Dean Ambrose Am I missing something?

[Hegs]

I just watched Ambrose v Owens and I dont get Ambrose at all. His execution is sloppy, he looks weak and is not a good promo guy. Am I missing something in his performance or character?

[Superstar Sleeze]

I dont care for his character. He seems like a spastic, moody, sarcastic teenage loner.

 

He is probably the best seller among the men (Cena used to be the best then he became all bout DEM MOVEZ~!, Rusve might be better than Ambrose), which is why I tend to like him. I think he is incredibly effective in tag team and six-man tags at getting his ass kicked. His offense is fine. I am not in love with moves that come off the top rope onto standing opponents. I love his Tenryu tribute chop/punch. I would say in terms of bell-to-bell, he is a wrestler on the roster I look forward to watching. His promos/angles tend to do nothing for me.

[Loss]

The rebound lariat. The rebound lariat. How I hate. The rebound lariat.

[WingedEagle]

He was really solid in the Shield, but upon turning face and the split he developed that twitchy persona which is incredibly hard to take seriously. His offense has also become incredibly routine, with the plancha and rebound clothesline and a lot of weak punching in between. The character is really terrible though.

[Superstar Sleeze]

His plancha blows. One of the worst, super minimal impact. Though, recently he has started throwing himself into it. I forgot about that.

 

The selling, guys, the selling! He is good at that. We should support great selling especially when there is so little on the show.

[Hegs]

I'm glad I'm not alone in the world on this one.

[Exposer]

Ambrose is a good tag worker. Like Sleeze said, he's good working in peril and selling. His offense is pretty bad though. He also is typically a boring singles worker. And the rebound lariat is awful. He does have a couple of great TV matches with Rollins, but otherwise he's left a lot to be desired as a singles worker. I can't say he's even a top 15 worker in WWE today. Cesaro, Cena, Harper, Sasha, Bayley, Brock, Reigns, Sheamus, Big E, Rusev, Owens, Asuka, Becky, Emma, Joe, Zayn, Goldust, and Titus are better in my opinion.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I love the guy. I love the character and that he wrestles like his character should, wild and sloppy and crazy.

[Coffey]

Cesaro, Cena, Harper, Sasha, Bayley, Brock, Reigns, Sheamus, Big E, Rusev, Owens, Asuka, Becky, Emma, Joe, Zayn, Goldust, and Titus are better in my opinion.

 

This reminds me of how good Alberto El Patron is but how boring & bland he becomes in WWE as Alberto Del Rio.

[Cap]

I am not as high on him as some, but I do like some of the chaos he can bring to a match. It does make his matches feel dfferent, not always better, but different. His use of the rebound lariat did bring him way down for me. Fuck, I hate that move.

 

I honestly think at least some of the buzz is because people really like responding to the first 5 seconds of his music.

[Death From Above]

The rebound lariat. The rebound lariat. How I hate. The rebound lariat.

 

This is the one thing about him that really bugs me. It's so bad.

 

Nothing else about his ring work stands out more than a hundred other things guys do in WWE.

 

His character strikes me as a PG Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's fine for the tribute gimmick it is. "Guy that wears a leather jacket to be an outlaw" is sort of a timeless wrestling staple I would be sad if it totally died.

 

And not to take it off topic but I agree Rusev's selling rules. I love when he does his staggering, he's like a big wobbly jello man. But he also has some great offense. I'm sad I missed his whole super-push because I watch the League of Nations and constantly think this should be the focus guy in this group. Rusev does some of everything, I really like him.

[cpst]

In summer / early fall of 2014 when Ambrose was super over, he brought that feeling of "controlled chaos" to a lot of situations. They weakened his character after that. His best matches seem to be with Rollins; I liked the EC / MITB matches from 2015.

[cactus]

The rebound lariat. The rebound lariat. How I hate. The rebound lariat.

When he first started doing it, it was one of my favorite spots in wrestling. Ambrose using it every single match he's in as a signature move has made me hate it. It should only be used sparingly or it ends up looking hokey and stupid as it does now.

[Laz]

I love the guy. I love the character and that he wrestles like his character should, wild and sloppy and crazy.

This. I got turned onto him right as he was signed and looked up as much Jon Moxley work as I could find, and holy hell was he just the most spastic and crazy promo guy since Piper. He's so toned down in WWE he's almost a different person entirely, but he stil shows that urgency and general craziness as Ambrose. He's the guy you know is going to snap and is barely holding it together.

[El Dragon]

Dean Ambrose to me is a classic case of a guy who has shown in different settings he can be really really good, but in his current role he's really really not. He's a very good seller, yes, but his offense is the worst in the company.

 

Him and Bray Wyatt are my standard bearers for "People who have been hurt the most that they don't just do arena brawls anymore". Both should be fist fighting and bleeding, not doing what they are.

 

In summer / early fall of 2014 when Ambrose was super over, he brought that feeling of "controlled chaos" to a lot of situations. They weakened his character after that. His best matches seem to be with Rollins; I liked the EC / MITB matches from 2015.

 

And even that has been pretty hit or miss. I thought his matches with Seth this Summer were firmly in the "mediocre to good" range, which isn't bad but they were being given main event spots.

[Parties]

What he's good at is in direct opposition to what they want. Brawling, bleeding, hateful promos, smarm, heeling on the crowd, improvisation. 2-3 years ago he was working a better version of Owens’ current gimmick. He was viewed as the clear leader of the Shield in its inception. He’s just in a bad role right now - #3 or #4 babyface in a company that’s only capable of pushing 1-2 at a time. He’s not a Sheamus or Cesaro athlete who can work like a machine through repetition to build a progressively strong version of the same match every night.

Ambrose has said that of his WWE peers, he particularly admires Randy Orton. He’s well on his way to being the Orton Lite to Reigns’ take on Cena Lite.

[GOTNW]

He is a terrible wrestler currently so you're not missing anything really. I liked him as a wacky heel in FCW but that's really the last time he was any good.

[The Man in Blak]

Ambrose was red hot coming out of the Shield breakup, but they have swung and missed on just about everything he was involved in after Money in the Bank 2014.

 

2014:

- They bait-and-switched his match with Rollins on Battleground 2014 when the Ambrose/Rollins feud was arguably at its peak.

- On a Raw leading up to SummerSlam, Ambrose takes the next step in this bitter blood feud and...pranks Seth Rollins by pouring soda and popcorn into his Money in the Bank suitcase.

- They had Ambrose pick the Lumberjack Match stipulation for SummerSlam 2014, where he promptly loses anyway due to interference from Kane.

- Ambrose ended up answering an open challenge from Rollins at Night of Champions 2014, only to have a brawl with Rollins broken up by security and the Authority. No match. (Again.)

- Ambrose finally got a main event match with Rollins at Hell in the Cell 2014, which was completely torpedoed by Bray Wyatt's hologram interference in a truly terrible angle. Rollins wins.

- Ambrose gets himself disqualified and loses against Bray Wyatt at Survivor Series 2014 because reasons, I guess.

- After a meandering twenty-five minute stunt show match, Ambrose decides to explode his own face with a gimmicked television and lose to Bray Wyatt at TLC 2014.

 

2015:

- Ambrose makes the final four at the 2015 Royal Rumble, but gets tossed by Kane and Big Show, triggering a massive backlash from the crowd against Roman Reigns' telegraphed win.

- Dean gets shunted into an undercard IC title match with Bad News Barrett at Fastlane 2015 and loses by getting himself disqualified again.

- He continues his IC title pursuit with the opening IC title ladder match at Wrestlemania 31, which ends up being won by Daniel Bryan.

- Ambrose opens Extreme Rules 2015 in a goofy Chicago Street Fight with Luke Harper that re-used the two segment gimmick from Piper/Goldust at WM12. And he wins on PPV for the first time in almost a year!

- Sheamus beats Ambrose by DQ for the King of the Ring network special.

- Somehow, Ambrose gets included in the Fatal Four Way main event for the world title at Payback 2015 with Randy Orton, Rollins and Reigns. Rollins wins.

- Ambrose pins Rollins at Elimination Chamber thanks to a second referee, but the decision gets reversed to a DQ win for Ambrose. Ambrose steals the title anyway in one of his better written moments of this period.

- Just to make sure they didn't make the same mistake twice and boost Ambrose again, Rollins decisively beats Ambrose in a lengthy (and underwhelming) minute main event ladder match at Money in the Bank 2015. No interference, no shenanigans.

 

From there, he's mostly been relegated to "second banana" status with Reigns with the exception of Survivor Series 2015, where he had one of his best WWE singles performance against Kevin Owens in the run up to the tournament final against Reigns. Which -- surprise -- he lost.

 

The booking and writing surrounding his character have been dreadful for a long time running now, but that doesn't excuse the opportunities for lengthy main event matches with Rollins that have been decent at best. In the process, an alarming amount of his PPV losses have established him as a clueless babyface that makes Sting look like a chess master.

 

Pair that lack of credibility with a tendency to fall into schtick with stuff like the rebound lariat -- which is a cool spot that someone has decided has to be in every match, even if Ambrose deliberately falls into it -- and you've got a guy that is nowhere near where he was in the summer of 2014.

[Jimmy Redman]

I absolutely despair for the day that Dean Ambrose doesn't have "shitty offense". He's a fucking lunatic babbling crack addict, what exactly about him makes you think he's in control of his own body? Or that what he needs is more wrestling moves? We're lucky that he remembers how to do any moves at all and doesn't just eye gouge and bite people's noses off.

 

I swear to God I saw someone on another board say that what Ambrose needs is to mat wrestle more. TO MAT WRESTLE. Like seriously what the fuck.

 

There's that conversation going on in the Sabu thread about how Sabu's style, his botches and recklessness are the whole point of him and adds to his charm. To me this is the same thing. Ambrose is supposed to be a crazy lunatic, he should damn well wrestle like one. It may not make for "good matches" in a way that pleases you personally, but fucks sake.

 

Ambrose's problem is that he's stuck in WWE in 2016, the land of constant TV rematches with sterile non-storylines. He can't just go brawling all over the place, he can't fully portray something wild and out of control when he's boxed into the house style of "repeat your signature spots every match". He can't really let loose on the mic, which is his biggest strength. He's trying to be crazy while moving down the monotonous production line that is WWE programming, which makes crazy impossible.

[Laz]

Exactly. They hired a bloody brawler who cut great TDK Joker-esque promos and made him into "I put slime in the briefcase lol." That's part of the reason why I'm not enthusiastic about the NJPW signings, since WWE seems adamant on taking away what makes guys special.

[jcmmnx]

I just don't think he's a good fit for the modern WWE high spot heavy 2.9 style. All his best promo work has been the unscripted post show promos that end up not being seen by 95% of the fan base. Most of his biggest strengths as a wrestler are things WWE shuns.

[fakeplastictrees]

I'm not a big Dean Ambrose fan for the simple fact that I feel like he is a character that is in a G rated movie and really should be in an R rated moved. As mentioned, the promos are good and when I see his stuff on youtube (and the non-ring in promos on Raw), I wonder why that presentation isn't [put into the forefront more as that is the actual interesting aspect of his work. I can go either way on his matches, but the majority of them do not offend me. I just know he could do so much more and catch strong fire if allowed to do so.

[Quentin Skinner]

I've liked the guy a lot in the past, but this current incarnation makes me never want to ever watch when he's on TV (a lot of it due to his presentation, "The Lunatic Fringe, Maggle!). It's a shame because he actually is a very talented guy. The 30 minute Iron Man with Rollins from FCW is one of my favorite WWE matches of the last 5 years. He can go in the ring, great on the mic when allowed to showcase it, and very charismatic. If the company didn't kill his momentum so they could make room for Roman Reigns, he could probably be the lead face considering the popularity he has.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I absolutely despair for the day that Dean Ambrose doesn't have "shitty offense". He's a fucking lunatic babbling crack addict, what exactly about him makes you think he's in control of his own body? Or that what he needs is more wrestling moves? We're lucky that he remembers how to do any moves at all and doesn't just eye gouge and bite people's noses off.

 

I swear to God I saw someone on another board say that what Ambrose needs is to mat wrestle more. TO MAT WRESTLE. Like seriously what the fuck.

 

There's that conversation going on in the Sabu thread about how Sabu's style, his botches and recklessness are the whole point of him and adds to his charm. To me this is the same thing. Ambrose is supposed to be a crazy lunatic, he should damn well wrestle like one. It may not make for "good matches" in a way that pleases you personally, but fucks sake.

 

Ambrose's problem is that he's stuck in WWE in 2016, the land of constant TV rematches with sterile non-storylines. He can't just go brawling all over the place, he can't fully portray something wild and out of control when he's boxed into the house style of "repeat your signature spots every match". He can't really let loose on the mic, which is his biggest strength. He's trying to be crazy while moving down the monotonous production line that is WWE programming, which makes crazy impossible.

That's fine, but you basically explain everyone has a gripe with him, gripe. His suicide dive is the least suicide-y ever. OMFG he hit an elbow drop on a standing opponent instead of a fallen opponent. REBEL~! He is way too watered down.

 

The guy you describe that just bites and gouges sounds fucking awesome. Ambrose needs to realize that currently this is a half-baked, half-assed character.

 

So either needs to Fuck you, WWE this is how I am going to do shit and if you dont like it do something about it.

 

Or he needs to work inside the system. He has shown an aptitude for doing slow build matches especially with CM Punk and in my opinion (I may be alone) with Seth Rollins. So he needs to tweak his character to be one that does do mat work and layers in his selling. Why not accentuate that positive?

 

If he stays on this course, I am sure that will be lucrative for him, but it will be missed an opportunity for something greater and like the rest of WWE he will be just playing it safe.

[Matt D]

I want mat wrestling but I want it all to be nostril based holds.