10 Ups And 8 Downs From WWE TLC 2018

1. Rollins, Ambrose Can’t Manufacture Drama

dean ambrose seth rollins tlc 2018
WWE.com

It wasn’t just the women who failed at ratcheting up the drama for a supposed big-feud match.

Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose were supposedly embroiled in the biggest blood feud on Raw, with Ambrose turning on Rollins the same night Roman Reigns announced he’s battling leukemia. That was eight weeks ago.

The feud has drawn out, delayed because we couldn’t have them fight at Survivor Series, because that’s when Raw and SmackDown have to compete head-to-head. God forbid.

So instead, we waited until TLC on Sunday, and by then, the feud had sputtered and lost quite a bit of steam. And it showed, as the crowd just couldn’t care about the match, which dragged on and on. Technically, it was fine, but even ignoring the live audience, the match just didn’t have the kind of spite, anger and venom that this rivalry had a month ago.

It’s a shame, because this should have been the feud that fueled Raw for months, but two PPVs that didn’t accommodate a match (Evolution and Survivor Series) pushed the first match off too far and it showed.

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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.