Tag: Pro-Wrestling

The final WWE Pay-Per-View for 2018 is finally in the bag, and we’ve had this crazy year topped off with a show that was really…..ok.

While there wasn’t a match on this show that I can say I hated, but I didn’t feel the show was as good as I thought it would be when I read the card. The amount of matches really made the show drag a little, especially towards the end. However the focus of the show seemed to be in the right place, so it made for a decent night.

Now let’s talk about the matches themselves, as I rank them from worst to best.

12 – Carmella & R-Truth def. Jinder Mahal &      Alicia Fox
(Mixed Match Challenge Season 2 Final)

Not a whole lot to say about this one really…

I haven’t watched any of the Mixed Match Challenge this year, so I don’t really have any investment in what happened here. I prefer Truth and Carmella to Jinder and Alicia, but that’s mostly just by default. More to the point, there wasn’t anything noteworthy about the match either.

There were a couple of minor slip ups, but aside from that it was a pretty standard match that wouldn’t feel out of place on Raw or Smackdown. I know most people are digging the “Dance Break” thing, but I hate it with all my being, and of course the Singh Brothers were around so they had to go ahead and make it even stupider.

I’m glad Mella & Truth won, but I’m not looking forward to Truth being #30 in the Royal Rumble, or the “comedy” sketch on Tuesday about their trip to WWE’s head offices.

11 – Elias def. Bobby Lashley
(Ladder Match)

Gimmick matches on the pre-show now? A bit weird, but alright.

I’m not sure that the guitar thing was really necessary for this match, it could’ve quite easily have just ended in a pinfall and I don’t think it would’ve made much difference. I know it was unlikely Elias was ever going to pin Bobby, but if you were just going to have Bobby lay Elias out immediately after the match anyway then what’s the point in even having Elias win?

It’s not like either of these men are about to compete for a title, and they’re certainly not in the running for Royal Rumble winner, so this whole thing was ultimately pointless. The match was at least somewhat entertaining, with some nice versions of spots we’ve seen in every other ladder match since the dawn of time.

These two men don’t really have the greatest about of chemistry together, so I really hope this feud doesn’t continue any longer.

10 – Natalya def. Ruby Riott
(Tables Match)

Who knew “tables with pictures on them” would be one of the major stories on this show.

I feel bad putting this match this low, because there was actually some stuff to like about it, but the overall story didn’t really draw me in at all. I liked all the stuff with the Riott Squad taking the bullet for Ruby in a couple of spots to make sure she didn’t lose, it was a nice way to make their present felt without having them directly hinder Natalya.

The main problem I had here was how slowly these two would set up every single spot. It wasn’t just the table spots either, even Natalya locking in the Sharpshooter felt like it took forever. It was a little bit annoying that the tables were so obviously pre-cut, but I guess you didn’t want a situation like Hell in a Cell 2016, where the women are too light to break the table when they fall on it.

It was a perfectly serviceable match, with nothing amazing to draw me in, and buckle up, because I’m going to be saying words to that effect a lot in this review.

9 – Rey Mysterio def. Randy Orton
(Chairs Match)

Please, no more chair matches.

I think that this was the only match on the show that was actively hindered by the stipulation, chairs matches just don’t really seem to work as a concept. For one, all it really is, is a no DQ match where the ring is surrounded by chairs, but more importantly it means that every single major spot has to involve chairs in some way.

There’s only so much you can do with a steel chair and while they’re good in small doses, basing a whole match around them gets old fast. While there were a couple of fun spots, including a rather nasty looking one where Rey went arse first into a chair, but nothing particularly outstanding, and although I didn’t hate this match, I can’t help but feel it would’ve been better without this stipulation.

8 – Dean Ambrose def. Seth Rollins(c)
(Intercontinetal Championship)

Oh….well ok then.

I really don’t understand what it was about this match, but it just didn’t click. The placement on the show probably didn’t help, being the second to last match on a show this long pretty much guarantees a worn out crowd, and they were almost dead silent the whole time.

The match also didn’t really feel like it was a fight between two men with the history that these two have. Dean needed to be a lot more vicious, and Seth needed to have a lot more energy and fire underneath him for it to really click like it should’ve. At the end of the day, you could replace Dean and Seth with pretty much any other heel and face on the roster and the match wouldn’t have felt any different, which really isn’t a good thing.

While they did touch on the story in the closing minutes, given how badly the story’s been built over the past month and how underwhelming the match had been up until that point, it didn’t really feel earned. Part of me wants to see them try this again, but another part of me really just want them both to move on.

It sucks that, in a year where Seth Rollins put on the match of the night on almost every show, he’s down this low on the final show of the year. Let’s just hope he moves on to blow the roof of Wrestlemania against Lesnar next year and we can all forget this ever happened.

7 – Braun Strowman def. Baron Corbin
(TLC Match)

How heroic of these good guys to all team up and beat the ever-loving piss out of their boss.

When I think about how all of this went down, I feel like I should hate it, but I just can’t for some reason. Sure, Strowman probably could’ve still beaten Baron with a broken arm, but this solution make Braun seem quite smart too. It was also a pretty clever way to get them out of this spot they ended up in, where Baron needed to be out of power, but Braun was injured.

Given how crap Raw has been these past few weeks, it was kind of cathartic to see one of the main culprits put to rest, although I’m not all in on WWE using him as a scapegoat for the whole mess. Corbin’s probably going to end up fading into the background a bit more now, and Braun can move on to lose to Brock Lesnar again at the Royal Rumble, but let’s just enjoy this while it lasts.

6 – Finn Balor def. Drew Mcintyre

I never thought WWE could make me feel simultaneously disappointed and pleasantly surprised, but here we are.

I really don’t understand the rationale behind Balor winning here. As much as I’m glad to see that WWE aren’t continuing to hand him loss after loss, I really felt like this was a match Drew needed to win, especially as it seemed like they were trying to build him up. You could argue it was a protected loss since Dolph Ziggler got involved, but this is the same Drew Mcintyre who damn near killed Kurt Angle, two small dudes attacking him shouldn’t really be a problem.

The match itself did feel more like an above average Raw match than a decent PPV match, but everything in it was solid, and Dolph’s interference does at least make sense from the character’s perspective. I really feel like Drew needs to be a much more vicious heel however, he shouldn’t be using rest holds and shouting at his opponent, he needs to be trying throwing them around the ring like they’re nothing.

I really hope this isn’t the start of a decline for Drew, because it seemed like things were going so well for him up until now.

5 – Buddy Murphy(c) def. Cedric Alexander
(Cruiserweight Championship)

Well that was fun while it lasted.

It’s a real shame that the cruiserweights got bumped to the pre-show once again, after putting on two fantastic main card performances in a row, but there was a lot of matches on this show, and I can’t really say that anything else could’ve been bumped to make room for this one.

Regardless, these guys don’t care what part of the show they’re on, they’ll still put on a great match if they can. While it did feel like they toned things down a bit due to being on the pre-show, it was still an entertaining match, with lots of fun action.

One thing the cruiserweights seem to be really good at, is winning over a crowd that usually doesn’t seem to care. The crowd started out dead silent at the start of this match, and by the end they were loving it. It goes to show that even if a good portion of that crowd probably have no idea who these guys are, they’ll still invest in a match if they like what they see. If only they’d go home and watch 205 Live afterwards.

4 – Ronda Rousey(c) def. NIa Jax
(Raw Women’s Championship)

I know I’ve said this pretty much every time she’s wrestled this year, but Ronda Rousey is really good at wrestling.

Clearly Natalya trained her well or something like that, because she just seems to get it, case in point: this match right here. There really aren’t very many people on the roster who could have a match that good with Nia Jax, maybe Becky & Charlotte, but there isn’t anyone else that good.

This match really was all Ronda, pretty much the whole time, Nia seemed somehow more immobile than usual, but Ronda was still able to make it work. She sold her ass of on basically every move to make sure it felt like it had impact, and was flying all about the place when she was on offence to really get the best out of Nia.

This is probably the last time Nia will have a major role on Raw for a very long time, considering Ronda didn’t seem to struggle too much in putting her away, and then Becky laid her the fuck out after the match.

3 – The Bar(c) def. The New Day & The Usos
(Smackdown Tag Team Championships)

Please, never move these teams to Raw, never.

While this was a very good match, it did feel a bit like it was one of the victims of the over stuffed show, but, these teams could pull a great match out even if they only had 30 seconds to work it. Everyone got plenty of time to shine in this match. I’m not sure I like the whole “only two teams in the ring at once” stipulation to Triple Threat tag matches, but they generally still seem to work and I’m ok with that.

My only real worry is where on Earth do these tag titles go next? This is the problem with only focusing on these three (admittedly brilliant) tag teams, is now you need The Bar to fight someone else and there really isn’t anyone build up enough. The Club have lost so many tag title opportunities, they’re basically a joke, and Sanity kept losing their matches and have been absent for months, with the exception of one underwhelming appearance at Survivor Series. Maybe we’ll get a NXT call up, but it’s not like Heavy Machinery ever stand a chance of taking out The Bar.

I have a lot more faith in the Smackdown writers than I do the Raw writers though, so maybe we’ll get something great in time for the Rumble. Maybe.

2 – Daniel Bryan(c) def. AJ Styles
(WWE Championship)

Who knew this one would be good?…..What? Everyone?! Oh alright.

I had to rewatch this one before I wrote about it, because I didn’t really enjoy it that much watching it live. Maybe it was down to how tired it was, but I just didn’t really get it the first time around, however everyone on Twitter really liked it, so I watched it a second time the next day, and it turns out that past me was very wrong about not liking this one, because this match was great.

Sure, it wasn’t anywhere close to the Styles/Bryan match I had in my head, but this was the match we needed, not the one we wanted. For one, Bryan showing up as The American Dragon was unexpected, and I didn’t even realise it at first, but this dude really is something else. After his return I was starting to doubt if he really was as good as we all remembered him being, but this match reminded me exactly why Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world.

He’s able to blend his fast paced crowd popping babyface style so well with his slow and methodic heel pace that he can wrestle just about any style he wants and it still feels true to his character. More importantly he’s clearly done his homework on AJ Styles, with an answer to pretty much everything he’s got, and when he does get caught, it’s not long before he gets back on top.

The perfect example of this is the finish, winning with a small package after a match like that is brilliant, it feels heelish and cheap, but really he just straight up out thought AJ Styles and won because he was the better wrestler. We’ve got so used to heel champions cheating to win, that it’s really refreshing to see a heel win, because he’s just the better wrestler and that’s all there is to it.

I’d love to see just one more match between these two to really kick things into that final gear and get that truly awesome match we all know they can put on.

1 – Asuka def. Becky Lynch(c) & Charlotte Flair
(Smackdown Women’s Championship)
(TLC Match)

Hey! Smackdown finally main-evented a cross-brand PPV! Only took 8 sodding months.

What a match this was, everything about it was just great. It started just how it needed to, they didn’t rush to get to all of the weapons spots, they started out just wrestling each other like normal and built to all of the crazy weapon spots, it allows the crowd to get a feel for the match, instead of getting worn out with all the high spots early on.

Every single spot felt like it built on the last, and they were able to set them up without slowing the pace of the match down, in many instances they made the setting up of a spot a key part of the match, so it all flowed perfectly. It’s hard to talk about the rest of this match without just listing all of the awesome stuff that happened during it, so here goes:

• Asuka flipping Becky back first onto a ladder looked so damn brutal and rebuilt Asuka to her former glory in about 5 seconds.
• Becky’s ladder dive was great, even if she did almost crush Charlotte’s ribcage.
• There was a really nice catharsis in watching the women wail on each other with chairs and it made the whole thing feel so much more intense.
• Charlotte spearing Asuka into the time keeper’s area looked amazing, and the fact that the barrier didn’t break properly actually made it seem even more brutal.
• Then there’s the finish…

First of all, these women did a really good job of making it look like they were about to win when they weren’t. Usually in a ladder match it’s pretty obvious when someone’s not about to win, but there were a couple of moments in the last 5 minutes where I thought Charlotte had it in the bag.

However, the main article here is Ronda Rousey, who came out, pushed both Charlotte and Becky off the ladder, leaving Asuka to climb the ladder and win. Before I talk about the interference, I just want to mention how awesome a moment it was when the crowd realised Asuka was about to win, they exploded in cheers and it was beautiful to see Asuka finally get what many thought she should’ve got in April.

Does Ronda’s interference cheapen Asuka’s win? Well yes, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t. Does this make me mad? Not really. I know a lot of people are quite upset about the finish to this match, and I feel like I should be too, but I’m just not. The match itself was so good that I don’t really mind and Ronda’s actions make perfect sense in the context of what’s been happening over the past month or so.

I’m not quite sure where all this is leading, personally I still hope it’s Becky vs Ronda and Charlotte vs Asuka II, either way it’s going to be an interesting time in the women’s division moving forward.

So there you have it! That was TLC 2018, overall it was a fairly average show, full of ok wrestling and a fantastic main event, not the greatest thing to end the year on, but certainly not the worst either.

Make sure to share this post around on social media, and follow me on Twitter @10ryawoo for more opinions on wrestling and the like. Stick around for the next few weeks as I will be starting to cover my end of year awards for both wrestling and gaming!