Hello and welcome to the WrestleTalk News, I am Luke Owen.
The final WWE PPV of 2018 TLC is now done and dusted - and saw Asuka become the new
Smackdown Women’s Champion in a terrific Tables, Ladders and Chairs match, AJ Styles
and Daniel Bryan have an excellent WWE Championship bout, and Ronda Rousey successfully defend
her Raw Women’s Championship against Nia Jax. While not everything on the show was
perfect, 73% of you agreed with my score of Great Per View, which is a step up from 46%
voting Survivor Series Thumbs in the Middle and 66% voting for Crown Jewel as the very
bottom rating Worst of Both Worlds.
But one of the biggest disappointments of the night was the Intercontinental Championship
match between Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose, a feud that was based around Dean turning
on Seth on the same night as Roman Reigns’s leukemia announcement. But even with all this
drama going into it, the crowd turned on the match with chants for Becky Lynch and “this
is boring”. Seth himself even acknowledged these chants on Raw last night, promising
he will do better in the future.
And it would appear the crowd and Seth Rollins were not the only people disappointed in the
match, at least according to Dave Meltzer on the TLC review edition of Wrestling Observer
Radio. During the show Meltzer noted that, “There were a lot of reasons [the Seth Rollins
vs. Dean Ambrose] match didn't work” adding that, “Vince [McMahon] was furious at it
too.”
And it’s Vince’s fury at the current product that might have sparked his surprise return
to WWE TV - which was announced just before TLC and plugged as a big deal throughout the
show.
However according to WrestleVotes, Vince McMahon himself wasn’t really keen on the idea of
being a TV character again - posting on Twitter that, “I’ve heard Vince really didn’t
want to come back to TV, so this shows signs of desperation.” This isn’t anything majorly
new as it’s been reported for several years that Vince wanted to stop portraying the Mr.
McMahon character on TV and simply work backstage. With that said, Vince McMahon is also a proven
ratings draw which is something the company needs right now.
Him being back on TV this week felt like a direct response to both Raw and Smackdown
Live’s declining ratings since Survivor Series - with both shows posting record low
numbers in the past few weeks. Vince, Stephanie, Shane and Triple H all opened Raw last night
and promised that they would be making changes to the show and would start listening to their
audience - which would explain why The Revival earned a tag team championship shot at Bobby
Roode & Chad Gable instead of losing in nonsensical handicap matches against Lucha House Party,
the hour-long women’s gauntlet match, the removal of Baron Corbin as Raw general manager,
and several NXT call-ups including Lacey Evans, EC3, Heavy Machinery and Sanity’s Nikki
Cross [16].
Next week’s Raw will take place on Christmas Eve and as such WWE pre-tapped the episode
after last night’s show went off the air. And we’re going to reveal the results of
that show now so if you want to avoid some spoilers then click onto another WrestleTalk
video. Maybe Oli’s review of Raw or something. We’re giving you plenty of time here. We’re
heading into the Spoiler Room Brawl in 3...2...1.
The show kicks off with an Elias song and he then beats Bobby Lashley in a Miracle on
34th Street Fight - apparently featuring a spot with boxes full of LEGO. Jimmy Havoc’s
lawyers have been called. Chad Gable & Bobby Roode retain their tag team championships
over The Revival, Sasha Banks teamed with Bayley and Ember Moon to defeat Alicia Fox,
Dana Brooke and Mickie James - with The Riott Squad attacking the babyfaces after match
- and Finn Balor defeats Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler in a triple threat. Braun Strowman
comes out to tell Paul Heyman that he will beat Brock Lesnar at Royal Rumble - pretty
sure we’ve heard that one before - Ronda Rousey retains her Raw Women’s Championship
against Natalya, Heath Slater defeats Jinder Mahal - which also sees Ryhno return to make
the save from a Singh Brothers beat down - and a main event of Seth Rollins beating Baron
Corbin. Must see TV.
And before we get out of here, we wanted to introduce the latest trading cards for Crap
Gimmick Wrestling - a section we do on each and every episode of the Saturday WrestleRamble
where you submit to us Crap Gimmicks suggestions for us to possibly sign to our crappy promotion.
A big thanks as always to Lewis Tillett for the amazing trading cards - and you can see
more of them over on Instagram @LewisTillettArt [have his handle with the Instagram logo next
to it] - and our latest signees are The Road Workers: the team of Road Worker Dave and
his apprentice Ben - who are ready to asphalt their opponents in the ring. You can see more
of Lewis’ work over at @LewisTilletArt on Instagram and a full list of Crap Gimmick
Wrestlers can be found in the link in the video description below!
Hear more about those NXT call-ups in Olil Davis’ review of Raw in about 4 minutes
by clicking the video on screen right now. I’ve been Luke Owen and that was wrestling.