Match Guide Reviews: Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins v The Bar, Summer Slam 2017
Let me take you back to another time and begin at the beginning.
This week marks the relaunch of my podcast The AEW Match Guide (first episode drops Wednesday, teaser at the end of the column) but I was a wrestling writer before I was a podcaster so it felt fitting to first dust off the keyboard and give this Substack some attention.
I know many of you came here originally for The AEW Match Guide Countdown, a list celebrating the greatest wrestling AEW has produced, so in the spirit of that on the off weeks of my podcast I will be posting match reviews here.
So to begin this project let me sit you down and bring you back to the match that made me want to write about wrestling in the first place. It’s a time before AEW, before I had got into New Japan with any kind of regularity, before I’d watched a single episode of BTE, it may seem odd for someone who doesn’t even watch WWE any more but the beginning is always a good place to start.
Dean Ambrose & Seth Rollins v The Bar
RAW Tag Team Championships, Summerslam 2017
Back to where it all began for me. In July 2017 I was writing about cycling, staying up too late at night shooting out hot takes and live blogging the Tour De France for an Australian sports site. It was a fun gig but something else caught my eye, a story I held near and dear to my wrestling heart had entered a new chapter, the story of Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins.
I won’t spend too long writing about the build-up, we all know it well and lord knows in the last seven years I’ve spent many a column inch going over it. Watching through it again in 2024 though, I was struck by how much the themes explored in this match’s build-up of friendship, brotherhood, betrayal and forgiveness would continue to be the ones that resonated with me as I wrote and podcasted about wrestling.
Both wrestlers are at peak form as they go back and forth each week over the sin Seth Rollins committed when he betrayed The Shield three years earlier. Dean is defiant and refuses Rollins claims to have changed but now having also been betrayed and turned over a new leaf, Rollins is actually in a position to challenge Dean’s self-righteousness. Words cannot repair the relationship for either man though so it is fitting that they don’t truly come together until they are forced into combat when The Bar attack them the week before Summer Slam. It was in the fire of the fight that their bond was formed, so it was only there that it could be remade.
It has honestly been years since I watched this match and at least a year since I watched a Dean Ambrose match, but coming back to this felt like putting on an old pair of boots. Of course, much of that is helped by the character of Jon Moxley, who remains a lynchpin of my fandom, very much being an expansion of the character of Dean Ambrose. He’s always been a blue-collar craftsman who takes enjoyment and pride in a hard fight, a man who values the bonds of brotherhood formed through combat over just about anything else. He’s lost his singlet, his hair and an ungodly amount of blood since leaving WWE, but the heart of this character is still very much the same.
I can’t forget Seth Rollins either. While I have not continued to follow him in the way I did before I stopped watching the WWE in 2019, he is a guy who maintains my utmost respect for continually rising to the challenges put in front of him.
It is a testament to both wrestlers and the strength of their story together that five weeks of build could be done around them exchanging a simple fist bump together.
To the match though and while this match may not be anything revolutionary in the ring, it is the epitome of a tried and tested formula being the best way forward. Riding the momentum of reuniting, the duo of Ambrose & Rollins get on top early, Sheamus & Cesaro regroup and by working as a team with a planned assault of Ambrose on the apron manage to gain the numbers advantage on the legal man Rollins.
This match is probably most infamously remembered for the beach ball moment where Cesaro jumped the guard rail and walked into the stands to collect and tear up a beach ball that some in the crowd were tossing about. It was an inspired thing for Cesaro to do, having the double effect of getting him a small amount of heat from those tossing it around but also bringing the audience back into the match. All I can say is that thank God we have moved beyond the beach ball era of wrestling crowds, the people who brought them along have either been engaged by something more to their liking or are gone althgether, both of which are fine by me.
The best thing this match does in my mind is slowly tell the story of Ambrose and Rollins getting back on the same page in ring. At this point it has been three years since they were in The Shield together so it stands to reason that they would be a little off with their timing, especially when faced with two absolute pros in Sheamus & Cesaro. After he recovers Ambrose takes a risk to save Rollins and the Shield brothers are able to this time stay on the same page with stereo Suicide Dives followed by a modified Heart Attack with Rollins hitting a Sling Blade.
I love that not only are they on the same page at this point but when they get there they are both fired up by the ignition of that old flame. They ride the adrenaline, slapping and high-fiving each other as they swarm in to attack their opponents.
The ending is a fitting close to the Rollins & Ambrose arc with Seth, the one who originally put himself before his bothers being the one to save Ambrose, giving the partner he once betrayed the final move and pin.
It’s a fun match and I’m very glad I went back to watch it. These two would have multiple programs after this one to varying degrees of success but this particular build-up and match remains a complete home run.
I still think there is juice in this too. Since leaving WWE Jon Moxley has squared off with many of the guys I once dreamed of seeing him face but Tyler Black showing up in AEW for another chapter of their saga may just be my ultimate dream scenario. Ambrose returning as a shadow of the past for Rollins and even Reigns after so much water has gone under the bridge might even make me want to watch the WWE. Both scenarios seem unlikely right now but if someone had told us in 2017 what kind of ground Ambrose and Rollins careers would cover in the next seven years we’d probably think that was even more crazy.
To close, I owe a lot to this match. This is the match that brought me to the dance. It inspired me to put my thoughts on the internet in the old Lords of Pain Columns Form and set me on a course that would see me pump out close to 200 columns, produce 40 podcasts, write God knows how many tweets, make countless priceless memories and form friendships that I still hold to this day.
Going back to where it began and writing this has got me fired up though. It makes me want to celebrate wrestling and to dig back to other matches I’ve loved. As fun as the weekly news, intrigue and politics of wrestling can be my fandom is never more alive than when I’m focusing on what happens in the ring.
I hope you want to join me.
As I noted above my podcast The AEW Match Guide will be released this Wednesday, there is a teaser below. You can subscribe to it on your podcast player of choice. If you’d like to suggest a match for me to cover here or on the podcast then feel free to leave me a comment below or on the AEW Channel of the Social Suplex Discord.
I plan to continue to post a match review here every fortnight, on the off weeks of the podcast. Subscribe if you’d like to keep up with it and let me know what you remember of Ambrose & Rollins v The Bar in the comments below.