Ranking Every TLC Match In WWE History - From Worst To Best
4. Fatal 4-Way Tag Match (SmackDown, May 25 2001)
We’ve already seen one Fatal 4-Way Tag Team bout on this list—the Raw rendition from October 2002—but some 17 months prior, SmackDown had already beaten them to the punch. And moreover they’d done an even better job.
In just the third-ever TLC match, Tag Team Champions Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit faced Edge & Christian, the Hardyz and the Dudleyz on the May 25, 2001 showing of SmackDown. And rather than being a mere spot-fest, this one had an added sub-text in the form of Benoit’s apparent injury.
After missing a dive to the outside, he was taken backstage on a stretcher, leaving his partner Jericho to fend for himself. But after the remaining septet had just about battered each other half to death, he’d make a valiant return to set up a dramatic finish—the perfect finishing touch on the madness that had preceded it.
Said madness included a 3D to Christian through a table, the Walls of Jericho to Edge atop a ladder, and Jeff Hardy leapfrogging onto Bubba Ray to drive the big man through the announce table, in what has to go down as one of the greatest SmackDown matches of all time.