Courtesy of WWE Home Video, Matthew Roberts looks at the latest WWE DVD release, the last pay-per-view of 2020, TLC.
Sometimes I bore even myself moaning about the fact that supposed “gimmick” grudge matches in Wrestling don’t happen because there is a big grudge but more because it’s December and we’ve got a PPV called Tables, Ladders & Chairs and so that’s what we have to have. It remains a valid point but let’s move on.
Regardless of HOW we got here, there was no denying that there was a fairly good looking card with plenty to look forward to. But did it deliver? Let’s find out.
We kicked off with the WWE Championship match between Drew McIntyre and AJ Styles. Even with a thrown-in there TLC stipulation this sounded like a good idea. Even with the tease that The Miz might get involved this sounded like a good idea (largely because it seemed incongruous to think that even if he did that he was walking away as champion). Of course these two just going at it in a “regular” match sounded even better, but there we go. As you’d expect this was a very strong opener. We all know how good Styles is, but McIntyre has been perhaps THE breakout star of the year and is someone who has made the “no crowd” era work for him. What I liked about this match is that it didn’t overly rely on big, high spots (although it had plenty) and the fact that Drew went to the extent of actually selling the hurt and pain from Styles targeting his legs. The Miz did get involved, although seemingly didn’t actually cash in as Morrison had done it on his behalf. In the end, Drew climbed the ladder, grabbed the gold and retained. Excellent opener.
You wouldn’t have thought that Sasha Banks and Carmella could possibly have followed that; truth be told they couldn’t. But the did bring forward another very good match. Sasha looked as if she really hated/wanted to get her hands on Carmella, the challenger herself amply displayed a desire, which became a desperation, to get the job done and even the stuff with Reginald looked good. Banks held the match together well, Carmella more than did her part and in the end this was a dramatic, well assembled match.
The New Day and The Hurt Business were up next in the first of two consecutive Tag Team Title matches. Their feud as a whole had not quite convinced and had never really given us the barnburner that we thought it might. This was still a good match though, with two evenly matched teams having a good back and forth match with the pace never really dropping. The Women’s Tag match that followed wasn’t as good, but it was more a set-up match for the return of Charlotte Flair (replacing the “injured” Lana) than anything else. It was to be the end, for now, of Shayna Bazler and Nia Jax’s reign as champions.
Roman Reigns continued his great run of matches with his TLC 2020 match in defense of his Universal Championship Title against Kevin Owens. By this point, any people still saying Reigns is “boring” or “can’t wrestle” are clearly just showing themselves up as simpletons. The build-up was great, the bout itself matched it. The two simply went at it in a 25-minute war that was everything you could have hoped for. For those who would moan about Jey Uso getting involved again…well come on, this is wrestling!
We ended with the Firefly Inferno Match between Bray Wyatt and Randy Orton. If it seemed incongruous that this was the main event hindsight showed that there was no other choice. Not because it was an awesome match (the in-ring stuff is STILL the weakpoint in this incarnation of the Bray character) but that Bray being set on fire (after tasting fire AND the RKO en route to his loss in the actual match) clearly couldn’t have been followed by anything else. Memorable for the end visuals, but a pedestrian match.
For 80-85% of the show this was shaping up to be up there in all-time “B” PPV territory. As in on a par with Canadian Stampede. Of course that only had four matches, all of which were good-to-excellent, and there would be an argument that you could pick the best four matches on this card and get something similar. But that’s not the way it works. Whilst Stampede ended with a genuine five star classic, TLC 2020 ended on a damp (albeit fiery) note which perhaps just dragged the whole card down ever so slightly. Still with two great World Title matches, able back up from the tag team division and the women this was still a fantastic show.
The extras include the kick-off eight man pitting Big E, Daniel Bryan, Otis & Chad Gable against Sami Zayn, King Corbin, Cesaro & Shinsuke Nakamura. Hardly essential viewing, but good fun all the same.
9 out of 10.
You can also check out our results from the night here.
Photographs courtesy of Fetch and WWE. Thank you to WWE Home Video for our review copy of TLC 2020 which is out Monday 15 February on Bluray and DVD. You can buy your copy from WWEDVD.co.uk by clicking here.