411 Roundtable Preview: WWE Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2015

Introduction

December is here and it’s time for some TLC! WWE presents Tables, Ladders and Chairs this Sunday on PPV at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT. Let’s go ahead and find out what the 411 staff has to say about the show.

The Staff

Kevin Pantoja, WWE NXT Reporter, Wrestling Video Reviewer

Michael Weyer, DVD Reviewer

Mike Chin, The Magnificent Seven

Mitch Nickelson, The 411 Top 10

Mike Hammerlock, Wrestling Zone 8-Ball

Daniel Wilcox, Music and Wrestling Zone Columnist

Wyatt Beougher, Wrestling Columist, MMA Fact or Fiction Organizer

The Wyatt Family vs. Tommy Dreamer, Rhyno and The Dudley Boyz
Tag Team Elimination Tables Match

Kevin Pantoja: When TNA can’t let go of the ECW thing, it’s dumb. When the WWE does it, it’s still dumb. I was all for a Dudley Boyz return, even if their feud with New Day disappointed. Nothing about this really interests me. The Wyatts will win because they can beat unimportant people, but lose the big matches. This isn’t a big match.

Winner: The Wyatt Family

Michael Weyer: Oh, God. Not again. ECW is dead, ok? It’s gone, it’s history, leave it behind, we don’t want to see it with the same guys again. Just…ugh, this is gonna be ugly.

Winners: The ECW Originals

Mike Chin: I dig on wrestling nostalgia, and think seeing the ECW squad in this sort of match is fun. It’s frustrating, though, that WWE has an eight-man match in which one team is made up entirely of guys in the twilight of their careers (or past it). To do some armchair booking for a moment, what if WWE told the story of Neville getting picked on by the Wyatts, only for The Dudleys to come to his defense, and then maybe Dreamer or Rhyno backs them up. Such a move gets a guy like Neville into a program and on the card, besides giving him the extra shine of rubbing elbow with some nostalgia acts. All of that, plus there’s the promise of a Red Arrow through a table, and the story of Neville taking out a couple Wyatts against the odds before he succumbs to the odds (that might even set up Neville-Bray Wyatt for a one-on-one feud to follow).

Fantasy booking aside, this is the match in which the Wyatts shore up their spots as JTTS and remain an upper-mid-card threat, or when they lose all remaining credibility by losing to a half-semi-retired team.

Winner: The Wyatt Family

Mitch Nickelson: I expect this match to be a whole lot of fun. There are four guys on each team and it is an elimination tables match. Basic math tells me that there will be at least four tables broken… at least. Let this one go wild and let the action spill out into the arena and while they are at it, give the Wyatts the win. The Dudleys can win in a future 2 on 2 traditional tag match. On this night, the Wyatt Family needs to prove their dominance when competing as a collective.

Winners: The Wyatt Family

Mike Hammerlock: The WWE has gone to great lengths to give the Wyatt Family a match it can win. Good for them, but that moment on Monday where it looked like Bray was about to shake up the stale face-heel dynamics on Raw held so much more promise. This should be an entertaining one-off match. It will fill some time while they figure what to do with Bray’s collection of giant misfits.

Winner: The Wyatt Family

Daniel Wilcox: This is one of the matches I am most looking forward to. Table Matches can be pretty dull if you’re only building to a single “fall,” but this should be a cathartic kind of chaos. The Hardys/Dudleyz had a great Tables Match at Royal Rumble 2000 in MSG, and in the same arena nearly three years later Jeff Hardy teamed with the Dudleyz in another fun car wreck match against 3-Minute Warning. I expect similarly fun results here. this whole feud seems to be about rebuilding the Wyatts once again, which is absolutely the right thing to do, so the only question here is how many Wyatts survive. I feel like we’re bound to see both a Gore and a 3D through a table, so once you have those two spots eliminating Rowan and Harper, there’s no need for Strowman or Bray to take a loss.

Winners: The Wyatt Family (Bray and Strowman Survive)

Wyatt Beougher: Unfortunately, Bray Wyatt and his family are yet again saddled with a bunch of old guys in an ultimately meaningless midcard feud that will probably go nowhere. On the bright side, these particular old guys are ECW legends and not WWF/E ones, so the Wyatt Family will probably get the win here. On the down side, Wyatt himself will probably get eliminated fairly early and Strowman will be the sole survivor on that team. On the plus side, it’s a Survivor Series elimination tag match with a TLC stipulation that should cover the shortcomings of Strowman and the old guys. On the down side, the only traditional Survivor Series matches we got at Survivor Series were completely unimportant. If the Wyatt Family for some reason loses this match (or looks like complete goobers while winning, like they did in Bray’s cage match against Cena last year), then I’m going to take a break from WWE’s main roster (and it will probably be a lengthy one). So let’s hope for the best here.

Winner: The Wyatt Family (Strowman survives)

Alberto Del Rio vs. Jack Swagger
WWE United States Title Chairs Match

Kevin Pantoja: You’ll notice a trend here. A match that doesn’t really make sense. Alberto Del Rio returned with Zeb Colter for reasons that were never really explained. We got told about MexAmerica very often but the point of it wasn’t well explained and we never really got a backstory. Jack Swagger returned to question why Zeb would align himself with Del Rio. Is it simply because he’s Mexican or because of their history? If they really wanted MexAmerica to be a thing, wouldn’t Zeb have tried to get his former client involved? Anyway, this led to Swagger and Del Rio feuding, only for Del Rio to join the League of Nations and dump Zeb. So now two guys are having a match over Zeb Colter, and Zeb isn’t in either guy’s corner. Del Rio retains because it’s Jack Swagger.

Winner: Alberto Del Rio

Michael Weyer: Not a fan of this one, we’ve seen it so many times before and the storyline behind it just makes no sense. It’s a shame as the guys are capable and could be able to provide a great showdown but there’s no real passion or reasoning behind this, just a messy fight. I’ll go with Del Rio, he just got back, not seeing him losing just yet.

Winner and still US Champion: Alberto Del Rio

Mike Chin: This is yet another in a string of strangely booked, not particularly compelling angles that very well might produce a good match. Swagger is completely irrelevant in the larger scheme of WWE booking while Del Rio is still fairly newly returned, part of a new upper card stable, and on the short list of guys WWE could plug into the main event scene if the injury bug were to bite worse than it already has. Little question, Del Rio goes over here, hopefully with some sort of cool chair-assisted cross arm breaker.

Winner: Alberto Del Rio

Mitch Nickelson: There’s a part of me that thinks that Jack Swagger will be victorious in this one. I do not think that he’s going to defeat Alberto Del Rio and take his United States Championship, but I think it’s entirely reasonable (and likely) that WWE will extend this feud for at least another month or more. Nobody is asking for that to happen, but I feel like it will.

Winner by DQ: Jack Swagger

Mike Hammerlock: They really ought to change the name of this Sunday special to Stipulation. This one has chairs. Here’s my question, how does the WWE take a guy who was on fire in Lucha Underground and AAA and douse his heat so quickly? Del Rio pretty much proves how creatively deficient the WWE has become. It’s nice to see Swagger get resurrected a bit, unfortunately he probably disappears again after this.

Winner: Alberto Del Rio

Daniel Wilcox: Alberto del Rio has been a chore to watch since his return. The value of the United States Championship has plummeted since John Cena took a vacation. If Cena returns, I believe next week, and doesn’t at least attempt to regain the title he spent all year defending, then I give up. Anyway, del Rio’s retaining here in what could possibly be the best chairs match to date, though there’s little competition. Thankfully del Rio’s pairing with Zeb Colter seems to be done and dusted, because that never worked. I’d imagine Colter plays a role here and ends up re-aligning with Jack Swagger after Swagger comes up just short.

Winner: And STILL WWE United States Champion, Alberto del Rio

Wyatt Beougher: Single object hardcore matches are, by definition, dumb. They limit the performers and feel like a stipulation had to be shoehorned in to fit the name of the show, but I guess if a match had to get saddled with the stupid chair gimmick, this one was as good as any. This feud makes no sense, has no heat, and has basically only been entertaining when Zeb rolls away from an argument on his scooter. That said, Del Rio and Swagger are both very good professional wrestlers, so I’m hoping that they can take this awful stipulation and make something worthwhile happen. At the very least, it’ll probably be better than last year’s utterly pointless Chairs match between Kane and Ryback. Since I think Sheamus loses his belt in the main event (and because Jack Swagger is a goober who disappears completely for lengthy stretches of time), I’m picking Del Rio to win here, just so the League of Nations isn’t completely neutered going forward. Del Rio hits the corner double stomp onto Swagger onto a chair for the win.

Winner and STILL WWE United States Champion: Alberto Del Rio (Corner double stomp onto a chair)

Charlotte (w/Ric Flair) vs. Paige
Divas Championship Match

Kevin Pantoja: Seriously, what the fuck is this feud? Heading into Survivor Series, Paige mentioned Reid Flair out of nowhere to try and build a personal rivalry. The match at the PPV did not follow the flow of what you’d expect a bitter feud to be. The next night, they had a more physical match and it looked like they were headed to a more personal PPV match. Suddenly, creative threw everything out the window. Becky Lynch was brought into play, but not in a logical way. The sympathetic face champion, who just defended the honor of her dead brother, randomly started being a dirty player like her dad (I mean, she uses everything else her dad does, but still). So, why should I root for Charlotte? Why should I cheer Paige? Why am I asking questions about a division that creative gives zero fucks about? Charlotte retains because Paige is gonna go to 0-6 on PPV/Network special Divas Title matches this year.

Winner: Charlotte

Michael Weyer This feud…I have no idea what they’re trying to do. We’ve got mocking of Reid Flair, we’ve got Ric involved, two great ladies stuck in a bad storyline, it’s really rough. It’s a shame as this could be a pretty good match given time but the baffling need to throw in this personal “drama” mars it, a running theme for WWE these days.

Winner and still Divas champion: Charlotte

Mike Chin: I liked the Charlotte-Paige match at Survivor Series a fair bit more than most other critics. I disliked Charlotte’s maybe-heel turn as much as anyone. So here we arrive at a match atop a division with little clear direction, in which the top three stars are all heels, and the third heel is the one everyone seems ready to root for (speaking of Sasha Banks, of course). Given the attempts to add intrigue to her character, the potential for Ric Flair as a more regular manager, I’m pegging Charlotte to retain here, likely via assistance from the Dirtiest Player in the Game.

Winner: Charlotte

Mitch Nickelson I am not predicting a single title change for TLC 2015. However, it seems logical that WWE will have at least one title change occur and if I had a gun pointed to my head to pick a match for it to happen on, it would be this one. Even so, I just don’t see Charlotte losing. WWE had buyer’s remorse on her as a babyface and I’m not so sure how into her as a heel they are. Regardless, the long-term plan that I’m calling is a Babyface Sasha Banks wins the belt off of a heel Divas Champion at WrestleMania. Heel Charlotte with daddy Ric in her corner only makes me more sure that she will keep her title until the big show in Dallas.

Winner: Charlotte

Mike Hammerlock: Why are we supposed to care? Every WWE diva is essentially the same horrible shrew as the next. I feel bad for Charlotte and Paige that they find themselves stuck in this mess. Yet here we are.

Winner: Charlotte

Daniel Wilcox: I’m not as down on the booking of these two as some others seem to be. Charlotte might have more to offer as a heel if Monday’s performance is any indication. And crowds have always wanted to cheer Paige. And you do have two clearly defined characters. You have a challenger who believes she’s entitled to the Championship because she feels she’s shaped the women’s division in the last two years, but now feels threatened by the recent arrivals. Then you have a Champion growing increasingly frustrated at the insinuation that she’s only got so far because of her family background, despite reigning as Divas Champion. It is a decent set up for a double turn. But then you also have the wildcard of Becky Lynch, who may or may not be a factor here. And honestly, I could see the win going either way. We’ll take a punt and go with a new champion.

Winner: And NEW WWE Divas Champion, Paige

Wyatt Beougher: Charlotte is obviously going to cement her heel turn here, so the real question in this match is if they can actually put a Hart/Austin double turn to continue the Paige feud, or if they’ll simply shunt Paige to the side in order for Charlotte to feud with Becky Lynch. This match could be good, and their match last month was passable, but Paige has yet to do anything on the main roster that remotely approached her match with Emma at NXT ArRIVAL, and with each passing week, it looks more and more obvious that Charlotte’s success in NXT was due more to who she was in the ring with than her being the incredible wrestler that a lot of us thought she was. If this ends with anything other than a Figure Eight, I’ll be stunned.

Winner and STILL WWE Divas Champion: Charlotte (Figure Eight)

The New Day vs. The Usos vs. The Lucha Dragons
WWE Tag Team Title Ladder Match

Kevin Pantoja: This should be a blast. The New Day have easily been the most entertaining thing on the main roster since the summer, while the Lucha Dragons are my second favorite active main roster tag team. The Usos are still good to have around for good matches and they’re pretty over. I don’t expect this to reach the levels of the old school triple threat ladder matches, but it should still honestly steal the show. I truly believe that the belts should stay on the New Day but I think the WWE is going to want faces with some belts. I also think that if the New Day have to drop the straps, it should be to the Lucha Dragons. What I think will happen though, is another Usos title reign.

Winner: The Usos

Michael Weyer: The New Day have been the best part of RAW, a fantastic act and elevated the tag team division nicely. This should be a great match, expect a few terrific spots from Kofi and the Dragons and some top notch action, it’ll be a terrific battle. It’s tempting to say a title change but the New Day are just so damn fun, it’s hard to see it ending so maybe put it off for another time and at least enjoy the spotfest this will give us.

Winners and still WWE Tag Team Champions: The New Day

Mike Chin: This match has a world of potential. I don’t foresee WWE putting gold on the Luch Dragons, so the question is whether The Usos resume their post atop the tag ranks, or if New Day has proven itself enough that the brass lets them carry the titles into WrestleMania season. I could see it going either way, but will pick New Day to retain here and likely drop the straps to the Usos in a conventional tag match down the road.

Winner: New Day

Michael Weyer: This could be the show-stealer of the night and I’m not necessarily talking about the high spots. New Day, even when WWE uses them in way too many segments for one night, are consistently the best thing about the current product. There will be trombone playing, hips gyrating, and even some cool stuff with ladders. New Day have the numbers advantage and sell lots of goofy merchandise. I expect them to retain.

Winners: The New Day

Mike Hammerlock: This should be the main event. It won’t be, but it has the ingredients of what makes a good main event. A) New Day is the best, most organic thing to happen in the WWE since Daniel Bryan. B) Given the history of the TLC match, this should be the one event each year where the tag teams rule the roost. C) These three teams are going to put on one hell of a show. Arguably, this match already pre-stole the show. It’s the one contest generating some positive buzz. I like that we’re on a slow burn for New Day-Usos, which ought to build to WrestleMania and something epic like a Three Stages of Hell match.

Winner: New Day

Daniel Wilcox: The Lucha Dragons have had a bit of a stop-start run since coming up to the main roster, but a consistent push will see them garner a lot more love from the audience. They were even crowned number one contenders weeks ago, but then the Usos returned and that was completely forgotten about. The New Day have arguably been the best thing about WWE’s product in 2015, but if there is one criticism of their two reigns as Tag Champs, it’s that they haven’t had too many memorable matches. The series with the Dudley disappointed because of booking as well as a paint-by-numbers in-ring story, but you’d think that this Triangle Ladder Match could be that defining moment of the New Day’s run so far. I expect New Day to retain via the numbers game, but after beating the top two contenders in a big gimmick match, you have to wonder, “who’s next?”

Winners: And STILL WWE Tag Team Champions, the New Day

Wyatt Beougher: I dare not be sour, but honestly, this match should’ve been the TLC match in the tradition of the first-ever TLC match. The Lucha Dragons would made fine stand-ins for the Hardy Boyz, The Usos are like socially awkward and painfully unfunny versions of Edge and Christian (without any singles potential whatsoever), and The New Day are the tag team the in-their-prime Dudley Boyz wish they could be. (Seriously, Big E is like Bubba Ray’s final form and Kofi may lack D-Von’s power, but he more than makes up for it in crazy spot ability.) This is my pick for match of the night, for the simple fact that New Day are legitimately the only consistently entertaining act in WWE from week to week, the introduction of ladders should cover the fact that the Usos, a tag team who are allegedly high flyers, are terrible at actually flying high, and Kalisto is going to blow everyone’s mind at some point in this match. Because the New Day deserve to hold the tag championships until forever, because they are the only participant in this match with a third man, and because they’re magical unicorns, I look for them to pick up the win here. (And yes, the fact that their merchandise is selling so well right now is a huge factor in that.)

Winners and STILL WWE Tag Team Champions: The New Day

Kevin Owens vs. Dean Ambrose
WWE Intercontinental Title

Kevin Pantoja: One of only two matches that I’m looking forward to. I was excited for the Survivor Series match, which turned out to be really good, but just shy of great. At first, I was surprised this wasn’t given one of the stipulations. After thinking about it, I realized there is a lot of time in between TLC and the Royal Rumble. That means we can expect endless rematches between these two over the next few weeks of Raw and Smackdown. That being said, this should be another solid match between two guys that can’t afford a loss. I’m holding out hope that Owens remains champion until he faces a debuting Sami Zayn leading to a match at WrestleMania.

Winner: Kevin Owens

Michael Weyer: This should be the match of the night, a great battle with both guys giving it their all. It’d be terrific if Owens could restore some integrity to the IC belt and push things nicely and a battle with Amrbose is just the way to do it. Expect a great match and while it’d be nice to see Ambrose get the belt, Owens deserves more of a shot to give it some push and it’d be nice to see the IC belt mean something again.

Winner and still IC Champion: Kevin Owens

Mike Chin: I would not be surprised to see this one go either way and this is another spot where there’s reason to believe we’ll get a very good bout. Ambrose has been main event/upper mid-card workhorse all year, though, so I’m pegging him to pick up a consolation prize to coming up short for the WWE Championship last month by picking up the IC title, and I predict the feud will continue.

Winner: Dean Ambrose

Mitch Nickelson: It’s weird that Dean Ambrose was in the finals of the WWE World Heavyweight tournament just last month opposite Roman Reigns. He’s one of the more over guys the WWE has now. But just like with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship last month, it would be a huge surprise if Dean won the Intercontinental Title at TLC. This might be a feud to that continues on for several months so there’s a potential DQ when that could happen, but even so I’m leaning against it. Owens will retain in what should be a really good match.

Winner: Kevin Owens

Mike Hammerlock: I maintain these two will stage a brilliant match one of these days. Not sure it will be here. Part of the reason is this feud has been a byproduct of the Reigns storyline. Ambrose and Owens haven’t been given a separate spotlight. It means even if they pull off a stellar technical match, it doesn’t carry much of an emotional payload. We haven’t been given much reason to think this is special. It’s just two talented guys fighting for a title. I suspect Ambrose gets the win so he can come out later to pose with Reigns with both their belts held aloft (in an effort to tame the boo birds).

Winner: Dean Ambrose

Daniel Wilcox: Two things have stalled the momentum for this match – firstly, Dean Ambrose won the right to face Owens on an episode of SmackDown, so half the audience didn’t even know he was number one contender, and secondly, Owens missed a week of TV. Despite the lack of build, this is two of the company’s most talented and most over competitors battling it out for a championship, with no gimmicks attached. It should be a pretty great match. It felt that they held back somewhat at Survivor Series, knowing it was a throwaway 9-minute bout, but here I expect them to pull out all the stops and get nearly double that time allocation. It wouldn’t totally surprise me if they put the belt on Ambrose here, even if for no other reason than I think heels are going over up and down this card, but you’d think there’s more legs in Owens’ title run.

Winner: And STILL WWE Intercontinental Champion, Kevin Owens

Wyatt Beougher: This match should be good, but in theory, so should’ve the Dolph/Owens match on Monday, which turned out to be a pretty dull and plodding affair. This match also should have had a decent build to it, with two of the best talkers in the business squaring off, but instead we got Dean Ambrose doing the corniest (pun fully intended) version of Brian Pillman’s “Loose Cannon” character ever and throwing refreshments at the Intercontinental Champion. In the back of my mind, I can’t help thinking that this should be this decade’s Austin/Rock, but instead we’re getting Sting/Vader (all we needed was for Hornswoggle to yell “play the game” repeatedly and a White Castle of Fear to really make the buildup worse). I guess what I’m saying is that this feud should be Ambrose and Owens’ launching pad to lead this company into the next decade, but instead they’re going to be relegated to (what should be) a very good but ultimately forgettable match in the midcard, where both will likely languish for the foreseeable future. As for who wins? If Ambrose couldn’t win the title after his major revelation back during the “God hates WWE” snowstorm at the beginning of the year, he’s not winning it here.

Winner and STILL WWE Intercontinental Champion: Kevin Owens (Lights Out pop-up powerbomb)

Sheamus vs. Roman Reigns
WWE World Heavyweight Title TLC Match

Kevin Pantoja: Man, this is one unenthusiastic main event. They’ve had some okay matches on Raw in recent months, but nothing about this screams PPV headliner. To make an already unappealing WWE Title match even worse, the weeks leading up to this show have been atrocious. Sheamus gets a new stable and Roman Reigns lays them out. Then Reigns beats all four members via countout on Smackdown. Then on Raw, Reigns pinned Sheamus and, to top it all off, he then made Sheamus look like a joke in arguably the worst go home Raw closing segment of all time. It’s like, you put this terrible dish in front of us, and instead of trying to make it more appetizing, you dropped it on the floor and made it even worse. If Sheamus wins, Reigns comes up short on the big stage again. If Reigns wins, Sheamus looks like even more of a joke than he already has. Contrary to what other “writers” will tell you, this is a lose/lose situation. I go with Sheamus because the WWE likes to job out the champion, then have him retain through nefarious terms.

Winner: Sheamus

Michael Weyer: Well, obviously, no title change here. It’s just more of the dragging out of Sheamus as champ so Roman can get the “big victory” at the end despite the fact fans aren’t exactly thrilled by it. It should be a fair match but not the epic main event expected and just shows how the direction of WWE is getting rough. If we don’t see another big walkout beforehand, I’ll be amazed as this main event really sums up all the problems of the product big time.

Winner and still WWE World Champion: Sheamus

Mike Chin: I have minimal interest in the story being told here, but at least these two guys, working this stipulation, is a fresh match with the potential to, in a vacuum, be quite good. The outcome could go either way, but I’m picking Sheamus to save Reigns regaining the title for an A-level PPV, and to give the League of Nations a little more time to get some legs under it.

Winner: Sheamus

Mitch Nickelson: If WWE wants for us the viewers to get behind Roman Reigns like they want us to get behind Roman Reigns, then they really should go all in with him. Sheamus has been booked like an absolute loser the entire duration that he carried the MITB briefcase and only cashed in successfully because he picked a spot when Roman was at his weakest. On Raw this past week, Sheamus was pinned clean in that big tag match by Reigns, then speared through a table to close out the show. The whole point of all of this is to garner fan sympathy and make Roman look strong. They should make him look like a gladiator of a fighter at TLC and single-handedly Superman Punch and spear Sheamus and all of his League of Nations buddies to win the match on Sunday. Let him be a Champion who’s good at beating people up. But what will more likely happen is that Sheamus will win again by some sort of fluke to drag this out for another month.

Winner: Sheamus

Mike Hammerlock: I’m expecting the crowd to murder this match. That alone could make this a must-see event. Seriously, this could become the Boston Massacre, the night the crowd turned completely on a WWE main event. I’m almost talking myself into getting a ticket for this. It could be a PR disaster, making it a perfect bookend to a year which started with fans pouring their hate all over Reigns’ win at the Royal Rumble. It’s all set up for Reigns to get his unambiguous rise to the top. He can plow through the League of Nations and win the belt, but my guess is the crowd will hate every second of it.

Winner: Roman Reigns

Daniel Wilcox: Presumably, if WWE wanted Roman Reigns to hold the strap at the current time, the company would have just ran with it from Survivor Series, without Sheamus’ involvement. As such, I’m fairly confident that Sheamus will retain after a long match and interference from the new League of Nations. The match itself should be a decent battle; Reigns has really shined on pay-per-view this year and even managed to have a pretty great plunder match at Extreme Rules with the Big Show of all people. I expect this to be of similar quality, although there are matches on the card more likely to steal the show. I’m not sure when or how Reigns’ story culminates, but WrestleMania seems the almost-too-obvious place. Regardless, this story almost certainly doesn’t end here.

Winner: And STILL WWE World Heavyweight Champion, Sheamus

Wyatt Beougher: How much better would this match be if it was Seth Rollins in Sheamus’ place? Sheamus and Reigns have complementary strengths and weaknesses, so that they should be able to put on some really good matches, but I honestly think the TLC stipulation is wasted on them (more on that in the tag title match write-up). When I think Roman Reigns and Sheamus, I think two guys just hitting each other in the face as hard as they possibly can until one of them falls down, which isn’t a bad thing (and has the potential to be a lot of fun, actually), but it’s not “do a bunch of spots off of ladders and through tables with chair shots thrown in”, which is more in the grand tradition of TLC matches. The tag title match should have been a TLC match, make Ambrose/Owens a Ladder match, and make this some kind of street fight, which would have still allowed the League of Nations to interfere and Roman to single-handedly dispatch them all, looking strong in the process as he wins the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for the second time in three weeks. Instead we’ll get a convoluted spot at the end where Roman takes out the League of Nations, climbs a ladder in desperation to spear Sheamus off of the main ladder under the title, then climbs that ladder to retrieve the belt and have his moment in the sun. (Assuming this match will see the belt suspended above the ring and won’t just be a three-weapon variation of a hardcore match like we got in last year’s main event. If it’s the latter, Roman pins Sheamus after the spear off of the ladder.)

Winner and NEW WWE World Heavyweight Champion: Roman Reigns

Kevin Pantoja: My interest level for this PPV is a 1: I want to see the Intercontinental Title and the Tag Team Title matches. Everything else looks like it’s going to completely blow. The weekly TV shows have made me want to see these matches far less than I would have going in blind. That’s bad.

Michael Weyer: My interest level for this PPV is a 1. December PPVs are always rough and this looks no better. The IC battle should be good and the tag teams but the rest looks bad, especially the ECW guys coming back. It’s going to be bad and not looking forward to how this signs off the year.

Mike Chin: My interest level for this PPV is a 3: In terms of storytelling and long-term ramifications, this is not a can’t-miss show, and it’s happening amidst a pretty blah period for WWE programming. When you look at the matches themselves, however, every one of them has the potential to range from fun little spectacle to great pro wrestling match (and yes, I’m even saying that about Charlotte-Paige, because I still believe these two have a great match in them). So, it’s with cautious optimism that I evaluate my interest to land at a 3/5–here’s hoping for the best.

Mitch Nickelson: My interest level for this PPV is a 4. The rivalries and storylines driving this show are pretty weak, but I’m optimistic that there could be several really fun matches. The tag team ladder match and the tag team elimination match both have potential for something over the top. Still, I need characters to care about and story arcs that progress interestingly and somewhat logically. That area is a big negative, keeping me only somewhat interested in this card.

Mike Hammerlock: My interest level for this PPV is a 3: I can’t claim to be excited about this. The WWE weekly product makes that impossible. However, the tag ladder match should be a blast and I can’t wait to see how over the top New Day’s entrance will be. The rest I could skip. Yet I’m giving this a 3 due to morbid curiosity. This could be a seminal moment in the WWE’s biggest storyline: Vince vs. fans. The main event features two guys who could have a perfectly good match, but who find themselves in a creative debacle. If the fans don’t like either guy, they could turn this match into their plaything. They bought their tickets and they’re going to get their money’s worth. If it’s a rambunctious audience early in the night, then it’s really going to be on. It’s just a question of how many Boston area fans decided to live hate watch the event.

Daniel Wilcox: My interest level for this PPV is a 4: The product may be stale as hell, but this is a card with a lot of potential. The Triangle Ladder match and Elimination Tables matches will be chaotic car wrecks and should both be knocking on 4-star territory, one would think. Ambrose/Owens should deliver even if it’s not the final chapter in this program, it’s still two of the best workers in the company. I’m invested in the women’s match, and again, there’s potential there. The main event could be a disaster and I have no real emotional investment in the outcome, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t intrigued to see how the crowd responds. This seems like one of the easier shows to book, so as long as creative doesn’t pull anything too ridiculous (and I know there’s always a good chance that they will) then this could be a sleeper of a show.

Wyatt Beougher: My interest level for this PPV is a 2: I won’t be watching this one with my friends, and there are two matches on this show that have the potential to make me stop watching the WWE main roster programming and potentially cancel my subscription to the Network. I was at last year’s TLC(S), and it was easily the worst wrestling show that I’ve ever attended live, and I honestly don’t look for this one to be much better. At least the main event will probably end without an exploding monitor this year.

And there you have it! Join us for LIVE coverage Sunday night and we’ll see you in January for the Royal Rumble!