After the euphoric high of Survivor Series and the dazzling NXT R Evolution, TLC had a lot to beat.
Interest prior to the PPV was minimal with a lacklustre card but TLC is usually good for some big spots if nothing else, and the idea of Dolph Ziggler and Luke Harper in a ladder match was a strangely intriguing scenario.
The NXT special was great in all the ways that WWE has not been lately: with characters you can invest in, clean finishes, great wrestling with limited interference and making everything mean something. Let's see if they've learnt their lesson.
WWE Intercontinental Championship: Luke Harper vs Dolph Ziggler
The match of the night by several thousand miles, with both men bloodied by the end, you knew these two had been in a fight. After years of squandering Ziggler's immense talent, he's now finally being booked right and looks like an absolute star as a result.
His body was put through Hell by the much larger man and it certainly felt like one of the most brutal matches in recent WWE history, helped I imagine by the blood both men accidentally spilled.
Everything Ziggler does has an impact to it, even when he's climbing the ladder you feel the energy pouring out of him as he desperately reaches for the gold. Ziggler would be mindful to tone down his act - I know it's why we love him, but he can't realistically continue into his late 30s wrestling like this.
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After randomly taking the belt off him last month, Ziggler regains it here in the final flurry, as he superkicks Harper off the ladder, righting that wrong and making the crowd erupt for the first and last time on the night. A fantastic opener that would be match of the night on virtually any WWE PPV.
Winner: Dolph Ziggler
WWE Tag Team Championship: The Miz and Damien Mizdow vs The Usos
Damien Mizdow, against all odds, has become the hottest thing in the company and thus WWE has an opportunity to build the tag championships back up, but that would be too easy.
Before things get going, there's a dreadful DQ finish that doesn't even bear talking about, we just need to move on quickly. Mizdow is hot and The Usos are over as tag teams go, so let them work and build, literally nothing can be gained from this.
Winners: The Usos (by DQ)
Erick Rowan vs Big Show
Essentially the match was: two large men plod around the ring, occasionally whacking each other with some steel stairs. That actually sounds like a fairly cool game of Rock'em Sock'em Robots, but a wrestling match it does not make.
Big Show, at this point in his career, just does not care, his offence is lame, he refuses to sell and he switches from face to heel and back again almost every week.
This match went over ten minutes and every single one of them was excruciating. And somehow it was made worse by the finish, which just makes Rowan look a bit thick. He should have gone over Big Show emphatically, because as the crowd reaction proved, nobody cares about Big Show winning.
Winner: Big Show
John Cena vs Seth Rollins
Minus the interference and befuddling finish, I saw this match at a house show in Birmingham a month ago and I didn't find it particularly entertaining then because it was clear both men were working within themselves. That was at a house show and they do exactly the same thing on a PPV. This was like something from WCW in 2000 and if you have any memories of WCW from 2000, you know just how bad this was.
Roman Reigns's return should have been saved for Raw or even the Royal Rumble and Randy Orton could have had his place here and it wouldn't be received any different. Big Show came out - I don't know why, nor do I care - and I can't repeat this enough times: stop with the screwy finishes.
On every WCW documentary WWE has ever produced there are always jokes and snide remarks about all of the messy finishes the company did with its top stars on PPV but WWE is doing the same thing. It's really simple guys.
None of this meant anything and for the first time in a decade, Cena didn't feel like a star, he was on fourth and got no reaction. At all.
The finish came when both men went through the table at the same time. Cue some referee squabbling, even though Cena had already gone through a table earlier in the match, which two of the three referees would have seen, but WWE thinks its entire audience is braindead. The match gets restarted, Cena wins and he faces Brock Lesnar next month at Royal Rumble for the third time.
Winner: John Cena
WWE Divas Championship: Nikki Bella vs AJ Lee
At least WWE gave these two a chance at an actual wrestling match after last month's farce.
It was a Raw or Smackdown match, with yet again, another dirty finish that makes the face look stupid. Nikki wins via hairspray and I want to cry.
Winner: Nikki Bella
Ryback vs Kane
This would have been a compelling match, but nobody cares about either of these two men because they have been given no time to cut a promo or build the feud. Both men give a good effort, but aside from a meek 'feed me more' chant, the crowd were silent and the stipulation, not for the first time, was killing the match.
There's only so much you can do with a chair match and I imagine Kane has a very sore back this morning after all those spinebusters, but again, WWE gave us nothing to invest in, so you give nothing back. At least it was a clean finish with the right man winning. I was ready to turn the show off if Kane won.
Winner: Ryback
WWE US Championship: Rusev vs Jack Swagger
The crowd got more excited over a guy dressed as Santa getting thrown out of the arena than they did anything from this match or indeed anything from this PPV aside from Ziggler-Harper.
I still like Swagger, he's a freak athlete, he just seems a bit timid and afraid to go to the place he needs to, to become a top star.
He's basically what Batista would be like if he could wrestle and wasn't friends with Triple H. It ended up being a glorified squash match but I'd like to see these two given a solid 15 minutes because I think there's a really good match there, but I don't see Rusev hanging around in the mid-card for too much longer. Solid, which on this PPV is like watching Shawn Michaels - Bret Hart.
Winner: Rusev
Dean Ambrose vs Bray Wyatt
The right choice for final match of the night and they could have saved the PPV right here with Ambrose and Wyatt tearing the house down in a wild brawl of a match, with some intense psychology and crazy moves. But that didn't happen.
This match would suck if it happened in CZW but this is a WWE PPV main event and it was embarrassing. It was a car crash. Ambrose just jumped off various sized ladders for what felt like an eternity, there was no rhythm or psychology, just carnage, and not the good kind. I felt like they just made it up as they were going along.
And yet the finish was worse. Dean Ambrose electrocuted himself with a TV monitor. I repeat, Dean Ambrose electrocuted himself with a TV monitor. He can't come back from this, he's dead, he'll always be the guy who electrocuted himself and there's nothing anybody can do about that.
Winner: Bray Wyatt
Verdict:
The worst PPV in some years, from the second Ziggler-Harper finished, it was a car crash. All the finishes were dirty, there were no pay-offs and all this just days after Sami Zayn and Adrian Neville had one of the best matches of the year.
The booking is thick - I can't even begin to imagine the justification to book the PPV in the way it was. On the bright side, Dolph Ziggler is a star, but my God, I miss CM Punk and Daniel Bryan. Hell, even Randy Orton.
Sam Moore is a culture writer from the UK, writing mainly about film, TV and music for the likes of The Guardian, GQ, The Independent and many more. He is currently working on a book about the making of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.
