TLC 2018

[Tenese Sarwieh]

18 hours ago, TheDuke said:

I agree with this. Even if it was just another version of Ride of the Valkyries, the version he has now sounds too exciting and is too linked to his dramatic face run from a few years ago.

I'll add a haircut and shave to the mix also.

[sek69]

The scraggly look goes with his environmental fanatic gimmick, but the music is jarring. It was fine the first couple times for him to tease doing the Yes motions then not doing them for heel heat, but now he needs something different.

[DMJ]

Will post my full review over at Kwang The Blog tomorrow (hopefully). A few thoughts I didn't necessarily see mentioned or not mentioned enough...

- Fun opener. Felt like "the best kind of house show match." It was light, a little silly, but everyone maximized their minutes. R-Truth and Alicia Fox are entertaining. Carmella has quietly earned recognition as "Most Improved" in 2018 (and maybe even 2017) from where she started. 

- Rollins/Ambrose felt like "the worst kind of house show match." My full scathing review will be at my blog, but this match had everything working against it - from loathsome commentary to even a bit of a "bait and switch" for the live crowd to the lackluster build to the layout of the match itself. What I'm referring to with the "bait and switch" is that when you spend a month of RAW promoting a match for a PPV entitled TLC and use the phrase "TLC" every time you promote a match that is built as the main draw of the show (at least on the RAW brand), fans are going to expect it to be a TLC Match...or at least something close to it. Also, Rollins wrestling 20-minute mini-epics on RAW every week when the rest of the card is woeful reruns containing the likes of Bobby Roode, Apollo Crews, and Baron Corbin, you're going to stand out as a "great wrestler." On a show with AJ, Bryan, Ronda, a healthy Rey Mysterio, and a motivated Randy Orton, you don't look quite as impressive.

- Can we talk about how fun that Orton/Rey match was? It was resthold-free and wrestled like two guys that, backstage, said to each other, "We're two of the biggest stars of the past 20 years and they put us in the midcard, let's go show them how it's done." Orton, when motivated, which seems like maybe 3-4 times a year in a good year, can be really good and Rey is Rey. That Bronco Buster onto the chair on the outside of the ring was batshit crazy awesome. The audience was more engaged for this "throwaway" match with a third of the build than it was for Rollins/Ambrose.

- They need to think about giving Graves a break on these shows, pulling him from a match or two for each brand. I like his commentary for the most part, but his work during the Rollins/Ambrose match was abysmal. I was actually shocked that the live crowd turned on it because I thought it was only fans watching at home that were being tortured. They should be lucky they didn't have to listen to 10+ minutes of Graves and Renee Young bickering back and forth while Cole tried (unsuccessfully) to get the match over.