For the second year running, the WWE is rounding off the PPV calendar with TLC – that’s Tables, Ladders and Chairs.  It’s something of a throwback to a few years ago when wrestling featured completely insane (and shamelessly contrived) stunts on a semi-regular basis.  The company has toned that sort of thing down substantially for a variety of reasons.  For one thing, they’re now positioning themselves as a PG company.  That decision wasn’t purely about supporting Linda McMahon’s senate election bid, as some fans seem to think; it’s also about placating the company’s licensees and trying to hang on to the kids who love John Cena as an audience for the future.  Another factor is that the company seems rather more attentive to the risk of injury to its performers; their motivations for doing so may well revolve around minimising criticism of the company and making sure that vital headliners aren’t sidelined for months just for the sake of a throwaway moment, but the bottom line is the same.

So in theory TLC ought to be one of the better placed theme PPVs, based around gimmick matches that the company largely steers clear of.  The name derives from a match which was originally conceived for a three-way tag-team feud between the Hardy Boys, the Dudleys and Edge & Christian, back in 2000.  The ladders are self-explanatory; ladder matches have been around for decades.  Originally the idea was simply that you had to beat up your opponent badly enough to climb the ladder without interference and retrieved the title belt (or whatever it was), but over time we’ve seen increasingly creative use made of the ladders as a legal weapon.  The Hardys were supposed to be the ladder match specialists.  Tables come from the Dudleys, who had started out in the original ECW with a gimmick of throwing opponents through cheap plywood tables (of the sort that ECW had at ringside for the timekeeper and so on – it wasn’t quite so plainly contrived when it was first created).  Wrestlers of the period rather liked this idea because it had the dual advantage of looking fairly spectacular while actually being a lot safer than taking the same move without the table in the way, since the table absorbs some of the impact.  And chairs… well, Edge & Christian had been hitting people with them a lot in 1999-2000 and they needed something to represent the third team.  Plus, it made for a neat “TLC” pun.

The problem with TLC is that you can’t do an entire show of TLC matches; it’s basically a stunt show and you can’t just do that for three hours.  One solution would have been to just headline with a couple of TLC matches and otherwise do a normal card.  Somewhat inadvisedly, the WWE have taken the middle route, with a headlining TLC match but every other match on the show also featuring either tables, ladders or chairs.  (Yes, a “chairs match” – something invented solely for this show and basically a way of letting the less gymnastic wrestlers go out and do a brawl for ten minutes instead of leaving them off the show.)  For my money, it’s overload on a single show; a TLC match is basically a ladder match with added weapons, which means this is a show with three ladder matches on it.  You can’t do a technical match to break up the pacing, and it’s really quite hard to tell a decent story even within the structure of these gimmicks.  I’d probably be more interested in this show if it had fewer gimmicks.  But that’s not the WWE’s philosophy, and hey, I could well be in the minority.

1.  WWE Title, Tables Match: The Miz v. Randy Orton. Raw is the company’s flagship show, and you’d expect their world title match to be the main event.  But Randy Orton isn’t doing a TLC match in a million years, so instead we’re going with the rather safer Tables option – winner being the first person to throw his opponent through a table.  Which is very silly, of course, but bear in mind that before somebody thought of working inexpensive hardware into wrestling matches, you used to get things like “bodyslam challenges”, where the winner was simply the first person to execute a bodyslam on an opponent.  This isn’t really much different in spirit, and it’s visually far more effective.

The defending champion is the Miz, who finally got around to cashing in the Money in the Bank title shot he won back in July (in a ladder match, as it happens – which begs the question of why he’s supposed to have opted for the “tables” stipulation, but never mind).  The MitB title shot can be cashed in at literally any time, and so like virtually every sensible winner before him, he ambushed Orton after another match and took the belt.  So Miz is effectively a paper champion, and this is Orton’s rematch.  So, in theory, either Miz cements his title win by beating Orton in a proper match, or Orton gets the title back and Miz drops back to the midcard.

The latter is almost unimaginable.  The WWE spent months building up to Miz cashing in his title shot, and so far he’s been very effective in the role of the vulnerable heel champion.  He’s also been getting them plenty of media coverage.  There’s no real upside to an Orton win here.  Miz is retaining, then; the question is how decisively he does so.  Since all these matches are (by definition) no-disqualification, we can assume that his lackey Alex Riley will be interfering freely, and if they want to give Orton an out, that would be the obvious way of going about it.  I’d expect something along those lines; Miz wins, but not definitively.  The match should be okay; Orton’s still not entirely comfortable in the babyface role, but Miz is a strong heel whom he should be able to play off.

2.  World Heavyweight Title, TLC match: Kane v. Edge v. Rey Mysterio v. Alberto Del Rio. Smackdown’s main event gets to feature the obligatory TLC match – partly because it features Edge, who’s been doing these things since day one.  In booking terms, this is a very odd one, because it’s actually two separate matches that were merged together at the last minute.

Smackdown’s main event feud for the last couple of months has been Edge as the babyface challenger to Kane’s heel champion.  It’s been a bit of a train wreck, partly because Edge and Kane are both more effective in the opposite role, and partly because the whole story has been built around a thoroughly ridiculous plot where Edge (the supposed babyface, remember) has kidnapped Kane’s father.  Kane wasn’t even supposed to be the champion at this point; he was meant to lose the belt to the Undertaker a couple of months ago, but an injury prevented that from proceeding.  The whole thing has been a bit of a fiasco, and the WWE clearly know it, since this week’s Smackdown opened with Edge presenting a highlights video played for comedy, and then telling the audience that it would be greatly appreciated if we could all just pretend the whole thing never happened.  This is as close as you’re going to get to the WWE openly acknowledging that a story has tanked while it’s still in progress.

Rey Mysterio and Alberto Del Rio, meanwhile, have been in their own entirely separate feud which was supposed to lead to a chairs match.  Mysterio is the veteran Mexican babyface, Del Rio the upstart Mexican heel, and in theory they ought to be a good pairing together.  Frankly, these days Mysterio is banged up to the point where he really can’t do the sort of high-flying material that he made his name with, and he could easily vanish due to injury at any time.

According to the usual sources, the main reason for merging the two matches into one is timing – the remaining six matches on the show all need plenty of time, and a seventh ladder match would have been a problem.  Plus, they think the TLC match would be stronger as a four-way.  There’s some truth to this, but it’s hard to avoid suspecting that the WWE is also alert to the fact that they have a dud main event feud, and that Mysterio’s limitations will be easier to conceal in a four-way.  But it does sound like a more enticing match than either of the original ideas would have been – even though throwing two extra guys into the match on the Friday before the show smacks of last-minute panic.

Between them, these four ought to be able to have a decent enough match, though the gimmick still doesn’t seem particularly well suited to either Kane (a lumbering giant) or Del Rio (primarily a mat wrestler).  As for the winner… well, Kane’s not really working out as champion, though that’s partly a function of the terrible material he’s been given.  I’d expect him to drop the belt, even so.  Mysterio’s injury status is questionable enough that I can’t see them going with him.  Del Rio is an upper midcard heel who hasn’t yet been built up as a world title contender and while he has some possibilities as a shock option, I wouldn’t bet on it.  That really leaves Edge, who could spend some time defending against Smackdown’s relatively plentiful heel challengers before switching sides to his natural heel alignment.  I’m betting on him.

3.  Chairs match: John Cena v. Wade Barrett. Ah, the “chairs match” – the WWE’s way of saying “we really needed to get this match on the show so we’re paying lip service to the gimmick.”  This is the latest stage in the long-running Cena/Nexus feud, which the company is starting to mess up quite badly.  Two months ago, you may recall, John Cena lost a match to Wade Barrett and had to join his Nexus faction, which in practice meant he had to take orders from Barrett.  Last month, Barrett challenged Orton for the WWE title, with Cena as his hand-picked referee.  The deal was that if Barrett won, Cena would be released from Nexus, and if Orton won, Cena would be kicked out of the WWE.  (Quite why WWE management would agree to any of this remains a mystery for the ages, but I digress.)  As it turned out, Cena refused to cheat, and Orton won the match, so Cena was out of the company.

Except… the company was too scared of losing viewers to keep him off the show for even a few weeks.  So instead we moved into a faintly silly period of having Cena attack Nexus members from the audience until they agreed to reinstate him.  Not completely illogical from a plot standpoint, but utterly ridiculous from the company’s point of view, because it means that in substance (if not in form), they failed to deliver on the stipulation they were promoting last month.  And that’s bad, because the first principle of professional wrestling is that you have to give the audience a reason to care who wins.

So anyway.  Cena is back, and he’s presumably got to defeat Barrett and end the feud – perhaps because they need the character in circulation for the January show in order that he can win the Royal Rumble battle royal and get a title shot at Wrestlemania 2011.  The chairs are nothing but a distraction, and I don’t expect much from this.

4.  Intercontinental Title, ladder match: Dolph Ziggler v. Kofi Kingston v. Jack Swagger. Battle of the Smackdown midcarders.  Not much in the way of storyline here; this is simply a case of taking three athletic guys from the Smackdown roster and sending them out there to do a ladder match.  It’s primarily about entertainment value and, actually, I’d expect these guys to deliver.  Who wins ought to be an afterthought, except that Ziggler’s IC title is on the line.  Normally I’d say that there’s no point doing a title change without a storyline leading up to it, and that would still be my general instinct.  But on the other hand, Ziggler’s probably got as much use out of that title as he’s going to, the WWE does like its “anything can happen” title changes, and Swagger could likely use the belt more at this point.  I’m really not sold on the idea of Kingston progressing much further up the pecking order at the moment, but Swagger has potential that they aren’t really tapping.

5.  WWE Championship #1 contender, ladder match: John Morrison v. Sheamus. These two have already had two very good matches on Raw, with Morrison taking the first and Sheamus taking the second to win the 2010 King of the Ring tournament.  (Cue the obligatory phase of wandering around in a robe telling people that they’re peasants.)  This is the deciding match – which, for a change, means that it actually makes some sense to step up to a gimmick match.  Morrison’s very gymnastic, too, so this has the potential to be an extremely good ladder match if it’s given the time.

The winner gets a shot at the WWE Title, which complicates the predictions.  Normally I’d go with Sheamus to win, since the company seems to be more solidly behind him right now.  Morrison’s great in the ring, but a bit ropey when he’s called upon to speak, and that’s a particular problem when you get up to the headlining matches.  But if Miz is going to retain the WWE title, then logically he needs a babyface challenger for January, and that would be Morrison.  Not the silliest idea in the world, in that Miz and Morrison had a long run as the WWE’s leading heel tag team (Morrison switched alignment immediately after the break-up).  There’s a story to be done with them fighting over the world title, although it’s not without its problems, because they’ve already done a half-hearted feud in the past, which never really went anywhere.  And bear in mind, the January show is the Royal Rumble, sold mainly on the strength of the titular battle royal – they want all the big stars in that, which often leaves the way clear for midcarders to get their first title shot.

Morrison to win, then, though it’s a tough one to call.

6.  Tables Match: Natalya Neidhart & Beth Phoenix v. Lay-Cool (Layla El & Michelle McCool). Natalya finally won the women’s title from Lay-Cool last month, but instead of going for the standard rematch, we’re getting this instead – a tables match, with Beth Phoenix making up the Smackdown side.  They’ve spent so much time over the last few weeks hammering the idea that Natalya and Beth are best friends that it’s clearly going to end with Beth turning on her, and this could conceivably be the place.  This one could be a challenge; I really can’t imagine Layla or Michelle being at home in this match, though Natalya and Beth should be okay.  Being the obligatory women’s match, it’ll probably be kept short.  Either Beth is turning on Natalya to keep the Natalya/Lay-Cool feud going (please no), or it’s going to be a straightforward babyface win to draw an emphatic line under the long-running story.  But it’s not likely to be particularly good, either way.

Worth buying? Depends on your interest in entirely gimmicky shows.  The ladder matches all have potential, and Miz/Orton could be decent, but this stuff really can get wearing without some regular matches to provide the light and shade.