Pro Wrestling Review: TLC 2013 Review

Welcome to another edition of Pro Wresting Review, today I'm going to be giving my TLC 2013 review.

Pre Show: Fandango vs Dolph Ziggler

 This match was alright while it lasted, it didn't go on for very long and in the end Fandango ended up getting the win after a distraction from Summer Ray. The next night on raw Ziggler got the win in their rematch. I'd love to see them continue this feud but odds are the match on raw was the end of it. Hopefully now they have something good in mind for both of these guys.

3 on 1 Handicap Match: CM Punk vs The Shield

 This was a good way to to start off the show, the match was fun and it had some very entertaining moments. For instance at one point outside the ring Roman Reigns went to spear CM Punk but Punk moved out of the way and Reigns ended up launching himself onto the announce table. The announcers said that when he came threw he hit his eye on the corner of a chair. It looked real because his eye did looked messed up but as someone on Pro Wrestling Talk Radio pointed out, Reigns was with the doctor most of the rest match so they would have had time to put some makeup on him. Near the end of the match Roman back came into the ring and went to spear Punk again but Punk once again moved out of the way and Reigns ended up spearing Dean Ambrose, then Punk threw him out of the ring and pinned Ambrose for the win. 

 If the eye injury was real it definitely came at right time because it kind of made scene that Reigns would miss the spear because he was disoriented. 

 Overall this was a very entertaining match, from here I see CM Punk possibly winning the royal rumble or at least entering it and going onto the road to wrestlemania. The Shield will probably break up around the royal rumble or elimination chamber, I'm really glad that they're taking their time with the break up and doing it too fast. 

 Overall very good match here and great way to start off the show. I'm very interested to see where the Shield and CM Punk go from here.

Divas Title Match: AJ vs Natalia

 Finally wwe has a good divas match, I knew when they put these two together it would be a good. I would say this is in second place for divas match of the year. The best one that I've see was Page vs Natalia on NXT a few weeks ago. 

 I wish they would've given this match more time though, usually with the divas division the less time the better but in this case since these two can actually go, I think it would've been better if it had gone on longer. The division definitely needs a lot work, when there's only been two matches from the divas division in one year that I would consider really good then there's a problem.

IC Title Match: Big E Langston vs Damien Sandow

 This match was entertaining but I don't know why it wasn't stimulation match, a tables match would've worked perfectly here. The unification match was in fact the only tlc like stimulation on the card. I think what wwe was trying to do was make that match even bigger, really make it seem like the show was all about it but I would've rather had more of the matches have simulations. I mean it's TLC, the one night of year when I expect to see TLC matches, also it puts a ton of pressure, maybe too much pressure on main event to deliver, which I'll get to in a little while. 

 Even though I wish this would've been a tables match, it was still entertaining and I liked it. In the end Big E won with a big ending. I hope wwe has big plans for both Damien Sandow and Big E Langston, Sandow desperately needs a good storyline to go into since he's been sliding down the card a lot ever since he lost his his MITB cash in, well actually he was never that high on the card in first place. The point is though this guy was supposed to be a world champion and now he's doing nothing.

 They also need to put Big E into a good feud to keep him relevant. This always happens to midcard champions, they're hot when they win the title but then soon afterwords wwe doesn't give them any good material and they become irrelevant. Especially since we're near the Royal Rumble and the Elimination Chamber which is a time when there's not a lot of feuds going on and they just put people into the rumble and elimination chamber matches. 

R-Truth vs Brodus Clay 

 This was basically just a cool down match, it did actually have a feud behind though, they're having this whole thing with Tons of Funk splitting up and then there's also Xavier Woods and R-Truth in there too. The match was alright but I'm interested to see where they go with this storyline.

 The match ended when R Truth pinned Brodus Clay with roll after Brodus was distracted arguing with Tensai. The problem with it is that R Truth and Tons of Funk have been booked basically like jobbers all year so it's king of hard to care about a feud involving them. Hopefully they make it interesting enough so that we do care anyway. 

Kofi Kingston vs The Miz

 At first I didn't really like this feud and The Miz's heel turn but now I'm actually starting to. They had some weird stuff in the beginning when The Miz didn't accept Kofi's tag, they had a match together, there was Miz tv which is always bad and then they were tagging together again but in that match Miz turned on Kofi again and after that they had another match on raw and now they had this match. At first it was really weird because Miz kept going back and forth between being a heel an being a face. Now though it seems they're getting somewhere though, apparently on the pre show Miz was saying lots of bad things about Kofi and then they got into a brawl. Afterwords this match was announced on the spot for show. I liked the brawl and as you could see in the match this is becoming a big feud between these two.

 I really enjoyed the match, there was some fighting outside the ring and Kofi showed a lot of intensity during it which I really liked. Kofi went for the trouble in paradise but Miz ducked and he ended up kicking the ring pole. That foot injury was the big story for the rest of the match and The Miz focused most of his offence on it but in the end Kofi won with a successful trouble in paradise. Like I said I thought the match was good but I've heard a lot of people say they didn't like it, I think there are three reason for that. One these two haven't been booked in many major feuds this year so they don't seem important and wwe isn't doing much to fix that. I hate when they announce somewhat major matches the night of a ppv because it makes the match seem unimportant and like filler. 

 The third reason I think people had a problem with the match is because these two have had so many matches together recently. I've said many times on here that I don't like when wwe gives away ppv matches for free before ppvs. In this feud they did that, these two have had tons of matches together recently so one more at a ppv doesn't seem like it's anything special. Now wwe did try to make the match unique from their other ones by adding a no DQ stimulation, (I would have rather had it be a TLC type stimulation instead since it was at TLC.) They didn't really use the no DQ stimulation very much, we did see them fighting outside of the ring but they never did anything that would have gotten them disqualified.

 Over all I liked this match but I wish it wouldn't have been announced the night of the show.

TT Title Elimination Match: The Rhodes Bros. vs The Real Americans vs Rey Mysterio and The Big Show vs Rybaxel

 This was a very good match as most tag team matches these days are, the final two teams were Mysterio and Big Show and Cody and Golddust. Cody ends up winning after delivering the cross Rhodes to Rey Mysterio, afterwords both teams shook hands. Then on raw this week these two teams had a rematch and Mysterio and Big Show ended up coming out on top so I'm guessing this is going to lead to a title match the Royal Rumble. The team of Rey and Big Show I guess is ok, neither of them are really doing anything at moment but hopefully Rey doesn't get injured this time right before wrestlemania like he did last year. 

 One thing I didn't like about this match was that they didn't handle the Real Americans very well. They had the Big Show knock both guys out, so they didn't look too good coming out of the ppv. The thing I really didn't though was that on raw they had them in a match against Mark Henry and Big E and they basically got dominated. It looks like the Real Americans are on their way to becoming tag team champions in the next few months as I'm guessing the Rhodes will drop the titles and go into a match against each other for wrestlemania. They could have the brothers face off as tag team champions like they did with I believe Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero at wrestlemania once but I'm guessing they'll drop the belts. The Real Americans are the logical choice to to take them, I could see the Usos or Show and Mysterio taking them but since Cody and Golddust are faces I think it's time for a heel run. Hopefully they start handling the team like future champions instead of what they've been doing recently.

 Overall pretty good match here but I was surprised the Usos weren't in it. I wish they would've done a TLC tag team match, do The Rhodes vs The Usos vs Real Americans in a triangle TLC match, that would've been awesome. 

The Wyatt Family vs Daniel Bryan

 I said in my TLC preview that I've learned never to bet against Daniel Bryan having a good match. A lot of people thought this match wasn't going to deliver but it definitely did, this was my favorite match of the night. We got some good spots from all the guys in the it including Bray Wyatt. Bray Wyatt is someone that, like Daniel Bryan really gets into his character and that is really shown by his in ring moves, the move he hit were pretty basic moves but because of the way he did them it made them really cool. Also he did that creepy upside down crawl. 

 I'm becoming a big fan of the Wyatt family, you have Bray who is absolutely amazing on the mic but not the best in the ring. That's ok though because you also have Eric Rowen and especially Luke Harper who pick up the in ring work very well. I also don't know if Bray Wyatt is as bad in the ring as people make him out to be, granted he's not great but he has had some decent matches. He had two decent ones with I believe Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler earlier this year. The one with Kane at Summerslam was a bust but that was only one match, I've heard that he's some good ones on NXT before. Also like I said the way he executes his moves really helps him a lot. 

 One more thing I want to point out is that in The Undertaker's early days some of his matches weren't all that great either but later in his career he was having 5 star matches. Hopefully it will be the same way Bray Wyatt and he'll end up working out in the ring. 

 They had the perfect opportunity these last few weeks to do Bray Wyatt against Daniel Bryan who I'm nearly certain he can have a good match against. I hope that they still end up doing that at some point because it seems that he Bryan are still sort of in a feud and a match on raw between the two would be the perfect way to finish it off.

 I really enjoyed this match, it had some awesome story telling in it with Bray Wyatt trying to get Daniel Bryan to join them. Bray sticking his hand out and then Bryan kicking it away was great. They played to everyone's strengths in this match, they had Bryan, Harper and Rowen do the majority of the in ring work and they had Bray Wyatt in for only little bits at a time delivering some cool moves doing most of the storytelling. 

 I'm interested to see where they go with the Wyatts after this. As for Daniel Bryan, he needs some character development.  I'm also hoping they put him in a big time match at wrestlemania and his ring work is amazing as usual. With the storytelling combined with just the match itself this was my favorite match of the night. I would say this was one my favorite matches in a long time but we've seen some great stuff lately, especially that match with Daniel Bryan against Randy Orton, wow that awesome, one of the best matches this year.

TLC Match Wwe/WHC: Randy Orton vs John Cena


 Moving on to a match that was billed as one of the biggest of all time for the unified world and wwe titles I really enjoyed the build up especially the segment on the go home show last week. 

 I thought  the match was pretty good I've know that a lot of people didn't really like it, mainly because of how big wwe was promoting it to be they were expecting an HBK vs Undertaker and that just wasn't what this was. It was a good match, maybe even a very good match but it wasn't one of the best matches of all time like many people wanted. So wwe building it up to be so big actually back fired. For me though it had the opposite effect, The big build up actually made me enjoy the match more.

 I was expecting Cena to win but I'm really glad they went with Randy Orton because I think there's a lot more they can do with him than John Cena right now. When the Authority came out after his win though I was disappointed because I was afraid that meant that Randy was going to be the corporate champion again and we've seen that for the last five months. On Raw though they did a pretty job with that by adding a lot of tension between the Authority and Orton, they're still partners some what but definitely not like they were back in September. That's really helped Orton's character a lot and we've been seeing some pretty good stuff from him lately. Also it doesn't make it seem like he's the lakie for Triple H and Stephanie anymore. So I'm glad they're distancing him from the Authority.

 Over all I liked it but I can see why some people didn't think it lived up to it's expectations. I'm really exited to see where they go from here with Orton as champion for the Royal Rumble and especially Wrestlemania. I'll be doing some wrestlemania possibilities articles soon talking about the wwe championship at mania and other matches. 

 TLC usually is a pretty solid event for wwe and this years incarnation was no different. The two handicap matches that a lot of people were worried about turned out to be great, the only thing that I really wish they would've done differently was have more stimulation matches on the card. I think wwe is starting to get back on track, there were those very poor ppvs back in  the fall, Survivor Series was ok and this one was pretty good.

 Be sure to tell me your thoughts on TLC on twitter: @ENC98 or on Pro Wrestling Review's very own twitter; @PWReview. Thanks for reading.