WWE Rumors: What's The Plan for TLC 2014 Pay-Per-View?

CM Punk appeared on his good friend Colt Cabana's podcast, Art of Wrestling, on Thanksgiving and detailed his discussion with Vince McMahon and Triple H the day he left WWE back in January. One of his numerous issues at the time was the creative direction of the company. Punk said, and I paraphrase here, that he did not know what WWE was doing as a business.

It's hard not to feel that way now as a fan watching the WWE television product in December 2014.

Survivor Series ended with so much promise. Sting made his debut, a sight that many WWE fans thought they would never see. Dolph Ziggler had almost single-handedly taken out Team Authority and put The Authority out of power. Fans were buzzing.

Then, Monday Night Raw happened the next night. The Authority left, Daniel Bryan returned to be the General Manager for the night, and all seemed well, But the show just meandered aimlessly for most of the three hours and ended with the nightmare of Michael Cole and the Anonymous Raw General Manager.

This week, the show followed the same pattern. WWE started to build toward TLC and set the main event between John Cena and Seth Rollins in a Tables Match with the stipulation that if Cena loses, then he forfeits his WWE World Heavyweight Championship match against Brock Lesnar. But it's hard not to feel like we're in a holding pattern until Royal Rumble in January.

I'll go out on a limb and say hardly anything of substance will happen at TLC. Cena's match will likely push the main event story forward, but other than that, it's going to be one big stall. Dean Ambrose, as much as I love him, is becoming a guy whose story goes nowhere. He pursues Seth Rollins for months, finally gets him inside Hell in a Cell, and then Bray Wyatt interferes to set up the next feud. Then Ambrose and Bray fight at Survivor Series, but the match ends in a disqualification and basically serves as a commercial for their Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match at TLC.

The rest of the matches always have the potential to be entertaining, but what does it all really mean outside of the main event? WWE is a directionless ship right now, and we likely won't see any real focus until January when we kick off WrestleMania season. It's easy to say that we're overreacting to two subpar weeks of television, but as Survivor Series proved, the mood in WWE can turn on a dime.

What do you think of the state of WWE right now? Do you think TLC will offer any important developments, or do we have to wait until Royal Rumble? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.