WWE Fast Lane: 6 Things You Need To Know About Reigns Vs. Bryan

5. Reigns Pinned Bryan In His First Main Roster Match

It was WWE TLC 2012. The Shield debuted a month earlier at Survivor Series when they helped CM Punk retain the WWE Title. This was their first televised match on the roster. It was originally going to be a regular six man tag against the face team of Daniel Bryan, Kane and Ryback. Then WWE found out that CM Punk was hurt couldn’t defend his title at the show, so they made this a six man tag match with TLC rules.

Since it was a TLC match it was Tornado Tag rules, so all six guys could brawl the entire time. A lot of the time when you have a match in those settings it might only got 10-15 minutes or so because without any tags it can get pretty tiring. Give credit to these six guys because they went 23 minutes and had one of the best matches of the year.

It was incredible to see how good the Shield guys were in their first televised match. There were some big spots in the match like Rollins doing a crazy bump through tables and it looked like he hit his head hard. Other weapons and table spots were done to put over the physicality of it all.

What’s interesting about Reigns role in the match is that we didn’t know that much about him. Rollins and Ambrose were indy wrestling darlings that were highly touted in WWE developmental as well. Reigns was more of an unknown. He has an impressive look, but he was still considered a project.

For the finish, Reigns pinned Bryan after a Powerbomb off the middle rope that also put Bryan through a table. That was over two years ago. Now they’re headlining a PPV together. Time flies.