So it's that time of year again when visions of steel chair shots and bodies being put through tables dance through our heads because while it might be Christmas time, it's TLC this Sunday. And this is a hella stacked card. Aside from pretty much all of the Takeovers and Evolution, this could be WWE's best PPV of the calendar year, not just because of the aforementioned stacked card, but because this is where things begin to heat up for the months leading into Wrestlemania. I know that the "Road to Wrestlemania" begins at the Royal Rumble, but usually around TLC, you start to see which storylines are coalescing and which superstars have enough momentum to carry them through Wrestlemania.
So before I get into the predictions and hopes for Sunday, let's first look at the card in no particular order:
- Becky Lynch vs Charlotte Flair vs Asuka for the Smackdown Women's Championship (TLC match).
- A.J. Styles vs Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship (No Stipulation)
- Nia Jax vs Ronda Rousey for the Raw Women's Championship (No Stipulation)
- Dean Ambrose vs Seth Rollins for the Intercontinental Championship (No Stipulation)
- Raw General Manager Elect Baron Corbin vs Braun Strowman (TLC match)
- Natalya vs Ruby Riott (Tables match)
- Elias vs Bobby Lashley (Guitar at the top of a Ladder match)
- Finn Balor vs Drew McIntyre (No stipulation)
- The Fabulous Truth vs Mahalicia for a vacation and the #30 spot at the respective Royal Rumbles (No stipulation)
- The Bar vs The New Day vs The Usos for the Smackdown Tag Team Championship (No stipulation)
- Randy Orton vs Rey Mysterio (Chairs match)
- Buddy Murphy vs Cedric Alexander for the Cruiserweight title (No stipulation)
Let's just start with the easiest one to predict; the Raw Women's Championship match. Ronda is going over. They are not going to try to pull some weird shenanigans to get Nia over. Sure, Tamina is going to likely be at ringside, and will try to interfere at some point, but she'll get knocked off the apron, providing the distraction to have Nia hit a Samoan Drop, and Ronda will kick out at 2. Approximately 120 seconds later, Ronda will lock in the armbar for the submission win. This is a feud that's going nowhere fast and they'll want to get this one out of the way to make way for the less predictable matches. WINNER: RONDA ROUSEY.
Next, let's talk about Finn vs Drew. Unfortunately, this match is unlikely to happen because there's been no indication since Thursday that Finn is cleared to compete due to illness. This is good either way for Drew because A: there was no fucking way in hell Finn was coming out of this one on top, and B: if Finn can't compete, they can continue to kayfabe the illness as Drew putting Finn out of commission so badly two weeks ago that he still can't compete. Either way, it makes Drew look strong. The same can't be said for Finn. The upside here for everyone's WWE bae is that he doesn't have to eat the pinfall. The downside is everything else. He was getting some good momentum that could possibly tease the makings of something cool going into the Rumble, and I like this David vs Goliath kind of booking, but missing it will likely continue to convince Vince that Finn is not the go-to guy that could easily be the face of the company. WINNER: DREW MCINTYRE.
Seth vs Dean. This one is easy as pie. What do people love more than a good underdog story? This is Booking 101 shit here. If Dean loses, he's just another Bane cosplayer who can't be a credible badass. If Seth loses, after losing the tag titles due to Dean's betrayal, Seth has to reclaim his superiority and that's a quality lead-in to either a Rumble win or just a good comeback story that leads to Seth vs (probably) Brock for the Universal title at Mania, and the best way to tell this story is to break Seth down completely. He's lost his best friends, he's lost his titles, and he should definitely lose his next few high-profile matches. Look, Roman isn't going to magically get better by then, as much as we may want him to, which means they need to have someone as the face of the company that can do the work, and have the crowd eating out of the palm of their hands, and right now, that's Seth. As far as Dean is concerned, the win will make his heel turn seem legit, and he'll have some gold to back it up, likely going into another Mania as IC champ. WINNER AND TITLE CHANGE: DEAN AMBROSE.
Another easy one is A.J. vs Bryan. They can't have started this whole New Daniel Bryan super-heel angle just to get the belt off him after one month. Smackdown booking is usually better than Raw anyway, and A.J. is likely going to be belt-less for the remainder of his current contract. He's no spring chicken, but he sure as shit ain't no Kane. He's still going to be awesome to watch, but right now, he's the gatekeeper of SD Live and having him put over relative newcomers and old adversaries like Andrade "Cien" Almas or Lars Sullivan is the appropriate role for A.J. at this time. The New Daniel Bryan gimmick is going to be here for a while, it's been really fun to watch so far, and I foresee a lot more fun to be had with it in the coming months. WINNER: DANIEL BRYAN.
Onto what are likely to be the two pre-show matches: Natalya vs Ruby and the Triple Threat SD Tag titles match. Natalya should be the one to put Ruby over, but they've built this entire fucking rivalry on Ruby using the death of Jim Neidhardt, and that sucks. Using real tragedy in a fake show might seem "edgy", but it's just gross. And because Vince is Vince, it's likely that Ruby will still go over, because dead relatives are funny to Vince. And if you don't think that Nattie is going through that table with the picture of The Anvil on it, you're likely to be sorely mistaken. So look forward to a few more 3 on 3 matches with Bayley, Sasha and Nattie vs The Riott Squad in the next month of Raw. WINNER: RUBY RIOTT. And I don't know why Vince seems to hate tag teams, particularly the tag teams on Smackdown, but they always seem to end up on the pre-show. As far as who wins, it really doesn't seem to matter. All of these teams seem to have enjoyed their time playing hot potato with the straps, but The Usos are talented as hell and way the fuck over, possibly more so than The New Day, (and no one really gives a shit about The Bar) so I'm going to call it... WINNERS AND TITLE CHANGE: THE USOS.
As far as Rey vs Randy, Randy took off Rey's mask. That is the ultimate insult to a luchador, and Rey needs to hit Randy a thousand times with a chair. Just don't shake his hand, Rey. WINNER: REY MYSTERIO. Oh, by the way, why are these midcard feuds the matches with the single-item stipulations? Why isn't A.J. vs Daniel a Ladder match? Or Seth and Dean a Tables match? Well, I guess after last year, we should be thankful we're getting any single-item matches at all.
That leads into Elias vs Bobby, which comes with the stipulation that's the most fun: a guitar at the top of a ladder. There will be shenanigans, thanks largely to Lio Rush, and frankly, Lashley needs a big win, so expect a shitload of splinters in Elias' back. WINNER: BOBBY LASHLEY.
Now we're looking at the middle-of-the-show regulars, the Cruiserweight championship match. Look, Buddy and Cedric are fucking awesome, and they compliment each other very well. Not as well as Buddy and Mustafa who, on that one episode of 205 Live 3 or 4 months back had what I would absolutely consider a MOTY contender, but they just had a championship match where Buddy retained. And Buddy is going to retain here. I just wish there was a new and exciting face on 205 Live to get me interested again. WINNER: BUDDY MURPHY.
Now onto the one that should also be on the pre-show, but it actually has real future stakes set up, so expect to see this one early and that's the Mixed Match challenge finals with the two most improbable teams to end up here: The Fabulous Truth and Mahalicia. And to be honest, I don't really care, and furthermore, the thing that is making me not care is that the winners will get the #30 spots at the men's and women's Rumble matches (plus an all-expenses paid vacation? Wasn't it cooler when they were fighting for a charity?). Look, not a single one of these four superstars is going to win the Rumble, and everyone knows it... so the victory is rendered ultimately meaningless. But there is a story to be told here either way. I'd love to see R-Truth come in at number 30 rapping his way up to the ring only to be his dumb self, continue rapping into the ring and get immediately eliminated. That would be a hoot to me, but the better story is that since Jinder and Alicia are totally rudderless on Raw right now, winning the #30 spot would give them bragging rights and false confidence leading into the Rumble, so... WINNER: MAHALICIA.
Now we need to talk about the match in every PPV that I like to call, "The Match I Couldn't Give a Single Shit About" and that's Corbin vs Strowman. If Corbin wins, he's going to become the permanent Raw General Manager, and if he loses, he loses the General Manager job. Now, what I believe is likely to happen here is that Corbin gets up there, shoots his mouth off about how Braun is going to forfeit due to his injury for a few minutes and gets Referee Heath Slater (he needs to be this match's referee) to start counting the "absent" Braun out. But Strowman is going to come in, smash Corbin's head in using just one arm, and Corbin will declare some new stipulation to the match and win by some kind of chicanery. Then Vince will come out Monday night and either raise Corbin's arm in victory and create some kind of super-heel Authority figure or, again, will cast all blame of the show's lowest-ever ratings and poor booking on Corbin and fire him anyway and hire Matt Hardy to be the "Woken" GM. Either way, who cares? Vince is gonna Vince; the question is will he Vince right, or Vince wrong? WINNER FOR SOME STUPID REASON: BARON CORBIN.
So those are my picks for TLC! Thanks for reading, and bookmark this page for... wait, what? What are you talking about, "I forgot a match"? What is this "possibly match of the year" shit that you think I'm leaving out?
I'm kidding, people. Do you really think that I would forget the Becky/Charlotte/Asuka TLC match that should absolutely 1000% headline the show because not a single other match on this card could possibly have more hype and more significance than this, and could easily go down as an all-time classic? Because it truly does have that feel to it. This is arguably the biggest match of the calendar year. If you thought that Charlotte vs Asuka at Mania was great, or that Becky vs Charlotte at Evolution was straight-up the MOTY, this could possibly end up blowing the arena into smithereens. Right now, Becky Lynch is the single hottest pro wrestler on the planet, and the best part about that is that it was totally organic. We've all loved Becky for so long that to see her take Charlotte out after their Summerslam match was a thing of genuine and pure beauty. And Vince tried to make her a pure heel, but the fans could smell that bullshit from the nosebleeds and rightly would not let that happen, so we have Becky as more of a tweener, Charlotte as the straight-up heel, and Asuka as the babyface. But where do we go from here? How can a match with these stakes end the best for everyone involved? There's only one clear solution, and it's one that I'm loathe to say, but stay with me because it will make sense. Here it is... WINNER AND TITLE CHANGE: ASUKA.
I know what you're thinking. "Why the fuck would taking the title off Becky be a good thing for her?" Well, I have your answer in the form of a question: What's the hottest feud in WWE right now? It's Becky and Ronda. Becky has been a fucking savage on Twitter since her turn, and no one, and I mean no one has been able to keep up with her. She's thrown six degrees of shade at Ronda and Ronda is clearly not up to the challenge of Becky's battle of wits with Ronda's wrong-headed reactionary "old man yells at cloud" avocado-toast-eating millennial shit. So how does the hottest feud possibly get resolved if they're both the champs of their respective brands during a brand-split? It's simple; you get the title off one of them. And since Ronda is their big crossover star, the best story here is to have Becky lose the title to a tapout by Charlotte to Asuka, who deserves her fucking day in the sun (you're an idiot, Vince), maintain a fierce feud between Charlotte and Becky for the time being, but once we get to the Rumble, Becky is the Last "Man" Standing and she chooses to go after the Raw Women's Champion. And that's how you ride the momentum of this feud all the way into Mania and get a proper and long-awaited main event with Becky and Ronda closing out the show. Charlotte becomes the new leader of Absolution or whatever they might call themselves and reforms a badass heel faction with an improving Mandy Rose and already-terrific Sonya Deville, and Asuka spends this time fending them off as well as the other women on the show who once thought of Asuka as losing her luster after her streak ended. I know that I'm fantasy booking the shit out of this match, but that's what we do here as wrestling fans, and be honest, doesn't this just kind of feel right? And it would be possibly the only time that I can really think of where an injury actually helped a superstar, because if Becky had faced Ronda at Survivor Series, this match we all want to headline Mania would have already happened, and if it had, Ronda would have surely won, but once you get to a certain point where you haven't lost the title, people start to really think that, "well, she's bound to lose now". Again, it's Booking 101. If the main roster could just get back to the fucking basics, we'd all be better off. The ratings of both shows would go up, the Creative team would be happier, the superstars would look better and the rising tides would benefit Vince, and that's what we need right now, because if Vince isn't happy, you can keep expecting more desperation moves, and those haven't worked to anyone's advantage yet.
Now we're done. So keep a scorecard handy and tell me how you think I did!
Until next time, kids...
So before I get into the predictions and hopes for Sunday, let's first look at the card in no particular order:
- Becky Lynch vs Charlotte Flair vs Asuka for the Smackdown Women's Championship (TLC match).
- A.J. Styles vs Daniel Bryan for the WWE Championship (No Stipulation)
- Nia Jax vs Ronda Rousey for the Raw Women's Championship (No Stipulation)
- Dean Ambrose vs Seth Rollins for the Intercontinental Championship (No Stipulation)
- Raw General Manager Elect Baron Corbin vs Braun Strowman (TLC match)
- Natalya vs Ruby Riott (Tables match)
- Elias vs Bobby Lashley (Guitar at the top of a Ladder match)
- Finn Balor vs Drew McIntyre (No stipulation)
- The Fabulous Truth vs Mahalicia for a vacation and the #30 spot at the respective Royal Rumbles (No stipulation)
- The Bar vs The New Day vs The Usos for the Smackdown Tag Team Championship (No stipulation)
- Randy Orton vs Rey Mysterio (Chairs match)
- Buddy Murphy vs Cedric Alexander for the Cruiserweight title (No stipulation)
Let's just start with the easiest one to predict; the Raw Women's Championship match. Ronda is going over. They are not going to try to pull some weird shenanigans to get Nia over. Sure, Tamina is going to likely be at ringside, and will try to interfere at some point, but she'll get knocked off the apron, providing the distraction to have Nia hit a Samoan Drop, and Ronda will kick out at 2. Approximately 120 seconds later, Ronda will lock in the armbar for the submission win. This is a feud that's going nowhere fast and they'll want to get this one out of the way to make way for the less predictable matches. WINNER: RONDA ROUSEY.
Next, let's talk about Finn vs Drew. Unfortunately, this match is unlikely to happen because there's been no indication since Thursday that Finn is cleared to compete due to illness. This is good either way for Drew because A: there was no fucking way in hell Finn was coming out of this one on top, and B: if Finn can't compete, they can continue to kayfabe the illness as Drew putting Finn out of commission so badly two weeks ago that he still can't compete. Either way, it makes Drew look strong. The same can't be said for Finn. The upside here for everyone's WWE bae is that he doesn't have to eat the pinfall. The downside is everything else. He was getting some good momentum that could possibly tease the makings of something cool going into the Rumble, and I like this David vs Goliath kind of booking, but missing it will likely continue to convince Vince that Finn is not the go-to guy that could easily be the face of the company. WINNER: DREW MCINTYRE.
Seth vs Dean. This one is easy as pie. What do people love more than a good underdog story? This is Booking 101 shit here. If Dean loses, he's just another Bane cosplayer who can't be a credible badass. If Seth loses, after losing the tag titles due to Dean's betrayal, Seth has to reclaim his superiority and that's a quality lead-in to either a Rumble win or just a good comeback story that leads to Seth vs (probably) Brock for the Universal title at Mania, and the best way to tell this story is to break Seth down completely. He's lost his best friends, he's lost his titles, and he should definitely lose his next few high-profile matches. Look, Roman isn't going to magically get better by then, as much as we may want him to, which means they need to have someone as the face of the company that can do the work, and have the crowd eating out of the palm of their hands, and right now, that's Seth. As far as Dean is concerned, the win will make his heel turn seem legit, and he'll have some gold to back it up, likely going into another Mania as IC champ. WINNER AND TITLE CHANGE: DEAN AMBROSE.
Another easy one is A.J. vs Bryan. They can't have started this whole New Daniel Bryan super-heel angle just to get the belt off him after one month. Smackdown booking is usually better than Raw anyway, and A.J. is likely going to be belt-less for the remainder of his current contract. He's no spring chicken, but he sure as shit ain't no Kane. He's still going to be awesome to watch, but right now, he's the gatekeeper of SD Live and having him put over relative newcomers and old adversaries like Andrade "Cien" Almas or Lars Sullivan is the appropriate role for A.J. at this time. The New Daniel Bryan gimmick is going to be here for a while, it's been really fun to watch so far, and I foresee a lot more fun to be had with it in the coming months. WINNER: DANIEL BRYAN.
Onto what are likely to be the two pre-show matches: Natalya vs Ruby and the Triple Threat SD Tag titles match. Natalya should be the one to put Ruby over, but they've built this entire fucking rivalry on Ruby using the death of Jim Neidhardt, and that sucks. Using real tragedy in a fake show might seem "edgy", but it's just gross. And because Vince is Vince, it's likely that Ruby will still go over, because dead relatives are funny to Vince. And if you don't think that Nattie is going through that table with the picture of The Anvil on it, you're likely to be sorely mistaken. So look forward to a few more 3 on 3 matches with Bayley, Sasha and Nattie vs The Riott Squad in the next month of Raw. WINNER: RUBY RIOTT. And I don't know why Vince seems to hate tag teams, particularly the tag teams on Smackdown, but they always seem to end up on the pre-show. As far as who wins, it really doesn't seem to matter. All of these teams seem to have enjoyed their time playing hot potato with the straps, but The Usos are talented as hell and way the fuck over, possibly more so than The New Day, (and no one really gives a shit about The Bar) so I'm going to call it... WINNERS AND TITLE CHANGE: THE USOS.
As far as Rey vs Randy, Randy took off Rey's mask. That is the ultimate insult to a luchador, and Rey needs to hit Randy a thousand times with a chair. Just don't shake his hand, Rey. WINNER: REY MYSTERIO. Oh, by the way, why are these midcard feuds the matches with the single-item stipulations? Why isn't A.J. vs Daniel a Ladder match? Or Seth and Dean a Tables match? Well, I guess after last year, we should be thankful we're getting any single-item matches at all.
That leads into Elias vs Bobby, which comes with the stipulation that's the most fun: a guitar at the top of a ladder. There will be shenanigans, thanks largely to Lio Rush, and frankly, Lashley needs a big win, so expect a shitload of splinters in Elias' back. WINNER: BOBBY LASHLEY.
Now we're looking at the middle-of-the-show regulars, the Cruiserweight championship match. Look, Buddy and Cedric are fucking awesome, and they compliment each other very well. Not as well as Buddy and Mustafa who, on that one episode of 205 Live 3 or 4 months back had what I would absolutely consider a MOTY contender, but they just had a championship match where Buddy retained. And Buddy is going to retain here. I just wish there was a new and exciting face on 205 Live to get me interested again. WINNER: BUDDY MURPHY.
Now onto the one that should also be on the pre-show, but it actually has real future stakes set up, so expect to see this one early and that's the Mixed Match challenge finals with the two most improbable teams to end up here: The Fabulous Truth and Mahalicia. And to be honest, I don't really care, and furthermore, the thing that is making me not care is that the winners will get the #30 spots at the men's and women's Rumble matches (plus an all-expenses paid vacation? Wasn't it cooler when they were fighting for a charity?). Look, not a single one of these four superstars is going to win the Rumble, and everyone knows it... so the victory is rendered ultimately meaningless. But there is a story to be told here either way. I'd love to see R-Truth come in at number 30 rapping his way up to the ring only to be his dumb self, continue rapping into the ring and get immediately eliminated. That would be a hoot to me, but the better story is that since Jinder and Alicia are totally rudderless on Raw right now, winning the #30 spot would give them bragging rights and false confidence leading into the Rumble, so... WINNER: MAHALICIA.
Now we need to talk about the match in every PPV that I like to call, "The Match I Couldn't Give a Single Shit About" and that's Corbin vs Strowman. If Corbin wins, he's going to become the permanent Raw General Manager, and if he loses, he loses the General Manager job. Now, what I believe is likely to happen here is that Corbin gets up there, shoots his mouth off about how Braun is going to forfeit due to his injury for a few minutes and gets Referee Heath Slater (he needs to be this match's referee) to start counting the "absent" Braun out. But Strowman is going to come in, smash Corbin's head in using just one arm, and Corbin will declare some new stipulation to the match and win by some kind of chicanery. Then Vince will come out Monday night and either raise Corbin's arm in victory and create some kind of super-heel Authority figure or, again, will cast all blame of the show's lowest-ever ratings and poor booking on Corbin and fire him anyway and hire Matt Hardy to be the "Woken" GM. Either way, who cares? Vince is gonna Vince; the question is will he Vince right, or Vince wrong? WINNER FOR SOME STUPID REASON: BARON CORBIN.
So those are my picks for TLC! Thanks for reading, and bookmark this page for... wait, what? What are you talking about, "I forgot a match"? What is this "possibly match of the year" shit that you think I'm leaving out?
I'm kidding, people. Do you really think that I would forget the Becky/Charlotte/Asuka TLC match that should absolutely 1000% headline the show because not a single other match on this card could possibly have more hype and more significance than this, and could easily go down as an all-time classic? Because it truly does have that feel to it. This is arguably the biggest match of the calendar year. If you thought that Charlotte vs Asuka at Mania was great, or that Becky vs Charlotte at Evolution was straight-up the MOTY, this could possibly end up blowing the arena into smithereens. Right now, Becky Lynch is the single hottest pro wrestler on the planet, and the best part about that is that it was totally organic. We've all loved Becky for so long that to see her take Charlotte out after their Summerslam match was a thing of genuine and pure beauty. And Vince tried to make her a pure heel, but the fans could smell that bullshit from the nosebleeds and rightly would not let that happen, so we have Becky as more of a tweener, Charlotte as the straight-up heel, and Asuka as the babyface. But where do we go from here? How can a match with these stakes end the best for everyone involved? There's only one clear solution, and it's one that I'm loathe to say, but stay with me because it will make sense. Here it is... WINNER AND TITLE CHANGE: ASUKA.
I know what you're thinking. "Why the fuck would taking the title off Becky be a good thing for her?" Well, I have your answer in the form of a question: What's the hottest feud in WWE right now? It's Becky and Ronda. Becky has been a fucking savage on Twitter since her turn, and no one, and I mean no one has been able to keep up with her. She's thrown six degrees of shade at Ronda and Ronda is clearly not up to the challenge of Becky's battle of wits with Ronda's wrong-headed reactionary "old man yells at cloud" avocado-toast-eating millennial shit. So how does the hottest feud possibly get resolved if they're both the champs of their respective brands during a brand-split? It's simple; you get the title off one of them. And since Ronda is their big crossover star, the best story here is to have Becky lose the title to a tapout by Charlotte to Asuka, who deserves her fucking day in the sun (you're an idiot, Vince), maintain a fierce feud between Charlotte and Becky for the time being, but once we get to the Rumble, Becky is the Last "Man" Standing and she chooses to go after the Raw Women's Champion. And that's how you ride the momentum of this feud all the way into Mania and get a proper and long-awaited main event with Becky and Ronda closing out the show. Charlotte becomes the new leader of Absolution or whatever they might call themselves and reforms a badass heel faction with an improving Mandy Rose and already-terrific Sonya Deville, and Asuka spends this time fending them off as well as the other women on the show who once thought of Asuka as losing her luster after her streak ended. I know that I'm fantasy booking the shit out of this match, but that's what we do here as wrestling fans, and be honest, doesn't this just kind of feel right? And it would be possibly the only time that I can really think of where an injury actually helped a superstar, because if Becky had faced Ronda at Survivor Series, this match we all want to headline Mania would have already happened, and if it had, Ronda would have surely won, but once you get to a certain point where you haven't lost the title, people start to really think that, "well, she's bound to lose now". Again, it's Booking 101. If the main roster could just get back to the fucking basics, we'd all be better off. The ratings of both shows would go up, the Creative team would be happier, the superstars would look better and the rising tides would benefit Vince, and that's what we need right now, because if Vince isn't happy, you can keep expecting more desperation moves, and those haven't worked to anyone's advantage yet.
Now we're done. So keep a scorecard handy and tell me how you think I did!
Until next time, kids...
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