10 WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs 2019 Impulse Reactions

Of all the years for WWE to excel behind their $9.99 Network paywall, 2019 probably shouldn't have been it.

This was the year that television became kingmaker for the company - the fabled billion dollar SmackDown deal kicked off in October with more pyro and ballyhoo than peak-insanity Vince Russo could have scripted. Raw huffed and puffed in such a manner that USA Network b*llocked Vince McMahon into bringing back about 40 legends for one show just to pop a number. NXT was transformed by a move to Wednesday nights to go head to head with new company All Elite Wrestling and their not-really-that-new wrestling show Dynamite. Numbers and demographics and dollars all became part of the conversation again, replacing the Network subscriber count that had for years been one WWE's key indicators.

Typical of such a topsy turvy organisation, those forgotten subscribers were served month after month of good-to-great action.

There were duds along the way of course, but almost every show had something that was way above WWE's generous quality curve, with wrestlers free to express themselves bell-to-bell with all the bells and whistles, rather than within the claustrophobic weekly confines of stilted promos or stymied matches.

Tables, Ladders and Chairs is a show with bells and whistles built into the title. It couldn't possibly throw out the form guide the decade's bitter end, could it?

Well, yes, if everything had met the standard set by the pre-show.

Andrade and Zelina Vega's clashing is a new and unwelcome development for the former's character - his entire WWE career was saved by this pairing in NXT and there's an uneasy sense about things going entirely in reverse for him if and when the duo are severed again. The man's an in-ring banger factory, but as the very placement of this latest one proved, he's can't place them anywhere interesting without a persona to latch on to.

Carrillo and Andrade rocked a half-empty Minneapolis Target Center with the 12:45 they were allocated, following on from a similarly sexy sprint on last week's Monday Night Raw, but the second verse was largely the same as the first. Neither man gained any significant control until Andrade and Vega's miscommunication made a difference. The former was rattled by nearly striking the latter which fed into the finish that saw him pancaked by a poisoned 'rana and a beautiful moonsault.

All stirring stuff then, even if both winner and loser appeared to be heading away from the spotlight rather than towards it.