This week, all eyes are firmly on TLC as WWE prepares for the final PPV of 2018. What did WWE do?

On RAW, Baron Corbin’s tyranny continues unabated and Strowman’s allies, Finn Balor and Elias, struggle to keep the resistance up. Alexa Bliss gets a promotion that means bad news for Sasha Banks and Bayley. The war of words between Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins continues and Rollin’s Open Challenge brings out a very real threat. Ronda Rousey and Nia Jax prepare for their own match, but the Riott Squad isn’t done with Rousey’s friend, Nattie.

On SmackDown, Becky Lynch returns and confronts Charlotte over her actions, but both must face a mutiny in the women’s division. The Bar struggles with the loss of Big Show against the Usos. Miz’s schmoozing of Shane McMahon continues. Randy Orton and Rey Mysterio try to put an end to their feud, and the celebration of Jeff Hardy’s career brings out a surprising opponent.

On NXT UK, the first NXT UK Women’s Champion is crowned, Jordan Devlin gets the shot of a lifetime against Pete Dunne, Eddie Dennis’ rampage continues, the Coffey brothers face an unexpected foe

On 205, Maria Kanellis’ plan for the Lucha House Party hits an unexpected snag, and Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali face Buddy Murphy and Tony Nese in a battle for supremacy.

On NXT, the fallout from War Games continues. Candice LeRae faces questions about her actions, Kairi Sane finds ready allies for her battle against Shayna Baszler and her friends, and Lars Sullivan and Keith Lee face off in an epic main event.

RAW

Baron Corbin vs Braun Strowman: Last week, Baron Corbin and his friends had run roughshod over Braun Strowman and his allies, Finn Balor and Elias, shattering Strowman’s elbow and leaving both Elias and Balor in heaps in the ring.

Corbin and company saw no reason to be remorseful about their actions, in fact, they were gleeful abut it. Corbin said that what happened to Strowman and friends was what happened to people who were on the wrong side of history. He was going to keep his job as RAW GM after TLC and anyone who had opposed him could expect the same.

As for Strowman, Corbin claimed that he’d sent a camera crew to Birmingham to talk to Strowman. Strowman was there and his arm looked nasty, but his anger wasn’t dimmed by the anesthesia. He vowed that, when he got back, he was going to make Corbin, Lashley, and McIntyre pay for what they’d done, even if he might not be at TLC.

At this point, the lights went out, but, instead of the Undertaker, the culprit was revealed to be Elias, who reminded us that WWE means ‘Walk With Elias’. Elias said that anyone, including pant-pissing Drake Maverick would be a better GM than Corbin. He also has a song for Bobby Lashley, which consists of singing ‘Bobby Lashley Sucks!’.

Elias vs Bobby Lashley (with Lio Rush, Baron Corbin, and Drew McIntyre: This looked like it was going to be a 3-1 handicap match, but it ended up being 1-1, at least at first.

Lashley dominated the first part of the match, but Elias managed to keep battling back, until he found himself outside the ring, which let Lashley get a cheap shot in and regain control. Elias came back and regained his footing, but the match was initially stopped by DQ after Rush pulled the ref out of the ring when Elias had the match won. Corbin got on the mic and declared that the match was now No DQ.

An enraged Elias snapped and was actually getting the better of Lashley when Corbin and McIntyre intervened, giving the Drifter a three on one beat down before Lashely would finally get the pin.

Later on, Corbin would take on Finn Balor one on one, or at least that’s how it started. When it became clear that he couldn’t beat Balor on his own, Corbin called in the troops and declared a 3-1 Handicap match instead. Balor and his demon have a lot of fight in them, but going against three huge men proved to be more than even they could handle, and Balor received a nasty beatdown to close out RAW. Will anyone stop the tyranny of Baron Corbin?

RAW Women’s Division: Alexa Bliss has been riding high since the RAW Women’s Team beat the SmackDown Women’s Team, even though the win came by Nia Jax sacrificing fellow teammate, Sasha Banks. Corbin, however, has been impressed by Alexa’s handling of the situation, and, admitting that he needed help running RAW, appointed Alexa as head of RAW’s Women’s Division, which is probably the worst idea he’s come up with.

Nia Jax has been on quite a roll since Evolution, she’s the #1 Contender for the RAW Women’s Championship, she became one of the most reviled people in wrestling after her reckless punch took Becky Lynch of Survivor Series, she’s reunited with her BFF, Alexa Bliss, and formed an alliance with cousin Tamina Snuka.

This week, Jax addressed her upcoming match against Ronda Rousey at TLC. She was proud of what she’d done, especially taking out Becky Lynch because that took something away from Ronda Rousey that Rousey had really wanted, just like she was going to take the title away. According to Jax, everyone knows Rousey can’t beat her, including Rousey. Nia would’ve beaten her at Money in the Bank if Alexa Bliss hadn’t interfered, but that’s water under the bridge. In fact, Ronda Rousey isn’t as good as everyone thinks she is, she can’t win when it really counts.

To prove her point, Jax showed footage of her match against Rousey and how close she’d come to beating Rousey. To press the point home, she showed footage of the Flair/Rousey match, which Rousey won by DQ.

Before this can get much further, Rousey comes out, dressed to fight. Ronda’s not worried about Nia’s jabs, she finds them quite funny. Rousey concedes that Jax has been very lucky these past few months, but her luck’s run out now. Rousey wants to fight and is willing to have that title match now, unless Nia and Tamina have a hot date elsewhere.

Uhm, EW!

Nia refuses to rise to the bait, at least a little. She’ll wait until TLC to get her match, but for now, she settles on getting a cheap shot in, with some help from Tamina. Nattie runs out to help even the odds for her friend, but is blindsided by the Riott Squad, who are clearly not over Ruby Riott’s defeat last week at the hands of Nattie. Rousey goes to her friend’s aid, but it’s clear that she’s got more problems than Jax and Snuka.

Sasha Banks and Bayley were talking in their locker room about how much fun they’d had at Starrcade when Alexa Bliss walked in. She wanted to thank them for helping her get the job as Head of the Women’s Division. Banks and Bayley, who have both had plenty of problems with Bliss, weren’t interested and told her to get lost.

Stung, Bliss suggested that the reason they’d never gotten along is because they’d never gotten to know each other, and she intended to change that. Banks and Bayley were skeptical, with very good reason, given Bliss’ track record.

One theme of this season of Mixed Match Challenge has been substitution. Ember Moon got her chance to compete in the Challenge because Alexa Bliss was injured, but with Strowman out with his elbow, another substitute needed to be found. Unfortunately, the injury bug is going around, and all WWE had to offer Ember was Curt Hawkins. Ember was…less than thrilled, Hawkins was over the moon. FINALLY, he had a chance to end his infamous losing streak, even if he had to settle for a tag team victory. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm did nothing to endear him to his partner.

Ember took on Alicia Fox, who was backed up by Jinder Mahal and the Singh Brothers. Thankfully, for Ember, the match was short and she was able to put Fox away with a thunderous Eclipse, though not before taking out Mahal and one of the Singhs with a double Eclipse.

Hawkins was more excited about the win than Ember was, though she warmed a little to him.

Alexa Bliss made good on her promise to have a little chat sesh with Sasha Banks and Bayley so they could get to know each other. She arranged a Q&A session in the ring with the Milwaukee crowd as the questioners.

It went about as well as could be expected. Banks and Bayley were both adamant that they wanted Alexa gone from RAW. Banks just wanted her sent to SmackDown, Bayley suggested hell.  However, Banks and Bayley were right to be suspicious of Bliss’ motives because the Goddess showed how treacherous she was by having Jax, Snuka, James, and Dana Brooke, who had been an ally, jump Legit Huggers. Banks and Bayley fought them off, but any veneer of goodwill has been trashed.

Seth Rollins vs Dean Ambrose: After a near death experience, Dean could be forgiven for being a little more off-kilter than usual, especially when it comes to germs. Mr. Ambrose wasn’t at RAW this week, or so he claimed, because he was at his doctor’s office getting inoculated against every disease known to the human race. Why? Because Milwaukee is filthy and the people there are crawling with germs, and if they cheer for Seth Rollins, they’re probably too stupid to get their vaccinations, so Dean’s protecting himself. But don’t worry, he’ll be at RAW next week and will destroy Seth Rollins.

As for Seth Rollins, he re-instituted his Open Challenge, but before that got going, he addressed his former friend. He said that he was done chasing Ambrose around and that Ambrose could inoculate himself all he wanted, but there was no vaccine for the ass-kicking Rollins was going to give him. Rollins didn’t think that Ambrose was with his doctor, but is ready for him if he shows up.

The challenger turned out to be Ziggler, who is very happy to see that Rollins is back to being himself. However, for Ziggler, the return of Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins means that Seth is going to drop that Intercontinental Championship to Ziggler. Never mind that Ziggler only beat Rollins because he had help from Drew McIntyre.

The match was amazing, as was expected, but without interference from either McIntyre or Ambrose to put the odds in his favor, Ziggler was defeated by Rollins with the Falcon’s Arrow. The Intercontinental Championship is still in the hands of the KingSlayer, but the Lunatic Fringe is still lurking.

RAW Tag Team Division: For the last few weeks, the Revival, long spokesmen for the traditionalists in the crowd, have found themselves in the embarrassing position of being beaten by the very untraditional Lucha House Party, and since LHP is being allowed to compete 3-2 due to a misunderstanding of Lucha House Rules, that embarrassment has started being tinged with frustration, which the Revival didn’t hesitate to vent before their match against LHP this week.

Despite the Revival’s best efforts to neutralize LHP’s numbers advantage, but the wily Luchadors were always one step ahead of them, pulling out yet another win over the increasingly frustrated Revival.

Drake Maverick has been the laughing stock of the wrestling world since his bladder malfunction during Survivor Series. His attempt to get AoP to extract some revenge on Bobby Roode and Chad Gable backfired badly. This week, Maverick defended his malfunction, citing that anyone would’ve done the same when confronted by a 7’ giant with his hand around their throat. The fact that LOTS of people have been in that position and HAVEN’T peed their pants on PPV doesn’t seem to have occurred to Maverick, he wanted to inflict his pain and humiliation on Roode and Gable, through AoP.

In the history of wrestling, there have been a lot of terrible matches, and this tag team CHAMPIONSHIP match was definitely one of them. Roode and Gable tried to get something worthwhile out of this thing, but they were hampered by questionable writing. Drake Maverick, with the cunning of a twelve year old, took off with Roode’s prized robe and let Roode see him ‘peeing’ on the robe. The distraction was enough to let AoP hit a low blow and get the pin, retaining the championship.

Jinder Mahal vs No Way Jose: Alicia Fox barely had time to register that she’d gotten beaten again when No Way Jose, and his followers, conga-lined their way to the ring for Jose’s match against Mahal.

The match was quick, and ended in Mahal’s favor, so Team Mahalicia broke even Monday night.

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