WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders, and Chairs 2009

WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders, and Chairs 2009

December 2009 - San Antonio, Texas

CHAMPIONSHIP RUNDOWN: Coming into tonight's show, the WWE Champion is John Cena, the World Heavyweight Champion was The Undertaker, the Unified Tag Team Champions were JeriShow, the ECW Champion was Christian, the Intercontinental Champion was John Morrison, and the United States was The Miz, the Women's Champion was Michelle McCool, and the Divas Champion was Melina. 

With the 2020 edition of TLC just a week away, I thought I'd check out the inaugural event as a way to get into the spirit of this show. Like TNA/Impact's Lethal Lockdown PPV series, plenty of ink has been spilled about why building a show around every match being a stipulation bout is a bad idea and I'm not sure any edition of this particular series of PPVs disproves that argument, but here goes...

Christian defends his ECW Championship against Shelton Benjamin in a Ladder Match to kick things off. I'm generally a fan of Christian and loved his ECW run but this match just didn't really do it for me. For starters, the build centered around Christian - the Champion - wanting to make this a ladder match so that he and Shelton could "steal the show." Yuck. Wrestlers shouldn't want to "steal the show," they should want to beat their opponents. It also doesn't help that when you hype up a match as being an epic before it happens, you often run into the problem of not being able to deliver on something quite as strong as you promised - especially when you're opening the show, wrestling for a lesser title, have no real storyline to help build drama, and might even be limited to what spots you can perform. Christian and Benjamin work hard and there are some cool moments - but a blood stoppage early on breaks up the flow and doesn't even quite make sense. Christian obviously blades himself to get the "color" - which I assumed would needed to have been okayed by the match's producer - but then, because he gets treated by a medic minutes later, the crowd boos and seems to not really care all that much about any of the violence that follows. There are also some glaring, albeit quick, moments of cooperation throughout the match, the kind of stuff that really takes me out of a match when I see it. Christian is usually super smooth and, at his best, makes his matches feel like real athletic and physical contests, but the chemistry just doesn't seem to be there with Shelton, who, based on the matches I've seen from him, seemed to be missing that integral part of his game for most of his WWE run (despite being, as Striker points out on commentary, arguably the best athlete on the roster). (2.5/5)

The Intercontinental Championship is up next with John Morrison defending the title against Drew McIntyre. McIntyre is not my favorite wrestler in 2020 and, in 2009, he was not "must see" either (though he was noticeably smaller and fresh-faced). McIntyre's gimmick was that he was Vince McMahon's hand-picked "Chosen One" but would end up getting fired a few years later (with some scuttlebutt on the internet being that he was demoted and then released because Vince lost interest in him after it was revealed he was the victim of domestic violence by his girlfriend, wrestling personality Taryn "Tiffany" Terrell). Anyway, enough about Drew - John Morrison isn't very good here either. Morrison was and is an incredible athlete, but by this point, he still wasn't able to tell a great story in the ring and had his best outings against guys like Rey Mysterio (a Jedi master of 'rasslin'). This isn't an outright bad match, but these two never seemed to click and the audience didn't care too much. (1.5/5)

Speaking of the audience not caring too much, Mickie James challenged Michelle McCool for the Divas Championship next. James and LayCool really, really tried to make this a deeply personal feud by having it be about James being bodyshamed and called "Piggy James," but the audience never bought in - likely because Mickie James was and is a gorgeous woman who isn't remotely chubby. Its like building a feud around Big Show being short. The audience rejected the premise of this match and James, usually fairly solid as far as in-ring performance goes, comes into the match like she wants to kick ass - she's even wearing cowboy boots rather than her usual ring gear - but doesn't really work the match in that style. There's the usual interference out of Layla, but like the prior match, things never click and the audience seems bored for most everything. This was an underwhelming match with a flat finish. (1.5/5)

Sheamus challenged John Cena for the WWE Championship in a Tables match next. Along with the match that follows, this is proof positive that the TLC PPV concept is a creative dead-end. I have no doubt that Cena and Sheamus could've had a banger of a match, but Sheamus was relatively green and Cena himself had still not reached "Jedi Master" level of storytelling ability. Add in a stipulation that doesn't play to either of their strengths and you have the recipe for a match that just doesn't work. This match is often criticized for its lame finish - Cena losing balance and falling through a table (and then overselling it for no apparent reason) - but its not like the previous 16 minutes are all that suspenseful. The irony of a "tables match" has always been that you only get one big table spot, so when the table spot itself is so lackluster, the match is equally lackluster. I'm sure Cena and Sheamus have had great matches in the many years they've worked in the same company, but this one was a swing and a miss. (1.5/5)

Similarly, the World Heavyweight Championship match between The Undertaker and Batista is underwhelming. Again we have two guys that are fully capable of having solid, hard-hitting matches against eachother tethered to a gimmick - this time a Chairs Match - that doesn't play to either of their strengths. This stipulation might've served Mike Awesome or the Dudleys, but Undertaker is not a "hardcore spotfest" wrestler and Batista, who had come into his own as an unlikable, pompous heel during this run, is equally hamstrung. It doesn't help that the finish involves an eye-rolling Dusty Finish. Again, this is a match where two guys work really hard but never reach the heights of their previous matches and seem to be going through the motions. (1.5/5)

Kofi Kingston vs. Randy Orton is our next match. Kofi had been feuding with Orton and his acolytes, Ted DiBiase Jr. and Cody Rhodes, for a couple months by this point. This was Kofi's first genuine push into an upper midcard/near-main event slot, but it didn't really take. Some of the blame has been laid on this match, which is surprisingly heatless. Having a straight-up 1-on-1 match on a card loaded with stipulation matches promising maximum carnage and sandwiching this match between the 3 biggest matches of the night didn't really put Kofi and Orton in a position to wow the crowd, but Kofi and Orton didn't exceed expectations either. Orton is usually the guy blamed for half-assing it in the ring, but Kofi was not yet a fully-developed character at this point and its noticeable that his ring presence is still at that "midcard" level, not commanding the audience the way he would years later. Speaking of "later," just a few months after this, Randy Orton would - according to the Viper-haters - put the kabosh on Kofi's main event push (as if that were even on the table after drawing crickets here) after Kofi botched a spot in a triple threat with John Cena on RAW. While that anecdote made for great fodder for the Kofi/Orton feud of 2019, I don't buy that Orton politicked Kingston out of anything in 2010. The fact is, this match shows that while Kofi had tremendous athleticism and a natural charisma, he still hadn't hooked the majority of fans and wasn't ready to be a top guy. (2.5/5)

Main event time - JeriShow defending the Unified Tag Team Championships against DegenerationX in a TLC Match. The commentators play up the fact that DX have never held the Tag Team Titles and that only Jericho has been in a TLC match coming into this. The show starts as one might expect with Jericho pairing up with Michaels and Triple H pairing up with Big Show and lots of brawling around the ring. Like I wrote about Sheamus/Cena and Taker/Batista, what hurts this match most is that it simply doesn't play to the strengths of the performers. While Jericho knows how to work this match and his spots are the funnest and most inventive, Triple H was never a great ladder match performer and, for the Big Show, having to climb up a ladder to earn a victory is practically antihetical to his existence. Michaels is often cited as the "inventor" of the ladder match but a tag team ladder match is a different animal and one that Michaels is unable to wring any emotion out of. That's not to say that they fail to deliver a crowd-pleasing, at times very exciting match. In fact, there are some really clever twists towards the end of the match that do help this match stand out a bit from previous iterations. Unfortunately, TLC matches do tend to benefit from the ridiculous bumps and spots that nobody in this match were going to take. The original TLC matches were practically designed to highlight daredevilism and skull-crushing chairshots and, years later, Edge and John Cena put together a version that firmly established Cena's resiliency and Edge's main event status. This match doesn't have the same urgency or intention of stealing the show - this is two teams of veterans trying to tell an original story without cutting years off their career. It is a smartly worked match, but its not one worth revisiting. (3/5)

With a Kwang Score of 2.0-out-of-5, the first-ever Tables, Ladders, and Chairs PPV should've been a warning sign to the WWE that shows like these just don't work. Most every match is a disappointment - some more than others - and the crowd seems to lose interest as the show goes on, deflated by Cena's loss, bored by Taker/Batista, and only edge of the seat for the main event because many were probably just eager to call it a night and beat the traffic as quickly as possible. Without a single match I'd recommend checking out despite featuring an absurd amount of stipulation changes, a major title change, and what was meant to be "star-making" matches for Kofi Kingston and Sheamus, I've got no problem calling ths one what it was...

FINAL RATING - DUDleyville