The New Day (C) def. The Revival – SmackDown Tag Team Championships (Ladder Match)
This was a perfectly fine and acceptable way to start the PPV. New Day can usually be counted on to set a proper tone for a PPV and you never have to worry about them not bringing the energy.
The Revival played good foils to them and were terrific heels in this match. While this ladder match was pretty tame for the most part, there were some gruesome looking spots, such as that suplex Dawson gave to Big E through that ladder. Ouchie. ***1/4
Aliester Black def. Buddy Murphy
This was exactly what I wanted it to be. I was hoping they would get around 12 or so minutes to work with. Thankfully, what we got was a hard hitting physical match that had a non stop pace.
This match reminded me of the one Black had with Cesaro at Extreme Rules. The heel work by Buddy here was also very good.
Thankfully, it was more or less the same quality, being very, VERY good. With the proper pace and usage of these two, WWE hit it on the money here. Now the key is to build on it. ****
The Viking Raiders (C) vs. The OC – RAW Tag Team Championships: No Contest
Ugh. This wasn’t a match so much as it was a plug for KFC. You probably have seen this match a thousand times on RAW already. It was watchable, but completely uneventful.
What’s worse is that they can’t even give it a proper finish. Nothing more than filler and marketing here. *1/2
King Corbin def. Roman Reigns – TLC Match
I’m going to state it from the jump. This match sucked and didn’t work at all. Firstly, this match exposed just how stupid and cowardly all the faces are.
Let’s address Roman first. You’ve seen that Corbin never fights fair and always has Ziggler and his entourage by his side. You know that this isn’t going to be one on one. So how do you go in that match without some sort of contingency plan or equalizer to offset his interference?
Next, you got all the faces. So The Revival can suck up losing a ladder match an hour ago to come and help out Corbin, but The New Day couldn’t come to save Roman? Didn’t Roman save Kofi from suffering the same fate he did on Friday? Some pals they are. They were shown brawling backstage so it’s not like they weren’t available. And where guys like Mustafa Ali and Shorty G, who have been teaming up with Roman the past couple of months?
Getting to the actual quality of the match, it was just boring. It wasn’t even a TLC match. It was a match that just so happened to feature weapons. Not only did it feel like it went on forever, but they spent the majority of time in the ring doing normal ring stuff. It just felt like an extended brawl that they could have had on SmackDown.
This was 22 minutes of lifeless energy and pointless brawling leading to anti climatic finish. So Roman gets crowned with dog food and doesn’t end up winning. Well, the dog food can at least symbolize the quality of this match. *
Bray Wyatt def. The Miz
God bless The Miz, but his matches have become so boring. I can’t remember the last time he was involved in a match that felt so engaging.
As for Wyatt, he didn’t do this match any favors. They were better off doing a squash or just having Bray attack Miz backstage before having the Daniel Bryan post match attack.
I will say that the only version I love more than the evil, vegan environmentalist version of Bryan is the American Dragon. While I’m excited to see where that goes, I didn’t even know a match happened. It just existed, it was weird, and it was flat all around. *
Bobby Lashley def. Rusev – Tables Match
This was another match in what feels like a streak of them where it feels longer than it actually was.
While I’ll give credit to Rusev and Lashley for hitting each other hard, this just didn’t work out either.
The pacing was off, the brawling without any regard for the tables just burnt unnecessary time, and we also were subject to watching another dumb face not have a contingency plan to offset obvious interference. The botched finish didn’t help matters either.
The only hopeful solace I’ll have is that this will hopefully be the close of this horrible feud. Perhaps this match would have been better if there were some actual stakes. When Edge, Hardy and Lita had their tiff back in 2005, it culminated in a match where the winner got Edge’s MITB title shot and the loser had to go to the other show.
What’s the payoff for three months of cringeworthy promo-cutting by Lana, terrible acting and endless sex references? A tables match where the winner gets to say, “I put you through a table!”? Oh, goody. *1/4
The Kabuki Warriors (C) def. Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair – WWE Women’s Tag Team Championships (Tag Team TLC Match)
This match gets a B for effort, and a C- for execution. I suppose the biggest beef that I had with this match is that they spent most of the action outside, providing for little drama.
Towards the end, it also got especially sloppy, with certain spots featuring Kairi Sane (who took a whalloping) and Flair being poorly executed.
The energy never really got out of second gear, and while there were moments, there were too few and far between. However, it wasn’t all their fault. Before this match, we already had a ladder match and a TLC match. One of the pitfalls of this PPV specifically is that you may be subject to seeing the same weapons being used, and it can be hard to be innovative unless you’re risking serious physical harm to yourself.
WWE also showed you how much they cared about this match as they had everyone in the back brawl in the arena to plug the Royal Rumble mere seconds after the end of the match.
I suspect this match was meant to build up to Asuka and Lynch fighting, so I suppose that was accomplished in the finish. Overall, I couldn’t fault the ladies for effort, but considering this was nearly half an hour long, it was very lacking. **1/4
Conclusion:
You ever watch a PPV for three hours and felt like nothing happened? That’s TLC 2019 for you. Like most PPV’s this year, the show peaked early and ended flat with a huge gap in quality in between.
The PPV is supposed to be about tables, ladders and chairs, yet the best match of the night didn’t need one weapon to steal the show. Makes you think, doesn’t it?
There were no title changes, little drama, and other than the reveal of Bryan reversing back to the start of the decade with his new haircut, nothing monumental happened on this show.
The first two matches is pretty much your show, and while I didn’t review it, Carrillo and Andrade worked very hard as well. However, the good on this show wasn’t nearly good enough to make up for most of the show.
Unfortunately, WWE ends 2019 on a sour note as TLC gets a thumbs down for me. Watch the first two matches, and you won’t feel so sorry for watching the show.
