This may have been the debate Donald Trump wanted, but it wasn't the one he needed.
With one last chance to make a pitch to the American public that he should be trusted with the presidency, the Republican nominee had to make efforts to expand his base of support.
He had to find a way to distance himself from the allegation that he has a history of sexual harassment.
He had to position himself as the change candidate - just days after a Fox poll showed that Hillary Clinton, whose party has held the presidency for eight years, was beating him on the question of who would "change the country for the better".
Instead, after a roughly half an hour of something resembling an actual policy debate about the Supreme Court, gun rights, abortion and even immigration, the old Donald Trump - the one who constantly interrupted his opponent, sparred with the moderator and lashed out at enemies real and perceived - emerged.
He called Mrs Clinton a liar and a "nasty woman".
He said the women accusing him of sexual harassment bordering on assault were either attention-seekers or Clinton campaign stooges.
He said the media were "poisoning the minds" of the public. And, most notably, he refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election if he loses.
Mrs Clinton had her own moments where she was put in the defensive - on her emails, on the Clinton Foundation and on embarrassing details revealed in the Wikileaks hack.
The difference, however, is that Mrs Clinton largely kept her poise and successfully changed the topic back to subjects where she was more comfortable. It was, in fact, a master class in parry-and-strike debate strategy.
The key takeaway from this debate, however - the headline that Americans will wake up to read in the morning - will certainly be Mr Trump's refusal to back way from his "rigged" election claims.
That was what Mr Trump wanted to say, but it isn't something the American people - or American democracy - needed to hear.
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The Russian gambit
Mrs Clinton's skill at deflecting attacks and baiting Mr Trump into unhelpful answers first was on display when moderator Chris Wallace brought up a line from one of her Wall Street speeches - revealed in the Wikileaks hack - that she endorsed a hemispheric free-trade and open-immigration zone.
After saying she was only talking about an open energy market - an assertion that seems somewhat questionable - she tried to turn the question into a discussion of whether Mr Trump would renounce the Russian government, which US officials have said is behind the cyber-attack.
Mr Trump actually called Mrs Clinton out on her attempted "great pivot" - but then he went on to get bogged down on the Russian issue.
He said he'd never met Mr Putin (although he boasted during a primary debate that he had talked with him in a television green room), and said that Mrs Clinton was a liar and the real Russian "puppet".
Oh, and this all came up when the debate topic was supposed to be immigration.
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