Roughly 48 hours before WWE TLC 2017, two top superstars were removed from the card due to illness. Their replacements may have made the show even better.
With WWE TLC 2017 just around the corner, the company had a big curveball thrown their way. Some kind of viral outbreak is spreading through the locker room, and it’s infected participants in two of Sunday’s biggest matches. So at the last minute, WWE was forced to make changes to a card that’s been building for the past month.
First off, the Sister Abigail vs. The Demon match is off the table. Bray Wyatt is among those possibly infected with either mumps or viral meningitis, depending on the source. Finn Balor will still compete at TLC – and his new opponent is AJ Styles.
In possibly even bigger news, Roman Reigns is also off TLC. The Shield reunion was a huge deal, but now it’s a no-go. But The Big Dog’s replacement came 100% out of left field – Hall of Famer and Raw General Manager Kurt Angle is coming out of retirement to team with Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins instead.
Now, all of that is a lot to process. It’s definitely been a wild couple of hours dealing with all the information. But after having some time to digest it all, it’s possible that TLC is now an even better show than it was when Raw ended Monday night.
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At the very least, Finn Balor will have a better match now than before. That’s not meant as a knock on Bray Wyatt at all. But it’s been played out. Balor has beaten Wyatt twice on consecutive pay per view events. And quite honestly, the “Sister Abigail” thing is something that works much better on paper than in practice.
Now, Balor gets to have a very different match against a very different opponent in Styles. The two have never faced each other in a WWE ring, so it’s as fresh a matchup as you can get. It’s as close to a “can’t miss” match as you can get nowadays. Bryan Alvarez is reporting that they’re getting “a good amount of time,” so expect that to tear the house down.
And Kurt Angle’s return to a WWE ring after 11 years? That’s a heck of a lot more exciting than Kane’s return to a WWE ring after 11 months (give or take). It’s a little strange that Angle would lace up the boots again with next to no build. You’d think WWE would want to hype this for all they could.
But the fact remains that Angle returning to the ring – in a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match, no less – is huge. Even with no build, and even with probable limitations on what Angle can do in such a match, it’s going to be a major event. If he shows just a flash of what he did in his prime, it might make the WWE Universe okay with missing out on The Shield.
Next: Biggest Storylines Heading into WWE TLC 2017
Of course, I reserve the right to take all of this back if he makes Braun Strowman tap out to the Ankle Lock.