10 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE TLC 2018

3. What A Waste Of #30

r-truth carmella
WWE.com

Braun Strowman. Finn Balor. Bayley. Charlotte Flair. AJ Styles. Asuka. Miz. Bobby Lashley.

All of these superstars were in this year’s Mixed Match Challenge. None of them were in the finals, which carried the prize of entering last in each winner’s respective Royal Rumble match.

That honor went to R-Truth & Carmella (who won), taking on Jinder Mahal & Alicia Fox. If there ever was a mixed tag match that screamed “WWE Superstars,” this was it.

The match itself was about what you’d expect, heavy on “comedy” with a dance break and Fox wielding her captain’s hat, and light on actual wrestling.

This could have been a cool gimmick, with the winners earning the #30 slot in the Rumble, but now you know when you’re watching the match, that Truth and Carmella – two people who have no shot of winning – are the last people out of the gate. It went from intriguing to a joke.

And this match opened the PPV, making it even worse.

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Contributor

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.