll always stop and watch his matches.
[Voice rises enthusiastically] Christian is just so unbelievably good. I mean, I always knew Christian was really good. Working with Christian, he’s been here for so long and has so much experience, you realize his brain is a super-evolved version of my brain [with] the way he sees matches play out, the way he comes up with things, especially in tag matches and stuff like that. Christian’s a guy who I’ve only had a small sampling of working with. Christian’s a guy I want to spend a lot more time in the ring with.
It’s awesome working with RVD, too. I’m a big ECW fan, so I got to work with him on a loop in California, and he’s cool. He’s friggin’ RVD. He’s got all the RVD spots and he’s ageless and stuff. There’s just countless guys that you want to work with for one reason or the other. I’m looking forward to diving headfirst into all of them.
Check out the complete interview online at TheClassical.org.
