10 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE TLC 2018

5. Shoehorned Gimmick Match

bobby lashley elias tlc 2018
WWE.com

Yes, we get it: The PPV is called TLC, so we needed to have a ladder match. But the problem with this sort of thing is that we often end up with a match that gets forced into a gimmick and doesn’t really fit.

That’s what Elias versus Bobby Lashley was Sunday night. The match never really clicked, as the two men were in a ladder match with Elias’ guitar hanging above the ring. Thankfully, the guitar wasn’t simply a weapon to be used, but it was the object to retrieve to win the match. The match was brief, and Elias pulled off the victory, and then Lashley and Lio Rush got revenge by attacking the troubadour afterward.

This might have worked a lot better as a regular pinfall/submission match rather than shoehorning the feud into a ladder match, which didn’t play into either man’s strengths,

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.