Following the break up of the incredibly successful stable he was a part of, The Shield, Dean Ambrose has gone on to a very well received solo career in the WWE . This Sunday, he goes into WrestleMania to face six other competitors in a ladder match for the Intercontinental Championship.

I sat down with Ambrose to speak to him about his Mania match, his feelings on going solo in the past year and his starring role in the upcoming WWE movie, Lockdown.

Dean Ambrose.

Ambrose goes flying.

It feels very good. The cool thing about now is everything I have now or get now or any success I can scrape up on a daily basis, it’s all mine and I earned it. It belongs solely to me and I don’t have to share it with anybody. I don’t have to worry about anybody. It’s nice being on my own because I don’t have to worry about anybody else. I can try something, try whatever I want, do whatever I want, do my own thing. If something fails, it’s on me. If it does good, it’s on me. I get to reap 100% of the rewards of my work where as before, not as much so it’s nice. It’s nice being on my own. It’s very gratifying. It’ll be gratifying on Sunday to walk out of WrestleMania by myself, 100% on my own. I made it to this match and was able to make this match a very anticipated match on the show.Everybody wants to be in the main event of WrestleMania and everybody wants the top of the billing kind of thing but my spot on WrestleMania this year is the spot that I earned. Whether it’s the perfect spot… For me this is the best place to be but whether you want to call it the main event or not, I earned my spot on WrestleMania this year through my own hard work so I’ll be able to go out on Sunday and enjoy that. The last two years, WrestleMania was kind of like being part of a football team, walking out together, getting all pumped up like let’s go out there but this year I’ll be able to -- this year will be the 16 year old kid who started this walking out on his own at WrestleMania for the first time so there’s something cool with that too.All of my opponents in this match, it’s the greatest crew of guys you could ask for because it’s a lot of good egos and no bad egos. All six of those other guys are guys that I would love to share the ring with on any other night of the week. All guys that are hungry and have a little bit of competitiveness between us all because we all want to one up each other. Like if Dolph does a nice dropkick. I want to do something else to top that. That’s what really creates magic is when we all start pushing each other a little bit. All guys who want to win the Intercontinental championship but also want to be great Intercontinental champions. Everybody wants to have that WrestleMania moment I guess, so to speak. It’s the perfect crew of guys and it’s cool because it’s such an eclectic mix. We’ve got big dudes, nasty dudes, mean dudes, violent dudes, high-flying dudes. We’ve got a little bit of everything. There’s not anything missing in this match from personality wise to style wise. You could see anything happen on Sunday in this match.From day one, The Shield was a vehicle. It wasn’t, “This is what we’re doing for the rest of our lives.” It was this is the vehicle we’ll use to bust into WWE, to ride to the top of it and then we fight each other. That was always the plan. Get to the top of WWE, kick everyone else off the top of the hill and then fight each other. That’s what we did. All of our routes are a little bit different. I’m in a situation where I’m going to have to kind of fight and scratch and claw and earn and scrape my way to the top of the hill kind of thing but that’s fine with me. That feels better for me anyway because the story of Dean Ambrose isn’t a story about riding the express elevator to the top of the penthouse so I really wouldn’t want it that way. We all are going to have our different routes and our different trials and tribulations, so it’s cool.

Continue to Page 2 as Ambrose discusses his upcoming WWE movie, Lockdown.