12 Ups And 16 Downs For WWE In 2018

10. Shield Feud Fizzles

Dean Ambrose turn
WWE.com

The implosion of The Shield on one night was an emotionally jarring experience. Roman Reigns announced he was taking a hiatus to battle leukemia. On the same night, Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose captured the Raw Tag Team Championships in an emotional moment. And then Ambrose immediately turned on Rollins and pummeled him.

It should have kicked off a blood feud that powered Raw through the fall and winter. Instead, badly timed PPVs that didn’t allow the rivalry to progress (Evolution and Survivor Series) hampered the feud, and things limped along for weeks until we got a match at TLC announced during Survivor Series. No call-out, no challenge from one man to another, just an unseen force dictating a match.

Because that’s what happens in a blood feud: An unseen authority figure passes word to an interviewer that a match has been made. It didn’t help that said match wasn’t all that great either.

What should have been a red-hot feud now looks like it could potentially damage both men’s standing on Raw.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.