The Story of McIntyre and Ziggler: The Fall of the Show
This Sunday, at Extreme Rules the Horror Show, the WWE is going to experiment with a few horrifying segments for your viewing pleasure:
Test what Seth Rollins looks like with only one eyeball
See if Braun Strowman and Bray Wyatt can keep their feud afloat
While these oddities will surely be unforgettable, talked about,and cause nausea (much like a night-long diarrhea spell), one match has me writhing and rolling with excitement rather than pain!
Dolph Ziggler vs Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship.
I had discussed the creation of McIntyre and Ziggler’s team, ‘the Show’, in a post yesterday and knew the story needed its conclusion and a recap of how it all went to hell.
Ultimately, I’m hoping to drum up more emotion for this story. Maybe a little bit more than the WWE has been able to whip up over the last few weeks. Getting Heath Slater involved was a great way to define the clear cut heel for 2020, but it is odd to revisit this tale and realize that Ziggler was the sympathetic figure by the end of it.
Just like any good villain origins story, we see the Drew created his own arch-nemesis by brushing him aside years ago. Will it come back to bite him? We will see.
But before we get into the separation of Drew and Dolph, they had one more high before it all came crashing down.
The Fall of the Show
Before the Show began to decline, they teamed up with Braun Strowman to take out the SHIELD week after week after week after week. And yes. Then one more week.
I actually declared it to be a resurgence after giving up on Ziggler and McIntyre. There they were: Standing tall with Braun Strowman at the conclusion of every Monday Night RAW with differing arrangements of the SHIELD members laying slain.
This lead to a clash with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins for the Raw Tag Team Championships at Hell in a Cell. While most of the match served as a great builder for all four competitors, nobody walked away looking as strong as Drew McIntyre. And part of that was because he was the only superstar to actually walk away from the ring was Drew:
(My thoughts back in 2018) “And when I’ve talked about fantastic uses of visuals for all of these matches (prematch, during, and post match), the sight of McIntyre carrying Ziggler and the tag titles with him after winning was pure genius. I know I talk about this tag team winning main event gold, but the superstar to eventually come out of this team as a “top of the company” main event champion, is Drew.”
Drew’s dominance continued over the next few weeks, including a clean victory over Dean Ambrose.
A clean win over a former WWE Champion does ALWAYS mean big things. Just look at all of the shenanigans that take place on one episode of RAW to ensure everyone looks strong and can bounce back the following Monday: Run-ins, roll-ups, using the ropes of leverage, count-outs. Clean wins are hard to come by when they aren’t squash matches.
And while the alliance between ‘the Show’ and Braun Strowman was crumbling, Drew demonstrated how much he cared for Ziggler in this act of true love:
The battles between the Show and the SHIELD paused for a beat as Roman Reigns made the major announcement that he was leaving the WWE due to his ongoing bout with Leukemia.
Using this as a major plot point (instead of just letting the WWE Universe wish Roman well), Dean Ambrose turned on Seth Rollins and destroyed the SHIELD. With the main opponent of Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler breaking up and Braun Strowman going on to battle Brock Lesnar and eventually lose, I figured now would be the best time to give Drew McIntyre a shot at the title.
Crazy... 14 months before Drew would win the Royal Rumble, I was ready for his title reign to begin.
The eventual fall of the Show came after Survivor Series. McIntyre had a very successful Survivor Series and began teaming with Corbin and Bobby Lashley. The Monday Night following Survivor Series turned into a night of recognition, by the decree of Constable Corbin.
As McIntyre celebrating his accomplishments thus far in 2018, Ziggler’s music rang through the arena. Dolph said he felt like the odd man out for this party and was passive-aggressively suggesting his invitation was lost in the mail. Drew, after all, had been his tag team partner since April and nowhere in the celebration was his name mentioned.
McIntyre squashed this theory and aggressively let Dolph know where they stood without batting an eye, blushing cheek, or showing any concern for the man he stood side by side with for months. He declared himself the brains and the brawn of the tag team and followed up by telling Dolph his only purpose was to get McIntyre to a prominent position. And his job was complete.
WWE followed this up with a match at the end of RAW, that for all intents and purposes was a simple squash. That was until some interference from Finn Balor helped Dolph Ziggler earn the very first pin of McIntyre since his return.
The next week on RAW, Drew got his revenge and thoroughly destroyed Ziggler between the bells and then even more so after.
This was a clear END to the relationship between these two and felt so wasted. Back-to-back weeks of torture for Ziggler pushed McIntyre into his next story-line with Finn Balor and The Show...was over.
As a fan of both men, I hoped for an entire winter of feuding. But McIntyre was meant for bigger things.
Extreme Rules Horror Show
We’re all in the future now, so we know how this all turns out. Pretty good, if you ask this McIntyre fan.
At Extreme Rules, Dolph and McIntyre appear to be getting the send-off they deserved back in 2018. Thankfully, their work in 2018 has paid off in spades and because of the wonderful job they did, I believe it helped the creative team believe in giving them this opportunity to tell the conclusion to their story.
To me, this is a tremendously well-told story and I hope that the fans of the WWE and Pro Wrestling see the gem the creative team uncovered in initially putting these two together and letting Dolph crash the Main Event scene in 2020. It’s even juicier when you realize that Drew created this problem for himself by pushing Ziggler away to find success for himself.
We’ve seen the same happen to Rocky Balboa, Spiderman, Batman, and Iron Man. It makes that potential loss seem so desirable (from a storytelling standpoint) and a continuation of this feud for a SummerSlam conclusion!
It's silly to say that a WWE Championship match will ‘steal the show’ on Sunday, but I guarantee it will be fantastic and I know it’ll be on the top of everyone’s mind come Monday morning.
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