Let’s Talk About Why Dean Ambrose vs Seth Rollins Was So “Boring” at TLC

Last night’s WWE TLC event was chock full of surprises. Such surprises included Asuka capturing the SmackDown Women’s Championship, Former Interim Raw GM Baron Corbin being pushed out of power, but perhaps the most surprising segment of the night came from Dean Ambrose vs Seth Rollins, not because of the match itself, but because of the reaction to it.

This Intercontinental Championship match arrived on the heels of one of the year’s hottest storylines and feuds. Even before Ambrose officially turned heel, fans have been eagerly anticipating for WWE to revisit the Ambrose/Rollins feud for quite some time. Yet, when the two had their first match in their newly christened feud, minutes after the bell rang, the match received “boring” chants. More specifically, the match received “This is boring” chants.

In fact, from the very start, the contest was pretty dead. For the duration of the match, the crowd hardly responded unless it was to deliver derogatory chants. We even got some “CM Punk” and “Becky” chants littered throughout. The boos towards the match were even louder.

What happened?

Well, there are a few reasons why Seth Rollins vs Dean Ambrose just didn’t work last night. Let’s talk about it.

via WWE.com

First and foremost, the match was introduced as the 11th match of a 12 match card and came nearly three hours into the show. Having a supercard like that on a WrestleMania show can be exhausting enough. Having a supercard like that on a gimmick show like TLC had to be brutal for the live crowd. By Match 11, fans were either too tired to get invested, or they were saving their energy for the main event of the show.

Having this many matches on any regular show was destined to backfire. Unfortunately, Rollins vs Ambrose had to be the match that suffered.

With that said, while their placement on the card did hurt them, Rollins and Ambrose didn’t help matters by trying to give us a traditional wrestling match. For almost two months now, their characters have been embroiled in a blood feud. Even without a hardcore stipulation, we expected fists to fly and high octane action treading at 100 miles per hour.

Instead, the match started off with a lock-up. What proceeded were rest holds galore. By time Rollins and Ambrose decided to shift into another gear, the crowd had tuned out.

Keep in mind that prior to the match, the crowd saw a TLC Match, a Tables Match, a Ladder Match, a Chairs Match, a dance break party and whatever crazy spots the folks at 205 Live were doing on the Kickoff Show. Ambrose and Rollins were always going to struggle to live up to those expectations. Classic mat based wrestling wasn’t going to cut it on this night.

It also didn’t help that the two opted to have not just a traditional wrestling match, but an overwritten story driven match with performances overacted as if they were gunning for an Oscar. You know, the kind of matches that Kenny Omega regularly has in NJPW where he’s yelling dialogue at his opponent as if he’s ready to cry mid-move.

Mind you, no one’s trying to shame these matches. Omega does them well – sometimes – and Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano had a trifecta of matches like that in NXT this year without overdoing it. Matches like these will always have a place in professional wrestling, but Ambrose and Rollins failed to execute such a match impressively.

The height of their “Oscar worthy” moments came when Ambrose stopped Rollins from doing a move by sticking his fist out for a classic Shield fist bump. The moment he did this and halted Rollins in his steps, there was a unanimous groan across the SAP Center. Even audiences watching at home had to agree that the moment was awfully cheesy. Not to mention, all it did was make Rollins look like an idiot for entertaining the fist for a second.

It can also be argued that this match was always destined to fail due to how it’s been booked as of late. The feud started off hot with Ambrose’s turn coming on the night of Roman Reigns’s leukemia announcement and then The Lunatic Fringe insinuating Reigns’s ailment is punishment for what terrible things he committed in The Shield. 

Then, as time went on, we went from seeing the remnants of a blood feud to seeing what could be mistaken for comedy bits. Ambrose getting a bunch of vaccine shots, coming to the ring wearing a gas mask, wearing a big pimp daddy fur coat, etc. Now, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve loved seeing all of that stuff – then again, to be fair, I am notoriously corny – but I can also see why this stuff could turn off other viewers. I can see how stuff like this could have turned fans off on the match long before TLC arrived on Sunday.

via WWE.com

Last night at TLC, it just wasn’t Rollins or Ambrose’s night. Which must be especially disappointing for the latter who won the Intercontinental Championship last night. Not exactly an ideal setting that anyone would want to have a big title win in.

Whether we like it or not, there’s still fuel in the tank of this feud. We don’t know how long WWE will run with it, but however long this feud continues to last, we hope that the former Shield mates can somehow retrieve the steam necessary to live up to previous expectations.