Above is the final three minutes of the closing segment to tonight's (Dec. 9, 2013) episode of Monday Night Raw at the KeyArena in Seattle, Washington, which was also the Slammy Awards and the go home edition to the TLC pay-per-view (PPV) this coming Sunday night in Houston.
It was one of the best segments of the year.
There's just so much that happens, a lot of it not included in the video WWE released to YouTube. What you don't see is the crowd hijacking a Triple H promo to chant for Daniel Bryan and one of the best promos of John Cena's career.
What you do see is genius booking executed to perfection.
It starts with Randy Orton taking a cheap shot at Cena before the two are separated by the various former champions standing in the ring with them. It breaks down rather quickly after that. In the process of losing his mind while being held back, Orton hits CM Punk in the face, resulting in retaliation from "The Second City Savior." This leads to Triple H emphatically removing Punk from the situation, enough so that Chicago's favorite son puts him down. Shawn Michaels just so happened to be standing right there, however, and that meant Sweet Chin Music for Punk. That's when Daniel Bryan came in with the flying knee. Orton got back in there with an RKO attempt on Bryan, but he was shoved into Stephanie McMahon, who took a hard bump. Triple H had recovered by then and after briefly attending to his wife and the mother of his three children, he nailed Orton with the Pedigree for knocking into her.
That's when the ring finally cleared and The Authority, alongside John Cena, disapprovingly looked on at Orton.
How many more buys did WWE sell for TLC with this segment? I know I'm ALL IN after this.
For complete results and the live blog from Raw click here.