BRM Reviews WWE Roadblock (great)

[Big Red Machine]

WWE Roadblock (3/12/2016)- Toronto, ON

NEW DAY PROMO- I’m sorry. I just don’t understand how people find this to be entertaining. The whole time this was going on, I was crossing my fingers hoping that no one else would walk into the room.

WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The New Day(c) (w/Xavier Woods) vs. The League of Nations (Wade Barrett & Sheamus)- 6.5/10
No Rusev or Del Rio with no explanation for either. That League of Nations pose looks completely idiotic. Yes, I realize it is the same thing that Triple H does, but at least he manages to come off as cool and intimidating when he does it.
Wow. The League of Nations are 100% correct. This is a match-up of Men vs. Boys. It’s grown adults trying to rescue the tag titles from children who are making a mockery of them.
They had a good back-and-forth tag tag match. You’d think Kofi would have sold more after being in the Cloverleaf for so long. Also, based on this finish, the New Day definitely come off like the heels in this feud, which I’m sure is the exact opposite of what WWE was going for.

SOME GUY WITH TERRIBLE HAIR INTERVIEWS PAUL HEYMAN- standard Paul Heyman stuff, which means it was great.

CHRIS JERICHO PROMO- Big pop for Jericho in his home country, despite his horrific, heelish actions earlier this week. Jericho quickly took care of that, though, with a fantastic “I’m ashamed to be from here” promo.

CHRIS JERICHO vs. JACK SWAGGER- 6.25/10
I guess Vince isn’t here tonight, because Michael Cole started to talk about the various Canadian indies Jericho worked for early in his career by name.
The match was fine and had some good stuff in it, but I REALLY wish they had given these two about twenty minutes.

They showed a WrestleMania commercial in which the entirety of the commercial was built around the presence of the Rock, who won’t even be wrestling on the show.

NXT TAG TITLE MATCH VIDEO PACKAGE- cool.
I think Corey Graves’ commentary (basically explaining that Dash & Dawson aren’t about flips and flashyness but instead about an old school “get the job done” mentality) did a great job of setting this up for people who might not watch NXT and might not quite get what is so great about Dash & Dawson. More importantly, I think that when you compare this to the WWE Tag Team Title match earlier in the night, it shows the big difference in what is important between the main roster and NXT.

NXT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Revival(c) vs. Colin Cassady & Enzo Amore (w/Carmella)- 6.75/10
Big pop for Enzo & Cass. The match was great and had more heat than anything we’ve seen so far from the main roster. The one thing I would have changed would have been having Carmella’s slap of Dawson had taken place behind the ref’s back.

NATTIE INTERVIEW THAT GETS INTERRUPTED BY RIC AND CHARLOTTE FLAIR- I guess they decided that this match needed an angle.

WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: Charlotte(c) (w/Ric Flair) vs. Natalya- 8/10
Charlotte got revenge for Nattie’s sarcastic WOOO in her face back at NXT Takeover. The match was awesome. Charlotte worked the leg while Nattie tried for the sharpshooter. Charlotte retains vs. Flair distraction and illegal leverage from the ropes.

BROCK LESNAR (w/Paul Heyman) vs. LUKE HARPER (w/Bray Wyatt)- 3.75/10
Bray cut a good promo before the match. Brock obviously got a huge pop. The match was just Brock throwing Harper around. Wasn’t it supposed to be Brock vs. Bray?

SAMI ZAYN vs. STARDUST- 6.5/10
Huge pop for Zayn. JBL completely buries the Reverse Boston Crab because “you can’t sit down on it” to get more pressure.

WWE TITLE MATCH: Triple H(c) vs. Dean Ambrose- 8.25/10
I totally forgot how cool Triple H’s water-spitting thing looks. Huge pops for both guys.
Did anyone else think that Dean came across as kind of heelish in the beginning, going for the ears, nose and fingers? After that it got pretty awesome. It would have been a bit better if Hunter had done a better job of selling his leg as things went on, it didn’t take away from the match too much. That false finish was pretty crazy.

A great show from WWE. We got a bunch of solid matches, a Lesnar squash, and two awesome title matches.

STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Byron Saxton calls a sidewalk slam a “side suplex.” I think this shows a lot about the state of WWE announcing.

[XIV]

The action might have been good, but what a useless show.

It didn't push anything forward and the nxt tag match aside. Predictable as hell (which always detracts from my enjoyment of shows).

[Big Red Machine]

The action might have been good, but what a useless show.

It didn't push anything forward and the nxt tag match aside. Predictable as hell (which always detracts from my enjoyment of shows).

The following are things that might lead to something down the road:
1. Tag Title match will almost certainly lead to a rematch at Mania with Woods either involved, making it a six-man, or with Woods somehow neutralized by a League of Nations member.
2. Dean's leg under the ropes pinfall on Hunter could be used to justify Dean getting a title shot after Mania
3. (and this one I don't think will happen, but it is possible) that Charlotte's cheating victory over Nattie could be used to set up Nattie as post-Mania challenger (especially if Charlotte loses the belt.

But in general, I agree with you that it feels lame when a show feels totally irrelevant. This is an issue that WWE (and ROH, and TNA, and basically everyone who isn't CHIKARA or EVOLVE) could fix with better booking that puts more of an emphasis on wins and losses.

[XIV]

The action might have been good, but what a useless show.

It didn't push anything forward and the nxt tag match aside. Predictable as hell (which always detracts from my enjoyment of shows).

The following are things that might lead to something down the road:
1. Tag Title match will almost certainly lead to a rematch at Mania with Woods either involved, making it a six-man, or with Woods somehow neutralized by a League of Nations member.
2. Dean's leg under the ropes pinfall on Hunter could be used to justify Dean getting a title shot after Mania
3. (and this one I don't think will happen, but it is possible) that Charlotte's cheating victory over Nattie could be used to set up Nattie as post-Mania challenger (especially if Charlotte loses the belt.

But in general, I agree with you that it feels lame when a show feels totally irrelevant. This is an issue that WWE (and ROH, and TNA, and basically everyone who isn't CHIKARA or EVOLVE) could fix with better booking that puts more of an emphasis on wins and losses.

If those three come to pass then it was very subtle and well done from WWE. It almost like because there's usually 5-6 weeks between their Feb PPV and Mania they've just pushed something into place for the hell of it.

If you'd have had Swagger vs AJ with some kind of Jericho distraction or interference that would improve.

Brock vs Bray 1 on 1 as originally planned would have been better.

New Day vs League of Nations I can't fault. It can potentially set something up (and maybe help me take League of Nations as a serious threat).

The NxT match had its purpose, it brought NXT to the forefront for a match.

Roman as a special referee for Dean vs Triple H would have been good. With Roman conflicted between helping is friend gaining glory or wanting to have that shot at glory himself.

There is just so much more WWE could have done with this show.

[Big Red Machine]

The action might have been good, but what a useless show.

It didn't push anything forward and the nxt tag match aside. Predictable as hell (which always detracts from my enjoyment of shows).

The following are things that might lead to something down the road:
1. Tag Title match will almost certainly lead to a rematch at Mania with Woods either involved, making it a six-man, or with Woods somehow neutralized by a League of Nations member.
2. Dean's leg under the ropes pinfall on Hunter could be used to justify Dean getting a title shot after Mania
3. (and this one I don't think will happen, but it is possible) that Charlotte's cheating victory over Nattie could be used to set up Nattie as post-Mania challenger (especially if Charlotte loses the belt.

But in general, I agree with you that it feels lame when a show feels totally irrelevant. This is an issue that WWE (and ROH, and TNA, and basically everyone who isn't CHIKARA or EVOLVE) could fix with better booking that puts more of an emphasis on wins and losses.

If those three come to pass then it was very subtle and well done from WWE. It almost like because there's usually 5-6 weeks between their Feb PPV and Mania they've just pushed something into place for the hell of it.

If you'd have had Swagger vs AJ with some kind of Jericho distraction or interference that would improve.

Brock vs Bray 1 on 1 as originally planned would have been better.

New Day vs League of Nations I can't fault. It can potentially set something up (and maybe help me take League of Nations as a serious threat).

The NxT match had its purpose, it brought NXT to the forefront for a match.

Roman as a special referee for Dean vs Triple H would have been good. With Roman conflicted between helping is friend gaining glory or wanting to have that shot at glory himself.

There is just so much more WWE could have done with this show.

I don't if they pushed something into place so much as it almost feels natural to have a mini-PPV/Saturday Night's Main Event/Clash of the Champions-style big show about half-way into the month to do some angles with. It's something I wish they would do every year between TLC and the Rumble because those six or seven weeks are usually pretty unbearable.

I think that they did what they did (or rather, what they didn't do) with Brock vs. Bray in order to save that match for a PPV down the line since apparently both of them really wanted to do that match at Mania.

As for Roman being the Special Guest Ref... I know that Triple H vs. Dean was originally planned to be non-title, so my guess is that this was supposed to be Roman's big return where he would spear Triple H to cost him the match (and set up Roman vs. Dean post-Mania because Dean would have pinned the champ) but it is taking Roman longer than they expected to recover from his surgery (I think he was supposed to be at this week's Raw but got pulled from advertising), so they went with a title match instead,

The other thing to remember is that WWE did have a second house-show tonight, so half of the crew wasn't available.