So I was home on a rare Sunday because I was not feeling well enough to go to work and because The Manager wanted to watch and comment and do her YouTube thing on the final PPV of the decade, Tables, Ladders and Chairs, I figured that I would swallow my pride and watch with her.
And guess what?
I have thoughts.
Overall, I didn't hate the show. Ironically enough, The Manager did. But I did not like it. Maybe it's the holiday season but I guess I was feeling more generous that I normally would because the things that I didn't like were super-indicative of the things I generally hate on the main roster didn't seem to annoy me as much. Not exactly a ringing endorsement to be sure, but it's better than I would normally feel about it.
Let's start with what really did work about the show, which was about as much as I predicted.
The first three matches of the show were all really good, I have to admit. The pre-show match with Humberto Carillo vs Andrade was really fun, despite the fact that someone botched something and it busted him open. This is not the kind of match where the feud runs so deep that it needs color. Aside from that, though, Carillo picking up the win was unexpected, and it felt like the match was really more in service of developing more of the story between the potential blow-up between Andrade and Zelina Vega, which is something I am really interested in.
Then the show got going in earnest with a ladder match between The Revival and champs The New Day for the Smackdown Tag titles, and that was a really good match as well. The outcome was never really in doubt for me because a Ladder Match is a match custom-made to show off a really cool Kofi spot doing something insane with the ladder. Essentially, this felt a little like the Fatal 4-Way for the NXT Tag titles when The Street Profits won. Big E had some awesome spots, like hitting a Big Ending off the ladder, and this match just worked. It was a lot of fun, and it let Kofi look like a champ again. And it had the benefit of working with the stipulation.
Then came the match of the night, which I was pretty much predicting it would be, and that was Buddy Murphy vs Aleister Black. This match was just... it was a huge indicator that these guys should be much bigger stars in the company. The crowd was a little dead, which was unfortunate, but that didn't matter, because these two were making a case as to why they should be featured much more heavily week-to-week on Raw. Although I'm relatively sure that Aleister suffered a fractured or broken nose on that head-off-the-ringsteps shot he took. I just don't want to see him disappear. The key ingredient of this match was speed and striking ability, and both men have a lot of both. That bit in the corner where Murphy kept hitting Black with his version of the Cheeky Nandos was just brutal, and I didn't expect the offensive flurry to lead to the end where Black just finally countered with Black Mass, and that was awesome. That was like solid NXT TV booking right there, which is why it was the best match of the night for me.
Then it all started to slip right through everyone's fingers, despite how "finger-lickin' good" things might have seemed because then we had The Viking Raiders come out and issue a totally unnecessary open challenge for the Raw Tag titles that was naturally answered by The O.C. and this segment was sponsored by KFC, and the only reason that some poor family was asked to sit ringside and dive into buckets of chicken and mashed taters was so that eventually, someone could put someone through that table. It might have well have been called "KFC's Chekov's Table". I don't know how long this match was... maybe 7 - 10 minutes, but it was just embarrassing. I've felt genuine embarrassment for The Viking Raiders since they got called up because they just aren't having fun. And The O.C.? I'm betting they're just happy to still be working at this point. Hell, Gallows and Anderson were barely on TV until A.J. turned heel again. Now they're the "Best Tag Team in the World" and this match ended in a shitty double count-out. Then the table spot came in and by then, no one gave a shit. Including me.
Then came an over-long, super-bloated mini main event, which was the TLC match between King Corbin and Roman Reigns. I don't know if Vince still thinks that it needs to take 78 people just to take down their big babyface star, and again, once Dolph Ziggler and all the chair-carrying peasants and The Revival showed up, I was just out. There was no saving that. And then the real problem was that this whole stupid crap had to continue even after Corbin predictably won. This is leading us to a Reigns push that will go through Mania, and we'll likely have Reigns vs The Fiend for the Universal Title. I wouldn't put it past Vince to have Reigns win the Rumble. So get ready for the same-old, same-old. At least this time, the dog food can wasn't open because that shit's just gross.
Then came a match that made virtually no sense, but was just all a lead-in to the post-match moment, and that was The Miz vs Bray Wyatt (not The Fiend) not for the Universal Title, but for Mix proving that he was able to protect his family. Here was a match that gave WWE the opportunity to do something really interesting with Bray Wyatt by having him lose as the "Yowie Wowie" version of Wyatt, only to have to rely on The Fiend to pick him back up again, proving that this whole thing is really a dual identity and Wyatt needs The Fiend to pick up victories, and The Fiend is unstoppable. But Vince isn't that creative so Wyatt picked up the win. But this was all preface to a bigger story which was the return of Daniel Bryan, head and face largely shorn except for a crew cut and a goatee, and he was going after Wyatt with a vengeance. This is a better kind of matchup for Wyatt, and a better use of The Fiend, but it's not necessarily the best use of Bryan, especially if they're keeping The Fiend in God Mode for a while.
And then... ugh... we had Lashley vs Rusev in a Tables match. This match just flat-out sucked. Since Rusev signed the "divorce papers", there weren't any stakes to it at all. It was just proverbial dick-waving. And Lashley won. So it's not like Rusev was having the match to keep the dog or not have to pay alimony or whatever. It wasn't over Lana, because Rusev was already out of that. It was just there eating up time and our patience. I hated this. It was definitely the low point of the evening.
But then we had our main event because they remembered that they had women on the roster, and that was Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair vs The Kabuki Warriors in a TLC match for the Women's Tag titles. And I really really wanted this match to be great, but whether it was Charlotte's botch or whatever, Kairi Sane was concussed pretty early on in the match, and no one seemed to care, particularly Charlotte, who seemed legitimately pissed off during this match that she kept laying into Sane with no regard for her safety. I don't know exactly what's been going on with her lately, but she seems to not really care about anyone but herself. So poor Kairi is trying to throw chairs into a ring and it's not really working because she's probably seeing double. Anyway, Lynch and Asuka kept trying to keep things rolling, but things were not going the way that anyone wanted because there was one point when Lynch and Flair were holding the ring, and the audience was definitely not on their side. Since Asuka and Kairi have been holding the tag belts, they've been getting pretty over with the crowd, and I don't think anyone wanted to see Becky holding another belt and Charlotte holding this belt because they're still pretty front-and-center on Raw, so I can't fault the booking of the match with Kabuki Warriors retaining, but this match just felt long and it just didn't seem like it was particularly interesting of a story to warrant a main event. Like most of this evening, it felt a bit slap-dash. I kind of like some of the choices that the main roster is forced to make when they're backed into a corner, but when they write themselves into a corner, it generally doesn't work in anyone's favor.
But the whole victory moment that Kairi and Asuka should have had was overshadowed as Reigns and some babyfaces were beating the hell out of Corbin and his heels, which started backstage before the Lashley/Rusev match, spilled out into the arena. So the war between Corbin and Reigns is going to continue, unfortunately, and this is not going to end well before either of these guys.
Let's take a moment to talk about commentary. First off, Samoa Joe is a godsend, and I'd be perfectly happy if he didn't wrestle anymore and just stayed on commentary. Second off, the team of Michael Cole and Corey Graves is just the fucking worst. For all the shit that some elements of the IWC want to give Mauro Ranallo for all his references in NXT commentary, Cole with "THE BIG DOG" and "BOSS TIME" and reminding us every 2 to 3 minutes that during a ladder, table or TLC match that there are no countouts or DQ's, The Manager and I were shouting at the TV, "WE GET IT, COLE!" Now Graves, despite how much I really dislike him as a human being, and hate him as a commentator, wasn't terrible during TLC. The most terrible commentator award goes to, as has been the case pretty much since his return, was Jerry Fucking Lawler. He's just god-awful. His jokes suck, his commentary sucks, and he kind of sucks. So I don't know why he's there. He doesn't know who a lot of the newer guys are so he can't put them over on commentary, and he doesn't really seem like he's there for the matches. He's awful and I want him out.
So, yeah, I watched TLC. And I'm glad I did because it reminded me that there's just not a whole lot of things I care about going on up there, and there is a metric ton of stuff I care about going on in NXT. So I'm perfectly satisfied to stick to wrestling that happens on Wednesdays. We're going to have Finn vs Cole for the NXT title!! Yay!
TLC... meh.
And guess what?
I have thoughts.
Overall, I didn't hate the show. Ironically enough, The Manager did. But I did not like it. Maybe it's the holiday season but I guess I was feeling more generous that I normally would because the things that I didn't like were super-indicative of the things I generally hate on the main roster didn't seem to annoy me as much. Not exactly a ringing endorsement to be sure, but it's better than I would normally feel about it.
Let's start with what really did work about the show, which was about as much as I predicted.
The first three matches of the show were all really good, I have to admit. The pre-show match with Humberto Carillo vs Andrade was really fun, despite the fact that someone botched something and it busted him open. This is not the kind of match where the feud runs so deep that it needs color. Aside from that, though, Carillo picking up the win was unexpected, and it felt like the match was really more in service of developing more of the story between the potential blow-up between Andrade and Zelina Vega, which is something I am really interested in.
Then the show got going in earnest with a ladder match between The Revival and champs The New Day for the Smackdown Tag titles, and that was a really good match as well. The outcome was never really in doubt for me because a Ladder Match is a match custom-made to show off a really cool Kofi spot doing something insane with the ladder. Essentially, this felt a little like the Fatal 4-Way for the NXT Tag titles when The Street Profits won. Big E had some awesome spots, like hitting a Big Ending off the ladder, and this match just worked. It was a lot of fun, and it let Kofi look like a champ again. And it had the benefit of working with the stipulation.
Then came the match of the night, which I was pretty much predicting it would be, and that was Buddy Murphy vs Aleister Black. This match was just... it was a huge indicator that these guys should be much bigger stars in the company. The crowd was a little dead, which was unfortunate, but that didn't matter, because these two were making a case as to why they should be featured much more heavily week-to-week on Raw. Although I'm relatively sure that Aleister suffered a fractured or broken nose on that head-off-the-ringsteps shot he took. I just don't want to see him disappear. The key ingredient of this match was speed and striking ability, and both men have a lot of both. That bit in the corner where Murphy kept hitting Black with his version of the Cheeky Nandos was just brutal, and I didn't expect the offensive flurry to lead to the end where Black just finally countered with Black Mass, and that was awesome. That was like solid NXT TV booking right there, which is why it was the best match of the night for me.
Then it all started to slip right through everyone's fingers, despite how "finger-lickin' good" things might have seemed because then we had The Viking Raiders come out and issue a totally unnecessary open challenge for the Raw Tag titles that was naturally answered by The O.C. and this segment was sponsored by KFC, and the only reason that some poor family was asked to sit ringside and dive into buckets of chicken and mashed taters was so that eventually, someone could put someone through that table. It might have well have been called "KFC's Chekov's Table". I don't know how long this match was... maybe 7 - 10 minutes, but it was just embarrassing. I've felt genuine embarrassment for The Viking Raiders since they got called up because they just aren't having fun. And The O.C.? I'm betting they're just happy to still be working at this point. Hell, Gallows and Anderson were barely on TV until A.J. turned heel again. Now they're the "Best Tag Team in the World" and this match ended in a shitty double count-out. Then the table spot came in and by then, no one gave a shit. Including me.
Then came an over-long, super-bloated mini main event, which was the TLC match between King Corbin and Roman Reigns. I don't know if Vince still thinks that it needs to take 78 people just to take down their big babyface star, and again, once Dolph Ziggler and all the chair-carrying peasants and The Revival showed up, I was just out. There was no saving that. And then the real problem was that this whole stupid crap had to continue even after Corbin predictably won. This is leading us to a Reigns push that will go through Mania, and we'll likely have Reigns vs The Fiend for the Universal Title. I wouldn't put it past Vince to have Reigns win the Rumble. So get ready for the same-old, same-old. At least this time, the dog food can wasn't open because that shit's just gross.
Then came a match that made virtually no sense, but was just all a lead-in to the post-match moment, and that was The Miz vs Bray Wyatt (not The Fiend) not for the Universal Title, but for Mix proving that he was able to protect his family. Here was a match that gave WWE the opportunity to do something really interesting with Bray Wyatt by having him lose as the "Yowie Wowie" version of Wyatt, only to have to rely on The Fiend to pick him back up again, proving that this whole thing is really a dual identity and Wyatt needs The Fiend to pick up victories, and The Fiend is unstoppable. But Vince isn't that creative so Wyatt picked up the win. But this was all preface to a bigger story which was the return of Daniel Bryan, head and face largely shorn except for a crew cut and a goatee, and he was going after Wyatt with a vengeance. This is a better kind of matchup for Wyatt, and a better use of The Fiend, but it's not necessarily the best use of Bryan, especially if they're keeping The Fiend in God Mode for a while.
And then... ugh... we had Lashley vs Rusev in a Tables match. This match just flat-out sucked. Since Rusev signed the "divorce papers", there weren't any stakes to it at all. It was just proverbial dick-waving. And Lashley won. So it's not like Rusev was having the match to keep the dog or not have to pay alimony or whatever. It wasn't over Lana, because Rusev was already out of that. It was just there eating up time and our patience. I hated this. It was definitely the low point of the evening.
But then we had our main event because they remembered that they had women on the roster, and that was Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair vs The Kabuki Warriors in a TLC match for the Women's Tag titles. And I really really wanted this match to be great, but whether it was Charlotte's botch or whatever, Kairi Sane was concussed pretty early on in the match, and no one seemed to care, particularly Charlotte, who seemed legitimately pissed off during this match that she kept laying into Sane with no regard for her safety. I don't know exactly what's been going on with her lately, but she seems to not really care about anyone but herself. So poor Kairi is trying to throw chairs into a ring and it's not really working because she's probably seeing double. Anyway, Lynch and Asuka kept trying to keep things rolling, but things were not going the way that anyone wanted because there was one point when Lynch and Flair were holding the ring, and the audience was definitely not on their side. Since Asuka and Kairi have been holding the tag belts, they've been getting pretty over with the crowd, and I don't think anyone wanted to see Becky holding another belt and Charlotte holding this belt because they're still pretty front-and-center on Raw, so I can't fault the booking of the match with Kabuki Warriors retaining, but this match just felt long and it just didn't seem like it was particularly interesting of a story to warrant a main event. Like most of this evening, it felt a bit slap-dash. I kind of like some of the choices that the main roster is forced to make when they're backed into a corner, but when they write themselves into a corner, it generally doesn't work in anyone's favor.
But the whole victory moment that Kairi and Asuka should have had was overshadowed as Reigns and some babyfaces were beating the hell out of Corbin and his heels, which started backstage before the Lashley/Rusev match, spilled out into the arena. So the war between Corbin and Reigns is going to continue, unfortunately, and this is not going to end well before either of these guys.
Let's take a moment to talk about commentary. First off, Samoa Joe is a godsend, and I'd be perfectly happy if he didn't wrestle anymore and just stayed on commentary. Second off, the team of Michael Cole and Corey Graves is just the fucking worst. For all the shit that some elements of the IWC want to give Mauro Ranallo for all his references in NXT commentary, Cole with "THE BIG DOG" and "BOSS TIME" and reminding us every 2 to 3 minutes that during a ladder, table or TLC match that there are no countouts or DQ's, The Manager and I were shouting at the TV, "WE GET IT, COLE!" Now Graves, despite how much I really dislike him as a human being, and hate him as a commentator, wasn't terrible during TLC. The most terrible commentator award goes to, as has been the case pretty much since his return, was Jerry Fucking Lawler. He's just god-awful. His jokes suck, his commentary sucks, and he kind of sucks. So I don't know why he's there. He doesn't know who a lot of the newer guys are so he can't put them over on commentary, and he doesn't really seem like he's there for the matches. He's awful and I want him out.
So, yeah, I watched TLC. And I'm glad I did because it reminded me that there's just not a whole lot of things I care about going on up there, and there is a metric ton of stuff I care about going on in NXT. So I'm perfectly satisfied to stick to wrestling that happens on Wednesdays. We're going to have Finn vs Cole for the NXT title!! Yay!
TLC... meh.
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