Bang For Your Buck PPV Review: The 2014 Tables, Ladders, Chairs (and Stairs) WWE PPV

Tables, Ladders and Chairs Match

Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt

Best Case Scenario: More tables than you can to shake a stick/other small table at, and a continuation of all of the things that make this feud feel like it could be great without any of the expository business that’s weighed it down.
What Nick Wants to Happen: Moar Dean Ambrose elbow drops.

For 95% of this match, it was perhaps the best one of the night and certainly a top-notch main event for any show. Then, a monitor exploded and we were forced to relieve the end of the Yokozuna-Hulk Hogan clusterkerfuffle from the first King of the Ring PPV. Or, at least that’s what it initially felt like. Then, after giving it a minute or two to settle — and for enough solid instant replays to be shown — it became clear that while the ending was disappointing, it at least made sentence and, perhaps more importantly, looked good while doing it.

There are still issues with the ending, undoubtedly, but it seems unfair to place them at the feet of the ending itself. The issues aren’t, or at least don’t feel like, they stem for a lack of closure within the context of this confrontation — Dean Ambrose, like he did last month against Wyatt and the month before that in his match with Seth Rollins definitively had Bray beat — but an inability for the Creative to move forward on whatever they want Dean Ambrose to become.

Ultimately, that’s the real issue with Dean Ambrose right now: the company seems both fully aware of what they have in him and completely incapable of deciding what they are going to with that information. There are obviously — with Bad News and Roman coming back soon/already and Daniel Bryan joining us/them eventually — a lot of pokers in the fire right now, but it’s hard to imagine pulling out someone more ready to main event PPVs with two different performers in consecutive months  than him. But, for whatever, they unwilling to pull the trigger on him quite yet.

Which, of course, brings us back to that finish, which as I mentioned earlier looked fantastic but — especially at first blush — felt just awful. And part of that is our natural aversion as a culture to finishes that feel inconclusive even if they are telling a good story. But mostly,we are just getting tired of seeing the “Dean Ambrose can’t win the big one because he’s too completely insane” storyline, watching every month with the hope that this PPV will be The New Day the one where Dean Ambrose turns into a real boy.

And because of that, despite what by all other considerations should have been an all-time great match — I mean, did you see the size of that last ladder? Even Jeff Hardy was surprised at that one — that launched a thousand t-shirt/sweatshirt sales, it will instead be remembered as the time the WWE finally figured out how to make things blowing up in their face look pretty.

Match .8

Bottom Line

This PPV was not “good”. It wasn’t bad, and it certainly didn’t feel like my 9.99 a month had went to something that would make me angry, but it was definitely the least “good” PPV of the year, with only 1.5 genuinely  good matches on the card and an ending that did not play particularly well to the crowd in the arena or the people watching on TV. I, unlike people who get paid to complain for a living to captive audiences, am not embarrassed to have watched this show, but at the same time, if this is the road they are continuing down, it would probably not be #BestForBusiness.

Overall PPV 4.45 | Match avg.  .4944444 (.495, if you’re nasty)

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