Brooklyn, the Star Furnace of WWE: 2012 TLC Review

WHOA
Photo Credit: WWE.com

In the handy-dandy TWB format.

Highlights:

• In a tables match to determine number one contendership to the WWE Tag Team Championships, Cody Rhodes countered a Sin Cara springboard with a simple shove, sending him flying into a table out of the ring.
• Antonio Cesaro was just too much for R-Truth, upending him with a corner European uppercut to the back and the Neutralizer for the win.
• 3MB, as guests on Miz TV, harassed the Spanish announcers for "not speaking American," which drew out Alberto del Rio for the save. A six-man match was announced for later in the evening.
• Kofi Kingston retained the Intercontinental Championship by countering a Bullhammer elbow from Wade Barrett into the Trouble in Paradise.
• CM Punk cut a promo lambasting the Brooklyn crowd and debuting his new t-shirt with the logo "KNEES 2 FACES" on the front.
• In a match that saw Seth Rollins fly from a ladder on the stage through two tables and Kane get speared through the timekeeper's barricade, the Shield defeated Kane, Ryback, and Daniel Bryan after powerbombing Bryan through a table from the top and pinning him.
• Naomi, who won the preshow Divas battle royale, came up short against Eve Torres, who retained her title via rolling neckbreaker.
• After throwing everything they had at each other, Big Show needed an oversize, overweight chair to defeat Sheamus in their chair match for the World Heavyweight Championship.
• del Rio and The Miz revealed their tag partner as the Brooklyn Brawler, who scored the submission fall in the six-man against 3MB by tapping Jinder Mahal with the Boston crab.
• In the main event, after beating up a meddling Vickie Guerrero, AJ Lee toppled the ladder while John Cena climbed it, causing him to crash to the floor. Dolph Ziggler took the opportunity to grab his Money in the Bank briefcase and win.

General Observations:

• I know this might seem like a piddling complaint, but if you really wanted us to believe that these tag teams were more than just temporary pairings to keep belts occupied and warm, you might want to do a mash-up theme for them.
• Damien Sandow heeling on Brooklyn hipsters was great except I'm not sure how many "hipster" types would go to a WWE event? I thought that indie wrestling was more their scene. Then again, there's no such thing as a stereotypical hipster so there's that.
• "We want tables" chant early as Cody Rhodes brought one out. I looked around to see if the Dudley Boys had guerrilla jumped back to WWE for a second. Force of habit.
• I absolutely dug Sin Cara and Rey Mysterio using tables tandemly as a weapon against the rudos here.
• "...making fun of BorAT." Y'know what, JBL, I'm beginning to think you're not as awesome as you were when you got back and aren't anything more than a more polished version of post-ECW Matt Striker.
• Mysterio may have no cartilage left in his joints and the bones of an arthritic centenarian, which is why I always recoil a bit when he takes bumps as hard as the one he took into the corner of the barricade.
• I'm easy to please, so when the Rhodes Scholars trapped Sin Cara's leg between the ring steps and the post and rammed it with a table, I swooned a little bit.
• I will never not yell out "DO A BARREL ROLL" when Sin Cara does that twisting tope to the outside.
• The finish to this match was amazing, and it's a testament to how the simplest stuff in wrestling can still look most effective. All Rhodes did was shove Cara mid-springboard, and it looked like he shot him out of a cannon into a brick wall that somehow had thumbtacks attached to it and was on fire.
• While Truth was preening in the corner, Cesaro was doing the whole "LET ME AT 'IM" routine. Again, simple stuff is the most effective.
• Truth made some goofy-ass taunt to begin the match, and I wonder if they're going to wellness test him because of it. Not really. Okay, really.
• If Cesaro wants people to boo him, then he should probably stop doing things like doing headlocks in the old-timey strongman style. At some point, people are going to be like "oh yeah, America is terrible, you are awesome!"
• I was relieve when the ref cowered and Truth stopped short during the end of the match, but I was a bit puzzled that Cesaro didn't do something dirty while the ref's view was obstructed. Then again, maybe he's serious about the whole "honorable competitor" thing.
• Dolph Ziggler was 100% right that he shouldn't have had to fight for his briefcase that he already earned. The funny thing is that most non-heel-friendly crowds would've booed him for that sentiment, which says something about how they're conditioned. Chris Sims was right.
• Miz TV? On a PPV? C'MAAAAAHN.
• It's funny that we're supposed to buy Alberto del Rio making the save for 3MB bullying the Spanish announce team when earlier in the year, we were supposed to hate him for the same reasons why 3MB was bullying the Spanish announce team.
• "I can't stand when someone repeats himself." Daniel Bryan, earning his Irony Badge.
• I have no problem with Kofi Kingston, the bumper. The problem is, to be an effective good guy, you have to have good offense, and Kingston doesn't have it. However, that lariat he took over the top rope from RED BELLY? Yeah, that was the goods.
• He did pull off a perfectly cromulent Russian leg sweep during the match though.
• I legitimately laughed out loud at the dude in the YES! YES! YES! unironically doing RED BELLY's taunt in unison with him. Good for him though. If you've got that good of a seat at a wrestling event and you're NOT having as good a time as he was? You're doing it wrong.
• There could have been worse entrees for The Shield in a WWE ring than brawling against Kane, Bryan, and Ryback. I also think brawls, when done right, are hella fun.
• Ryback used the ladder to beat the piss out of Rollins and Ambrose at one point, and I wanted to shout STOP IT, THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD.
• Just when you think that you've seen every kind of chair spot in WWE, Ambrose had to go and hit Bryan with a chair-backed body slam. Wut.
• The table set up draped across the top rope was pretty genius itself too.
• Man, the spear pictured above that Kane took through the timekeeper's barricade looked absolutely hellacious. Then they covered him in random detritus from around the ring and I wanted to cry tears of joy.
• Man, if you thought the chair-backed slam was the sickest bump Bryan would take all night, well, that axe kick that Rollins did to him on the set-up chair must've blown your mind. It did mine.
• Seth Rollins, we hardly knew ye. Ladder to table on the stage? Yeah. But it was great psychology, because it distracted Ryback just enough so that the other two could finish off Bryan in the ring. If this match were a woman, it'd be Gia-era Angelina Jolie. Crazy hot, but tinged with a bit of crazy.
• Torres countered Naomi's fine-ass dance moves with Elaine Benes-level choreography. She has to be the most improved wrestler of the year, doesn't she?
• Brodus Clay watched on the monitor backstage wearing more purple than I think was allowed by law. I won't call him Grimace here, because that'd just be mean.
• I always dug Naomi from NXT Season 3, but she felt green here, mainly because she spent the last year as "just a dancer." Hopefully, her and Cameron will get more reps in the ring in 2013.
• Torres' posing over her fallen opponent is easily becoming my favorite thing in WWE right now.
• A random "Ole!" chant broke out during the Show/Sheamus match. Did large portions of the crowd show up from Final Battle earlier in the day? And why pick Show/Sheamus to chant for El Generico?
• As impressive as Show's Vader bomb to Sheamus was with the chair draped over him, I kinda feel that should have been the finish of the match. Then again, it really has been established that these two guys turn into Darkseid and Thanos when in the ring with each other, hasn't it?
• MEGACHAIR! No seriously, I take it back. That was the perfect finish to the match.
• The Brooklyn Brawler! Although I was surprised with how savvy a crowd that was that it didn't really pop as big for him at first.
• Drew McIntyre totally pulled out the "I GOT TIL 5" card on the ref in the corner. Somewhere in the back, Daniel Bryan shed a single tear as he was getting a therapeutic rubdown from Brie Bella.
• JBL spent a good part of the match running down Steve Lombardi's other alter-egos, while Michael Cole just named old wrestlers. Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on JBL after all.
• I never knew Brawler's finisher was the Boston crab. Then again, he spent so much time losing that I never knew he even had a finisher.
• Ziggler made a full stop on a rope run and then posed for the crowd, which is the most Dolph Ziggler thing he's ever done.
• Cena's eye got busted open early on in the match, to the point where it was swollen shut mid-match.
• Oh my Lord, Cena climbing the ladder while Ziggler was draped on him with the sleeper was just visually one of the best things in WWE all year. Then they crashed to the floor and it got better.
• Ziggler tried climbing the ladder just after, and then Cena closed it and lifted it to dump Ziggler out of the ring. Freaky Cena Strength! Ziggler held onto the ropes and avoided taking maybe the most insane bump of his career, which should tell you about the kinds of bumps he's taken in his career.
• Ziggler must have countered the Attitude Adjustment like three times in this match. That alone may have given him an extra shine for the match.
• Oh hey, Ziggler found the Big Show ladder!
• John Cena attempted a hurricanrana. God bless him for trying, but I will say, he at least closed his legs at the top, which already put him on the inside track to be better at it than Sin Cara is. That being said, LOL at the lengths Ziggler went to to bump through the table and make it look good.
• Cena countered Ziggler's Sweet Chin Music into the Attitude Adjustment and finally hit it. CUE VICKIE GUERRERO! CUE AJ LEE!
• Haha, Lee hit the Five Knuckle Shuffle on Guerrero.
• Lee then toppled over the ladder that Cena was climbing. It was predictable, but really, the way Cena has been treating her the last month, would anyone blame her? Oh yeah, that's right, WWE's typical audience will blame her.
• I think Ziggler's incredulous look at Lee's turn really cemented it though.
• Post-match, Cena's eye looked fine. WHOA, HE REALLY IS SUPERMAN.

Match of the Night: Daniel Bryan, Kane, and Ryback vs. Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and Roman Reigns - It's funny, the meme when Seth Rollins was still Tyler Black was that he didn't have good matches unless it was against Bryan Danielson or Nigel McGuinness. His first match in WWE was partially against the rechristened Danielson, and it was not only the best match on TLC, but maybe one of the best matches of the entire year. Of course, there were four other men in the tilt that helped make it such.

At its heart, the match was a huge brawl. Right from jump, as The Shield emerged from the crowd and were pounced upon by the Tag Champs and Ryback, the mood was set. There wouldn't be any order at all. No one was concerned about keeping things neat or organized. Tables and chairs and barricades were all broken. I'm sure body parts might have been too. Everyone ate their fair share of punishment, which was par for the course. Some took it a bit harder than others obviously. The question wasn't whether Ryback would get up from the triple power bomb through the Spanish announce table as to when he'd do it. Kane being put out by the Reigns spear through the barricade was a bit more surprising, but at least they made a debris-strewn prison for him to be encased in.

Then there was the sacrifice at the end. Rollins climbed the ladder on the stage ostensibly to splash Ryback, who was laying on the table. Then again, maybe the story was he knew Ryback was going to rise up like he did from the triple bomb on the table. Maybe he knew he had to sacrifice himself so Ambrose and Reigns could finish off Bryan in the ring. When looking at it through that lens, it was a brilliant masterstroke for a match that stole the show and perhaps stole the year. And to think, Rollins didn't even need to play off Bryan directly to do it.

Overall Thoughts: WWE is often correctly accused of being slow on the draw in creating stars. We all whine and complain when the status quo is enforced, but for some reason, in the counterculture capital of the East Coast, WWE reversed field and went with the flow. Instead of allowing The Shield to be swallowed up like the Nexus was at SummerSlam '10, they allowed them to brutalize three of their best fan-favorites and leave Brooklyn with gravitas behind their mission. Instead of going with the guy who always wins, even if he doesn't deserve it, they let Ziggler continue his rise to the top, even if it's about a year late on that ascension.

Those weren't the only reasons why TLC was such a smashing success, at least from a critical standpoint, but they certainly helped. It's always great to feel like you're watching something new, fresh, and meaningful unfold before your eyes. Even if this was one of those nominally inconsequential "B" events, the thought and execution behind it made it feel just as important as SummerSlam or Survivor Series. That kind of atmosphere makes average shows good and good shows great.

Of course, the caliber of wrestling helped a lot. There were no bad matches on the card; even the Brawler six-man was fun at its core. WWE PPVs are always worth buying because you're going to get a bunch of wrestling during it, most of it good, and TLC not only delivered on it, but it exceeded the expectations that even the most optimistic paying customer such as myself would have.

But it's always a plus when the wrestling is not only good, but it feels important too.