365 Wrestling, Day 36: Leakee vs. Seth Rollins vs. Dean Ambrose (FCW, 2/5/12)

365 match reviews, one for each date on the yearly calendar? Challenge accepted. Welcome to 365 Wrestling.

It’s a fair criticism that WWE struggles to make new stars but when The Shield formed, it was the launching pad for three future headliners.

Together, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns made a greater impact as a unit than any WWE faction or group since D-Generation X. Each also went on to stardom individually. Rollins and Reigns remain fixtures at the top of the card for WWE, and Reigns finally has blossomed into the company’s unquestioned top draw. Ambrose, who you also may know as Jon Moxley, has played a prominent role throughout the short and growing history of All Elite Wrestling.

After the Shield dissolved the first time, an eventual match between the three of them seemed inevitable. I thought it would happen at a flagship event like WrestleMania or SummerSlam. Instead, they met in a triple threat at Battleground in 2016 — right after WWE went to a brand split — for the WWE Title.

However… before they became The Shield, these three crossed paths one other time, when they were in the WWE developmental system.

You can find this match on YouTube.

The Match

Before NXT went from a quasi-reality competition to WWE’s developmental-territory-turned-third brand-turned-developmental-territory, WWE used Florida Championship Wrestling to prepare its rising talent. All three members of the Shield were part of the FCW roster, and meet here in a triple threat match to determine the next challenger to Florida Heavyweight Champion Leo Kruger (you may know him better as Adam Rose).

Reigns is going by Leakee (pronounced lay-ah-key) here. It sounds good but it reads like “leaky”, which is why I am guessing the name did not stick. Reigns gets enough guff on social media as is, imagine how bad it would be if his name looked like “leaky.” And people thought Bron Breakker got a bad hand from the WWE name generator.

But I digress…

Rollins and Ambrose were veterans of the independent scene before coming to WWE, while Leakee is about 18 months into his wrestling career. Leakee is much leaner than the Reigns we know now, not to mention greener. He also shows some athleticism that isn’t part of the usual Reigns game. Early in the match, he kips up out of a Rollins headscissors. Later, he busts out a leapfrog. And his finisher is Checkmate — a spinning bulldog where he leaps and then changes direction in midair.

Ambrose is the engine that keeps the match moving. He spends some time jawing at William Regal on commentary and Regal talks about their past history — they wrestled once in FCW about three months before this match aired — and how the two are bound for another violent collision. Regal’s verbiage and delivery here is tremendous and made me want to see more of their feud in FCW — likely as part of this project. Ambrose starts the assault on Leakee, then double-crosses Rollins to queue the finishing stretch. Ambrose also advances the story with Regal, borrowing the Regal Stretch and the knee trembler from the Englishman.

Rollins is doing the same schtick he later does in NXT, with the floor-punching, moshing entrance. He’s the forgotten third man in this match at times but everything he does is smooth and looks good. He delivers a particularly on-point springboard knee during the finishing stretch.

Most of what happens here is standard WWE multi-man match fare that you’ve likely seen a hundred times before, but the finish stands out. Leakee blocks Ambrose’s finisher and hoists both his future stablemates for a double Samoan drop. It’s an impressive show of strength and succeeds in the ultimate goal to elevate him as a title contender.

Final Rating: 5.4

This is a fun way to spend about 10 minutes and an interesting snapshot into the past history of three of the most significant wrestlers of this generation.

Up Next

A historic match from New Japan.

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