— With CM Punk leaving WWE, there will be an interesting situation coming on February 12th. At this time, Punk is scheduled for an appearance on the Comedy Central show “@Midnight”. Given the amount of publicity that his leaving the company has received, one would think that his departure would be discussed during the appearance, which is something WWE would like to avoid.
WWE is also scheduled to hold Monday Night RAW in Chicago on March 3rd. WWE is very aware of the date, and the word is that they are holding out hope that they can get Punk back before then.
The situation, as previously reported, is in the hands of Vince McMahon.
— Dean Ambrose recently spoke to The Classical regarding the birth of the Shield and more. Here are the highlights…
On The Difference Between Jon Moxley and Dean Ambrose: Eh, I mean, a name’s just a name. I don’t think that’s all that big of a deal. You could call me an autobiographical kind of wrestler because if you went through my career, looking at me character-wise or by what I was doing at the time, you can kind of see that [my place in] real life would reflect in what I was doing in wrestling. To me, it’s very important that everything I do is real; it always has been to me. Everything I do is real or it’s really a reflection of me. I’ve never been a completely 100 percent fictional character. That works for some people—and there have been some great ones—but I’ve almost always just been an exaggerated mirror image of what you get when I roll out of bed in the morning. If I’m in a good mood, if I’m feeling arrogant, happy, sad, funny, angry, whatever it is, you’re going to get some sort of reflection of that in the performance. I mean, the guy I was four or five years ago—I’m not really in the same place then as I am now. Giving that same image off wouldn’t be authentic.
On The Birth of The Shield: 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.
