This review was commissioned by Nicholas Anderson over on my Ko-fi account.
Edited on September 11, 2025, 11:19 AM for factual correctness.
Indulge me, please.
The first thing I felt when seeing this match again was distance. Not an emotional distance, quite the opposite really, but rather the weighty stretch of time between now and then. I’ve been a wrestling fan long enough to remember seeing this as it happened, and checking the dates on it for this commission short circuited my brain a little to see that it’s been over a decade since this match. In the time since, so much has changed, even just looking inward here at the people participating in this match. Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins feel a million miles away from the talents that they were, Erick Rowan stuck in a lesser tribute act to this time on TV, Dean Ambrose might be the only person in this match better off now than where he was then in both position and talent. Most painfully, of course, Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper gone too soon.
Nostalgia’s a force that most critics impulsively try to work against, it’s often seen as something of a blinding factor that obfuscates the truth. That’s often true, especially given that nostalgia for childhood is simply a yearning for simpler things before consequence and responsibility or, in the case of pop culture, before a finer developed sense of taste. But one can’t ever truly kill nostalgia, in the spirit or in the mind, and it’s an important piece of the puzzle for one’s critical faculties. As with all emotions, it can be tied to truth or fabrication, and when it links to the former, it is a powerful thing. It’s a connection to what has been, and importantly, what could be yet.
There’s an immense feeling of nostalgia wrapped up in this match. A lot of it, personal. This match happened at the tail end of my time in high school, a period in my life that coincided with WWE TV being easily accessible to my friends. Burgeoning forum nerd that I was amidst mostly casual and social wrestling watchers, one thing that was easy to agree on was The Shield. I still remember cutting selfie promos with friends into an iPod touch, recreating the handheld promo style The Shield utilzied early in their run.
Beyond that though, I have nostalgia for what’s accomplished in this match. Because Jesus Christ, does so much of it just fucking rock.
For all the WWE’s numerous sins and creative faults even in brighter times, one thing they achieved in this early 2010s era was building up two separate acts parallel to each other, and making it all the more important when they finally touch. They do that here in a way they really haven’t achieved elsewhere in their history–creating two hot, over trios teams that the fans were in love with. Ostensibly entering the WWE as heels both, there just was no denying the magnetic pull that both The Shield and The Wyatt Family had on the audience. For The Shield at this point in their run, they’ve already amassed what’s likely the greatest trios repertoire in WWE history, essentially thrust straight into the main event and delivering week in and week out. The Wyatts didn’t have quite the same build behind them, drawing fans in primarily on aesthetic with their cult-like vignettes and cryptic promos. This too at a time when Bray Wyatt still had something to prove in the traditional pro wrestling sense of things, backing up the act in the ring and yet to swerve into the highly divisive theatrics of his final run.
Growing in popularity at the same time, the eventual clash was catnip to the viewing audience. Again, both teams came in heel, such that when it finally came time to fight, there was a truer feeling for the fans of choosing a side. There was just enough stylistic and presentational difference between both units that drawing a line in the sand felt more meaningful, especially given that there was no true turning point that shifted either team’s allegiances. Listen to the crowd in attendance during this match, and you’ll hear what I mean. The line is split pretty much down the middle.
And yes, of course they nail it in the ring too.
By this point, The Shield are a well-oiled machine, not merely in kayfabe but as an actual act. They’ve perfected the formula, their chemistry is unreal, and they work together in such wonderful synchronicity. A still spry Rollins bumps and flies like a maniac here, capturing that sort of magic recklessness that time has sanded down, Ambrose brings the unhinged energy with things like his big wild punches and biting, and Reigns is the consummate power worker with the heavy hands and big slams. It just fucking works. The Wyatts don’t have quite as much of that same experience, but they do succeed in feeling like a force on the level of The Shield. It’s a story that develops organically in the ring, as a consequence of how these two teams fight. It’s a rare example in the WWE of it feeling intentional that the act of wrestling reveals far more about the people involved than anything else.
Here, for example, the Wyatts don’t have quite the same deep repertoire of combination sequences that The Shield have perfected. What they do have though is a scrappy violence that equals the ferocity The Shield come at their opponents with. There’s a pettiness on display here one doesn’t often get in the WWE. It’s in the way both Harper and Rowan are constantly scratching at eyeballs or fishhooking mouths or how Wyatt grabs Rollins by his vest for leverage. It’s an ugliness to the fight that The Shield attempt to match as well, note how Rollins grabs Harper’s top to pull him back into the corner about halfway into the match.
The ugliness means that there’s not a traditional structure at play here either. Certainly the early skirmish initiated by Ambrose and Wyatt means we never get the traditional shine/heat/comeback three-act match here. The initial stages are more of a struggle for control, far more in line with one of the better King’s Road multiman tags than anything else. The Wyatts don’t necessarily cheat to take their control, nor does The Shield. The trade off of giving up the usual control segment/hot tag structure, is this genuine sense of animosity and unpredictability lurking at the edges of the match. Because of that pressure cooker atmosphere though, when things finally do well and truly break down, it’s such a cathartic release of energy and emotion in the match.
When the tags start meaning less and the bombs start flying, it feels less like a push into an excuse to do moves, and more like a “Well, what did you expect?” consequence of putting all this hatred in such close proximity. Perhaps significantly, there’s not a lot the workers do here to bask in the flashier moments. They’re not seeking that approval from the audience, nor does it ever feel like they’re intentionally trying to overwhelm the senses. Chief amongst everything is the feeling of the thing, and that is that they just want to fucking hurt each other. And at a certain point, the best, most direct way to do that is to just fling themselves full force at each other.
The trick is that the brawl plays out so naturally, that one when one finally sees the shape of what’s being constructed, it’s already too late for both the fans and the players in the ring. The brawl isn’t just to get those big high octane spots in, it’s a real strategy that matters to the wrestlers. Wyatt instigates the brawl, and uses it to neutralize Ambrose out in the crowd. Rowan controls Reigns in the ring while Wyatt and Harper set up the table on the outside to put Rollins through.
Then when Roman’s alone, it’s practically perfection.
As I mentioned The Shield never truly made a hardline switch to being babyfaces. They simply got over by being sick as hell and having great matches. But if there ever was a moment I could point to, it might be right here with Roman Reigns alone in the ring and the Wyatts surrounding him on each side. Babyface turn by pure karma. The feeling of The Wyatts closing in isn’t “The Shield finally got got,” but something more akin to dread. How do you like it now?
Even then, it doesn’t go half as smooth if Roman doesn’t fight back. A heel would crumble in this moment of poetic justice, whereas Roman doubles the fuck down, having a final comeback that might be the best tag work he’s ever done on top of already being an excellent hot tag by this point. It’s sympathetic, it’s badass, you think that maybe he can get it down even on his own. It’s a performance so powerful and rich that even through all the hate and bad booking of the decade to come, I always just had to shrug my shoulders and say, “I get it though. I get why they see it.”
Forgive my nostalgia, but this is something totally different. Near perfectly structured on a night when everyone involved seemed to be entering an elusive flow state. Everything done hits just as intended, all the choices being both meaningful and seemingly spontaneous in the moment–a difficult thing to do anywhere in pro wrestling. It might just be the best tag team match in WWE history. With respect to Canadian Stampede and the Two Man Power Trip/Canadians matches, I just don’t think anything quite captures the combined sense of combustibility and escalating action achieved here. Perhaps the only thing missing is that this is a match that feels like it sets the table for things never to come. This never becomes the world changing central draw to the whole show that it could have been, and I’m told gets wrapped up somewhat unceremoniously later in the year. We should remember this as a rivalry for decades to come, but time and mishandling leaves it as a singular match instead.
Not only can it never be recreated due to the inevitability of time and death, but I don’t think it’s something that the WWE ever has any interest in recapturing again. Two trios acts that feel like main event draws as a unit, not as individuals? It’s been eleven years and they haven’t done it yet. I don’t think they ever can again.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Oh yeah, there’s just so little wasted motion here and hardly a single down period to be spoken of. Tag team wrestling has an easy advantage over the King’s Road epic (hence why I prefer the tags of that period to the singles too) as the moving parts create avenues for drama and pacing that can never quite be replicated in a longer singles match. As I’ve already said earlier in the review, this has way more in common with the Fan Appreciation Night ‘91 tag than anything else, and that’s massive point in its favor.
Rating: ****¾
