5 Great Uses Of Strategy In Modern WWE Matches

The Shield, one of WWE's greatest ever factions, restored the psychological art of group wrestling throughout their classic 2012 to 2014 stint with an emphasis on systematic bisection.

The strategy they employed in their victory over Evolution was typically advanced. The frenetic Seth Rollins was deployed in the opening exchanges in order to unglue the crowd and bewilder the Shield's more stationary opponents. His standing as the smaller, athletic workhorse of the group also lent itself to the game plan; his protracted beatdown provoked the crowd into an audible show of support while tiring out Batista, Evolution's shortform powerhouse.

Ambrose's relentless, rash-like offence was cut off by Evolution's own numbers game, a necessary psychological substitution given The Shield's recent realignment to the face role. The Shield as faces would then subvert the dynamics of the match in the finishing sequence, in an iteration so intelligent that it demanded inclusion here ahead of the many instances in which they deployed the divide and conquer tactic.

Ambrose ran the length of the announce tables to spectacularly take out Triple H and Randy Orton with a dive, before isolating and drawing them out towards the lower echelons of the arena seating sections. Rollins hid in plain sight and emerged from a balcony to take out HHH and Orton and save his stablemate with an awe-inspiring dive of his own.

This left Batista on his lonesome back in the ring. Batista, especially in his 2014 return, was never known for his endurance. He was the perfect carcass to pick at the coda of a whirlwind twenty minute epic. Despite one last jump scare, the sweating, leggy Batista was swatted away by Reigns' spear.

The match could not have been more flattering to the Hounds of Justice; in soundly defeating the more experienced group with their thrillingly reformist update on the tag team art, Ambrose, Rollins, and Reigns were shown, ironically, to be the men who had evolved it.