10 Best WWE Pay-Per-Views Of The Past Decade

Starting next month, WWE is expanding its pay-per-view schedule. While the "big four" PPVs - Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series - will feature matches from both Raw and Smackdown, each brand with have an additional eight PPVs per year. That's a grand total of 20 of the events each calendar year, which wouldn't be possible in the days before the WWE Network, back when PPVs were sold a la carte at high prices.

In those days - prior to February of 2014 - pay-per-view was becoming an increasingly-unviable prospect for the company, and it was their own fault. The failure to build up exciting storylines which fans wanted to spend money to see resolved meant that buyrates were collapsing, and at $50 a pop, even the above-average shows often weren't worth the money.

As disappointing as some PPVs have been, though, there have always been the outliers, the ones that really delivered everything that was promised and more. Such shows, the rare mixes of great in-ring action and compelling story advancement, are few and far between, but they've won their places in the hearts of hardcore wrestling fans.

At the very least, we got our money's worth.

Here are the 10 best WWE Pay-Per-Views of the past decade...

TLC 2012 was a strong show all-around - certainly the strongest under the TLC banner - but it's mostly notable because it played host to the debuts of all three members of The Shield.

Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, and Dean Ambrose had arrived in WWE one month earlier, attacking Ryback at Survivor Series and helping CM Punk retain the WWE Championship. "The Big Guy", looking for revenge, enlisted the help of Daniel Bryan and Kane, collectively known as Team Hell No.

Nobody knew exactly what to expect from their six-man showdown, which was the first-ever TLC match to be fought to a pinfall or submission. What we got, though, was one of the wildest brawls in company history. The Shield took Ryback out early, powerbombing him through a table, then got rid of Kane when Reigns speared him through the guardrail. The babyfaces fought back, with Ryback throwing Rollins off of a ladder through a pair of tables, but in the end, Reigns and Ambrose powerbombed Bryan to pick up the win. The Shield had arrived.

Elsewhere on the show, Dolph Ziggler defeated John Cena in a dramatic ladder match for Ziggler's Money in the Bank briefcase. The finish came when AJ Lee, Cena's supposed romantic interest, turned on him to help "The Showoff" secure victory.