The fact that tribological performance correlates strongly to transfer film morphology is interpreted either as evidence that high quality transfer films cause low friction and wear or evidence that low friction and low wear sliding causes high quality transfer films. This work aimed to elucidate this causal relationship for a particularly well-studied material family by eliminating its transfer film. Alumina-PTFE composites were subjected to indexed reciprocation to eliminate the transfer film; standard reciprocation was used as a control. Three distinct alumina fillers known to produce low wear, moderate wear, and high wear when added to PTFE were used to gain insight into how each affects debris creation, debris size, counterface abrasion, transfer film morphology, tribochemistry, and other attributes of interest. Given the orders of magnitude differences in the wear rates reported for these materials, we observed surprising similarities. All three composites aggressively abraded the steel counterface without transfer films, exhibited comparable wear rates during run-in with and without transfer films, and exhibited significant tribochemistry but only in the presence of transfer films. The primary differences observed were debris size and morphology, and composition and morphology of the worn surfaces in the absence of transfer films. Finally, we discuss how these results contribute to our understanding of wear control in this system and how that might extend to related systems.