Among the glorious chaos of the Night 2 main event at WrestleMania 40, one of the more surreal moments was when The Shield’s music hit. The drama built up until Seth Rollins, dressed as he did back when the group was together, entered the ring with a steel chair (though the cameras missed it).
He was immediately decked by a Roman Reigns Superman punch, but it turns out Rollins was there for an important storytelling reason. Given the choice between hitting Rollins or Cody Rhodes with the chair, Reigns smashed Seth across the back as payback for then he turned on his Shield teammates and broke up the group years ago.
That proved costly, as it gave Rhodes the chance to recover and win the match. So everything worked on in logical fashion, and Rhodes was even seen after his victory saying a special thank you to Rollins.
Still, because Rollins had been in a grueling match earlier that night against Drew McIntyre, the first impulse was that he couldn’t possibly be coming to the rescue. Despite every rational reason why it couldn’t work, there was a second or two where many WWE fans thought the same thing: Wait, is Dean Ambrose really coming out here?
The third member of The Shield has been better known in recent years as Jon Moxley and has worked for AEW since 2019. That fact alone would seem to rule out any kind of participation at WWE’s biggest event, but it turns out there’s an even simpler explanation.
As ComicBook.com’s Liam Crowley found out directly from AEW CEO, GM and head of creative Tony Khan, “WWE did not reach out to AEW about using Jon Moxley for a one-off appearance.” That’s that.
Whether Khan would have agreed to do it is an interesting “what if.” It almost doesn’t matter in the end, both because Rollins turned out to be the proper person in that spot and because in the moment, it was enough that The Shield’s music made viewers believe Moxley might be coming.
As cool as it would have been to see him, the mere uncertainty worked in WWE’s favor, making for a small but clever wrinkle in what turned out to be a very entertaining match.
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