Kofi Kingston Reveals Big E Was Originally Going To Be Part Of The Shield

The current WWE Champion Big E was nearly a part of The Shield stable years before he joined New Day, according to Kofi Kingston.

The trio known as The Shield debuted at 2012 Survivor Series when they helped CM Punk retain the WWE Championship match against Ryback and John Cena. The trio attacked Rhyno and put him through a table. The group consisted of Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose (AEW’s Jon Moxley).

It could be argued that The Shield was the greatest stable in WWE history during their 19 months together. Reigns and Rollins have gone on to become two of the biggest stars in WWE history with multiple World Championships and WrestleMania main event matches. While Moxley left WWE, he had a good run as a WWE Champion and a headliner as well. It could be argued that Moxley had his best year when he was a World Champion in AEW as well. There are not many stables in wrestling history that have created three main eventers, but The Shield did exactly that.

The interesting thing about the group is that there could have been different members that were part of it. Kofi Kingston spoke to Rich Ucchino of Sportskeeda Wrestling with Kofi revealing that Big E was actually considered to be a part of The Shield:

“Big E will tell the story a lot better, but long-story-short, he was actually supposed to be in the Shield a long time ago, way way back when they were trying to pick people from FCW to come up. So Roman gets the call, Roman goes off, builds himself, and does all these incredible things and incredible run with The Shield. Roman is Roman and also Big E has done some incredible things and [shown] some incredible growth . . . Now, everyone loves Big E, so there’s a big journey there too.”

It’s interesting to think about what would have happened to the careers of Big E and Roman Reigns if Big E was in that spot instead of Reigns. Clearly, WWE made the right call with Reigns while Big E went onto have a lot of success as part of New Day a few years after this.

Reigns is the current WWE Universal Champion on Smackdown while Reigns is the WWE Champion on Raw. The two men wrestled twice on last night’s episode of Raw with Reigns picking up victories in a six-man tag and also a triple threat match. If WWE goes with the same Survivor Series format this year then Reigns and Big E could meet in singles acation at the November pay-per-view event in Brooklyn.