Thursday, March 28, 2024
EditorialBiggest Mistakes from WWE Tables, Ladders and Chairs 2015 PPV Event

Biggest Mistakes from WWE Tables, Ladders and Chairs 2015 PPV Event

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After such a disappointing TLC event, my major takeaway from the show wasn’t how excited I am for the Royal Rumble (I’m not, outside of it being my favorite event of the year) or how I think WWE has quelled any fears for The Road to WrestleMania 32 (they haven’t—they’ve made me even more nervous), but rather “how many mistakes did they make?”

Previously, I’ve done breakdowns of the biggest errors to varying capacities and I thought I had retired the concept, but it needs to come roaring back with this show, which was just riddled with flaws. Not everything that I disagree with is something I would classify as a mistake, however. Keep in mind that while I’m not the biggest Alberto Del Rio fan, I have nothing against him retaining over Jack Swagger, for example.

That being said, there are five things that stand out to me that are just flat out stupid for WWE to have done, and if we could all time travel and undo these, the pay-per-view as a whole would be so much better.

1) Team BAD’s Promo

This was awful…just awful. Any idea, if properly executed, could be good. Many times in WWE, something that sound ludicrous ended up being kind of great. Doink the Clown, The Rock ‘n Sock Connection, Damien Mizdow, so on and so forth are just a few to name. In theory, Team BAD cutting a promo about the 12 Days of Christmas could have been funny. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Not only was it not good, it was horrendous.

The singing was bad, but sure, this isn’t a singing competition, so that’s given a pass. The same can’t be said about the lyrics. These “jokes” weren’t funny at all and most of it just didn’t seem to have any enthusiasm behind it at all. One of the lines—which I’m sorry I can’t remember, that’s how unmemorable they were—was even delivered with confusion from Tamina as if she was trying to express to the audience “WTF am I saying?”

Pre-shows were never the most important thing, nor should they be, but lately they’ve been pushed aside so much that it seems WWE doesn’t want to put even 5 minutes worth of thought into it, and it shows. This had no match announced until the zero hour and after sitting through all the usual recaps and video packages, to see this promo before the match killed any buzz. It was as if some writer thought that this would propel Team BAD forward as “the female New Day” but forgot that biting off an act normally backfires as it immediately draws comparisons to the original, better act.

Team BAD lived up to their name. This segment was just bad.

2) The Placement of Rusev vs. Ryback

Following the poor kickoff, we had a fun ladder match for the WWE Tag Team Championship. This woke the crowd up and showed that maybe there was some potential for the rest of the night. Not many people were interested in TLC, and the first hour (the pre-show) wasn’t doing it any favors, but hey, if we get more stuff like Kalisto’s Salida del Sol, then maybe we’re in for a treat, right?

Then came Rusev vs. Ryback—the most obvious filler match of the bunch on the card. Putting this right at the time where the audience is supposed to be building up their energy was a huge mistake as it sucked the life out of the arena. This was nothing more than we see every week on Monday Night Raw, so why would anybody really care?

If the United States Championship match had gone on next, people would have seen something more entertaining and then maybe they would have had more energy going into this match to help the segment out. Then, it would be followed by the tables match, which would rejuvenate the audience yet again.

Instead, what happened was that we went from poor expectations beforehand to a bad pre-show, followed by a curve upwards in improvement, followed by a nosedive. Granted, this match isn’t going to make lists for the worst fight of the year by any means, but it did more damage than it did good.

3) Lack of Zeb Colter

Jack Swagger and Alberto Del Rio are only feuding because of the MexAmerica storyline, which has been dropped. However, if WWE wanted to fully drop it, they would drop all references to everything that has gone on with that angle. Separating Zeb Colter and Alberto Del Rio was a smart move, since those two as a pairing just wasn’t working out, but if the program wants to follow the idea that Swagger has some kind of investment in Colter, why not have him show up?

He obviously isn’t in the right health capacity to get in the ring and start flipping around or take any chair shots, so I wouldn’t expect that to happen, but he could have at least been ringside to witness the action. Maybe at one point, Del Rio could have threatened to hurt him and Swagger could have put a chair down, showing that he’s the good guy in this scenario and allowing Del Rio to get the upper hand again. Dastardly heels would definitely threaten an old man in a wheelchair, right?

That in itself is an issue that should be addressed: the wheelchair. This was a chairs match. Wouldn’t it have been fun / funny, however crazy, for a wheelchair to be involved, seeing as how it’s technically a chair? How insane would that have been? That’s not going to make a bad pay-per-view a good one, but this is WWE—a place where ridiculous ideas can sometimes be the most entertaining.

The alternative that we got was no Zeb Colter in any capacity, meaning WWE is trying to do their best to sweep this under the rug so we don’t remember how bad of a job this MexAmerica angle was.

4) Tables Match Spots

Why would you ever book the first spot of a tables match to be something where a guy puts his leg through a table but doesn’t technically get eliminated? The entire point of a tables match is “you are eliminated when you’re put through a table”!

Yes, if you want to argue semantics, nobody physically slammed Braun Strowman or something similar, but if Big Show can lose a tables match with his foot casually falling through a table, then Strowman definitely should have been eliminated through similar logic. If you charge at someone and they move out of the way of your attack, don’t they technically get the responsibility for your consequences? Remember, in the Royal Rumble, if all you do is duck and pull down a rope while a charging guy runs at you and falls over, you’re credited with eliminating that person despite how you didn’t physically clothesline him over the top or anything of the sort.

This was just stupid to do as it pointed out that WWE makes up the rules on the spot and changes them on a whim. If this was a pure accident and Strowman wasn’t supposed to do it, then it can be forgiven to an extent as WWE wanting to cover up something that wasn’t scripted, but having planned this out means they created a problem out of thin air, and for what? Was that spot so cool as to warrant a justification for creating a plot hole?

Then again, we’re talking about a match where the coolest thing about it was the thing that didn’t happen at all! TLC was so underwhelming and with ratings being low and morale in murky waters, it needed to prove to the WWE Universe that these weren’t bad times. You don’t accomplish that mission statement by teasing the audience with a fire spot only to have that anticipation doused immediately after with the end of the match.

“Hey everyone, wouldn’t it be awesome if we set this table on fire? Yeah? Nah too bad, but we’ve got Charlotte vs. Paige coming up next. Woo, am I right?”

I’m not saying that this match needed fire to be good. It certainly could have used some better spots all around, that’s for sure, but fire wasn’t a necessity. The problem here is that they teased the crowd with something better than what we had given to us. It’s essentially opening up a menu and seeing filet mignon only to find out that they’ve misprinted it and the best they can offer you is Steak-umms. If you’re not giving me much, then you show me something that I would like, but take it away, the only way you haven’t ended up with an even more upset customer is if you offer me something on par or better than that good option you dangled in front of me. Not having a fire spot is disappointing, but if we had something just as good follow it, I’d have been okay with it. Instead, we just got our hopes up for nothing.

Then again, maybe that was the theme of the night. Don’t get your hopes up that The Road to WrestleMania will be any better than what is currently going on, despite all of the advertisements that will be flooding us about how epic Dallas will be.

5) Dangerous Spots for a Limited Roster

So many people are injured already and that could kill WrestleMania as it is. Why would you want to do an event like this where the risk of injuries is amplified? What’s the payoff? Truthfully, answer in the comments below if you were on the fence about wanting to continue to watch WWE and the dangerous things that happened at TLC alone (not the storytelling or anything else, just the spots) convinced you that you should stick around.

Since this event was so blah, it seems like WWE would have accomplished the same amount of positive reception had it been a regular, non-gimmicked event, while also minimizing the risk that anybody else would be injured. I’ve already argued that this event serves no real purpose on the card to begin with, so it isn’t as though this can be compared to Royal Rumble or Money in the Bank where it’s an anchor point for the storylines going forward. This is just a flawed concept that does more damage than it brings any benefits to the table. If someone else falls victim to an injury over the next few months and they wrestled here, would it have been worth it?

This was a sour note to end the year on, so here’s hoping NXT TakeOver: London does a much better job at making sense and being all that it can be. As far as TLC goes, history will show whether or not this was a waste of an event, a black mark on the WWE, or by some rare fluke, something that lead the company in the right direction. Considering what I listed above, I don’t think it will be the latter, but whether you agree or disagree, let me know what you think in the comments below.

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