BRM Reviews WWE Roadblock: End of the Line

[Big Red Machine]

WWE Roadblock: End of the Line (12/18/2016)- Pittsburgh, PA

How much money to you think they spent for the completely pointless police cars and helicopters in the opening video?


WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The New Day(c) (w/Xavier Woods) vs. Cesaro & Sheamus- 7.25/10
I know this isn't news or anything, but Cesaro's strength and athleticism are both utterly ridiculous. Great match! And finally New Day’s title reign ends. Personally, I think losing the titles right after breaking the record for holding them the longest diminishes the fact that you broke the record. It’s the sort of thing that makes it feel like the only reason they didn’t take the belts off of them earlier is because they wanted them to break the record (which is exactly what happened here). It makes everything feel more forced and phony- and especially with an act like New Day where they’ve been using heel tactics to retain the titles for months but we’re all supposed to pretend they’re babyfaces for some reason.
I also hated the post-match segment. First of all, I hated Cesaro’s group hug with the New Day. How many times did New Day cheat him out of the titles? Also, I really don’t like the direction they’re going with Cesaro and Sheamus now. Having them going back to not being on the same page or having Sheamus being a heel again or whatever feels like a step backwards. Wasn’t the point of that segment in the bar supposed to be that they are on the same page and friends now?

CHARLY INTERVIEWS KEVIN OWENS- Owens was great. This led into a segment with Owens & Jericho where Owens tried to make up with Jericho so he bought him a scarf, but Jericho didn’t accept his gift.

TEN MINUTE TIME LIMIT MATCH: Braun Strowman vs. Sami Zayn- 0.5/10
They told their story competently, but that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t extremely boring. We all knew what the finish would be the moment the match was announced, so once Sami started selling all there was to do was to wait until the final bell. The stuff with Foley was quite annoying, simply because we all knew that Foley wasn’t going to throw in the towel. Also, during the time the whole Foley thing was going on, both Sami and Strowman should have been counted out five times over.

SETH ROLLINS vs. CHRIS JERICHO- 8/10
Jericho worked on Rollins’ mid-section while Rollins worked Jericho’s head, and we got tons of great counters, too. Owens’ involvement here was definitely necessary and was handled well. It felt like a completely necessary part of the match instead of feeling like overbooking.

WWE CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Rich Swann(c) vs. Brian Kendrick vs. TJ Perkins- 6.5/10
The commentary was awesome because they traded out Byron Saxton for Austin Aries. The match was fine. The finish was beautifully symbolic and artsy. It worked really well. That being said, all anyone is going to remember from this is the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Neville shows up… and turns heel by immediately assaulting Swann. TJP tries to make the save but Neville beats the crap out of him, too. GREAT stuff! This was pretty darn shocking. Like Graves in kayfabe, I had no idea that Neville could work this sort of mean heel style.

KEVIN OWENS TRIES TO APOLOGIZE TO THE CLOSED DOOR OF CHRIS JERICHO’S DRESSING ROOM- this was great. Owens brought real humanity to what was intended as a 100% comedy “best friends” angle.
After Owens sadly concludes that his friendship with Chris Jericho is over, Corey Graves said “the WWE Universal Champion can’t head into a massive match like he has tonight with hurt feelings like that.” This is why Corey Graves will win Announcer of the Year.

30 MINUTE IRONMAN MATCH FOR THE WWE WOMEN’S TITLE: Sasha Banks(c) vs. Charlotte Flair- 9.25/10
That darn Michael Cole and his need to tell the truth. Despite the fact that they’ve been pushing this as the “first ever” women’s Ironman match, Cole noted that this was the second Ironman match in WWE history involving women.
An OUTSTANDING match, and feels like a true blow-off for these two. They told a great story with Charlotte working on the knee and Sasha doing whatever she could to not give up despite the pain… until she absolutely had to. Major props are due to Sasha for her selling and Charlotte for her facials as well.

WWE UNIVERSAL TITLE MATCH: Kevin Owens(c) vs. Roman Reigns- 8/10
An awesome match until the disappointing finish. Owens and Jericho are back together again, so once again this angle has gone nowhere. A DQ on its own would have been bad but to then have it revealed that all we’ve done is reset the status quo was even more frustrating. Then having Rollins come out and he and Roman lay out the heels at the end with powerbombs through announcers’ tables made it even worse because it made this PPV feel like an episode of Raw instead of a PPV. If you were going to do a finish like this, then the women’s match definitely should have been the main event.


This was a pretty darn great show from WWE despite the disappointing ending and the Zayn-Strowman fiasco. Definitely do whatever you can to watch the women’s match.

[NWK2000]

I read into Jericho Codebreaking Owens as "I was actually mad at you, so I hit you, but now that I have gotten that out of my system we're cool." I didn't see it as a swerve, despite the fact that that was the story the commentators were telling

[cero2k]

we watched a different show, i hated every single finish, and the women's particularly i thought it was a completely stupid booked match

[Big Red Machine]

I read into Jericho Codebreaking Owens as "I was actually mad at you, so I hit you, but now that I have gotten that out of my system we're cool." I didn't see it as a swerve, despite the fact that that was the story the commentators were telling

I hadn't thought of it like that, and I kind of like that better.
That being said, the best thing to do would have been to have Jericho swerve everyone by laying Owens out a second time once they are celebrating together to build to a three-way at the Rumble (or more likely a four-way involving Seth, who has a claim that he deserves a title shot if Jericho gets one because he beat Jericho here on PPV). That being said, I can definitely see an argument against Owens and Jericho's first match against each other post-break-up not being a singles match. The way they did this does kind of allow for the same four-way scenario (especially if you use WWE booking logic to insert Jericho into the title picture via Rollins accusing him of being Owens' "co-champion, so you might as well throw him in the match because we all know he's going to get involved anyway"), then you have the story in the four-way of Owens & Jericho working together but either miscue causes Owens to lose the title, then Jericho screws up helping him get it back in February leading to a singles match at Mania, or Jericho steals the pin from Owens leading to something in February where Jericho cheats to fully turn Owens babyface and Owens regaining the belt in a gimmick match at Mania.

[Big Red Machine]

we watched a different show, i hated every single finish, and the women's particularly i thought it was a completely stupid booked match

I definitely seem to be the outlier on this show, and particularly that match. This is one of those instances- ridiculous as it seems- the backwards-ness of the babyface-heel dynamic doesn't bother me. I don't dispute that doing it the other way would have been better, but the match we got told a competent wrestling story and the competitors performed it very well. On some level, as long as no one is cheating or there is no huge size mismatch then "backwards" babyface-heel dynamics can be ignored. They weren't a plus to this match, but I didn't see the backwardsness of it as a negative, either. If we were grading this with a strict rubric I would give them a low score for it for most of the match, but I wouldn't be deducting points because of it. A zero, not a negative.

As for hating all of the finishes... did you really hate the tag title one? I'll admit to finding it a little weird, but once I figured it out I didn't hate it. Also, I think people wouldn't have hated the main event finish quite so much if it wasn't the main event... and the fact that they put it as the main event anyway really shows you that their faith in the women to main event is more for show than anything else.

[cero2k]

As for hating all of the finishes... did you really hate the tag title one? I'll admit to finding it a little weird, but once I figured it out I didn't hate it. Also, I think people wouldn't have hated the main event finish quite so much if it wasn't the main event... and the fact that they put it as the main event anyway really shows you that their faith in the women to main event is more for show than anything else.

the trick didn't bother me, but i don't like New Day losing so soon after breaking the title because it just confirms that was the whole point. While it was a legit pinfall and the new day was outsmarted, it doesn't feel like a clean win, and i think that if this is closing the huge record setting reign, it should be clean, no shenanigans, straight up win.

this was probably why i hated this show, it was, top to bottom, a showcase on WWE's cowardliness to pin 'their' guys, Cass was counted out while caring for his WRESTLER friend who was shoved down by a VALET! WTF! it's so annoying. Going back to our EVOLVE convo (i'm still working on the response btw), the reason guys feel like main eventers like Riddle and Williams is because they're allowed to beat the top guys clean, and in return, those guys get beaten by other guys. Not WWE, Big Muscly Cass can't be pinned, oh hell no.

also agree with what you said about the main event, but if Charlotte wins (yet again) in the main event, it was also going to be sour for the fans

[Big Red Machine]

As for hating all of the finishes... did you really hate the tag title one? I'll admit to finding it a little weird, but once I figured it out I didn't hate it. Also, I think people wouldn't have hated the main event finish quite so much if it wasn't the main event... and the fact that they put it as the main event anyway really shows you that their faith in the women to main event is more for show than anything else.

the trick didn't bother me, but i don't like New Day losing so soon after breaking the title because it just confirms that was the whole point. While it was a legit pinfall and the new day was outsmarted, it doesn't feel like a clean win, and i think that if this is closing the huge record setting reign, it should be clean, no shenanigans, straight up win.

I agree in principle about losing the belts so soon after setting the record, but due to New Day's lack of clean title defenses, the record already felt like bullsh*t. The ironic part is that if they had actually made THAT the storyline and had New Day turn progressively more heelish with the full heel turn coming in screwing Sheamus & Cesaro on Raw to preserve their titles, they could have gotten three or four more months out of this title reign and made it something memorable (as well as making Sheamus & Cesaro's journey more memorable), but instead they went this terrible, WWE-ish route where they have this thing they want to do and they have these guys that for whatever reason they have decided MUST be babyfaces, so they have the babyfaces cheat left and right to accomplish this goal while we're all just supposed to ignore that they are doing the exact same things that the top heel is being condemned for.
Now that I think about it, how many feuds like this have we had recently where the babyface is being a heel? The New Day stuff, Roman vs. Rusev, Ambrose vs. AJ, the Enzo-Rusev thing. Then we've got Rollins who still sounds like a whiny heel (although that might just be his voice. I remember some of the same complains during his babyface run in ROH) Dean is a douche, Slater is a liar, Dolph gets whiny, Doph and Foley both get WAY too emotional, Shane is kind of a tool...

this was probably why i hated this show, it was, top to bottom, a showcase on WWE's cowardliness to pin 'their' guys, Cass was counted out while caring for his WRESTLER friend who was shoved down by a VALET! WTF! it's so annoying. Going back to our EVOLVE convo (i'm still working on the response btw), the reason guys feel like main eventers like Riddle and Williams is because they're allowed to beat the top guys clean, and in return, those guys get beaten by other guys. Not WWE, Big Muscly Cass can't be pinned, oh hell no.

This I will certainly agree with. Kevin Sullivan (in his first RF Video shoot, I think) summed up one important principle of booking as follows (and be sure to read this in your Kevin Sullivan voice): "Some must die so that others can live." If you want to elevate either Rusev or Cass, someone's got to win, and win well. If you don't want either guy to lose then DON'T BOOK THE MATCH.

The Evolve thing plays into one of the other principles that WWE seems to miss. In theory, what you just put Gabe over for doing sounds a lot like WWE's dreaded 50/50 booking (the only difference being that we're trading wins around the whole promotion rather than every feud in the promotion doing so individually), but the other thing that makes the way Gabe does it work and the way that WWE does it fail is that Gabe understands how to cycle guys up and down the card. Gabe will spend a coupe of shows building someone up by giving them those big wins on their way up the card until they are at where they need to be to do what they are there to do (usually have a title shot) and once they lose (if they win, then the cycle repeats itself until they fail in a quest) he cycles them back down the card, as they put over the guys who are now being cycled up... but because we had four or five shows of the booking showing us how great this guy is (and the announcing telling us, and the wrestler proving it), it now means something when these other guys beat him on his way down and he retains a certain level of main-event credibility from now on.
On the WWE side of things, you've got the Dolph Ziggler/Jack Swagger/Wade Barrett/Christian mid-carder for life club where WWE doesn't do enough to give them that main event credibility while their on their way up and almost never lets them get the big wins while on top to retain that, so even though he is a former World Heavyweight Champion, a win over Jack Swagger doesn't mean sh*t and Swagger himself is stuck as an undercard jamoke forever. When you've got guys on different parts of the cycle facing each other, there is mobility. WWE has guys just fighting within their same level, so any time someone fights someone on a different level, we know what the outcome will be- not necessarily the outcome of the match, but we know who is going to be the one they are trying to get over with it.

also agree with what you said about the main event, but if Charlotte wins (yet again) in the main event, it was also going to be sour for the fans

Yeah, but "darn, the babyface lost clean in a big gimmick match" sour is much better than "f*ck-job DQ in the main event world title match (in which we also have the theoretical babyface losing)" sour. The first one is the type of thing that would make places like Evolve or CHIKARA or LU or pre-2015 ROH feel so interesting and open to possibilities. The latter is what put WCW out of business.

[cero2k]

also agree with what you said about the main event, but if Charlotte wins (yet again) in the main event, it was also going to be sour for the fans

Yeah, but "darn, the babyface lost clean in a big gimmick match" sour is much better than "f*ck-job DQ in the main event world title match (in which we also have the theoretical babyface losing)" sour. The first one is the type of thing that would make places like Evolve or CHIKARA or LU or pre-2015 ROH feel so interesting and open to possibilities. The latter is what put WCW out of business.

except this is the 4th change they've done with that title in the last 6 months. it's not special anymore, it's just another hot potato change. in hindsight, the title changes surrounding HIAC shouldn't have happened and this ironwoman match should have been the 'first women's main event'. I hate to agree with them, but it's been a while that Alvarez/Vinny and I agreed on the little things the show was getting on my nerves on for.

pretty much agree with everything else you said

[Big Red Machine]

also agree with what you said about the main event, but if Charlotte wins (yet again) in the main event, it was also going to be sour for the fans

Yeah, but "darn, the babyface lost clean in a big gimmick match" sour is much better than "f*ck-job DQ in the main event world title match (in which we also have the theoretical babyface losing)" sour. The first one is the type of thing that would make places like Evolve or CHIKARA or LU or pre-2015 ROH feel so interesting and open to possibilities. The latter is what put WCW out of business.

except this is the 4th change they've done with that title in the last 6 months. it's not special anymore, it's just another hot potato change. in hindsight, the title changes surrounding HIAC shouldn't have happened and this ironwoman match should have been the 'first women's main event'. I hate to agree with them, but it's been a while that Alvarez/Vinny and I agreed on the little things the show was getting on my nerves on for.

pretty much agree with everything else you said

I totally agree that them changing this belt is not special anymore and all of that... but of all of the viable main events (which was really just this match and Universal Title) it was the one that was both going to be more special, it was the gimmick match, and even more importantly, it was the one that didn't end in a f*ck finish.

[Big Red Machine]

As an example of why I don't get why people are being so hard on the women's match being backwards, I know of no one who let their enjoyment of Danielson vs. KENTA from GBH V: Night 2 be affected by this even though it was KENTA working on Dragon's arm/shoulder the whole time and Dragon was the one in the sympathetic light even though he was the heel.

[cero2k]

As an example of why I don't get why people are being so hard on the women's match being backwards, I know of no one who let their enjoyment of Danielson vs. KENTA from GBH V: Night 2 be affected by this even though it was KENTA working on Dragon's arm/shoulder the whole time and Dragon was the one in the sympathetic light even though he was the heel.

1. it was many years ago, and people probably don't even remember it
2. Kenta was always considered to be someone who hurts people regardless if heel/face

I see what you're saying here, but the problem with Sasha/Chalotte is not exactly that they changed roles, because they didn't, Charlotte wasn't acting like a babyface and getting sympathy, Sasha wasn't doing heel things; problem is that Sasha, as the babyface, didn't have the fire to hold 2 seconds and retain, and then she just lost again in sudden death. So here, the problem is not that Charlotte got a babyface style win, but rather that Sasha looks stupid, weak, all that babyface fire with her broken nose and she couldn't hold a submission 2 more seconds. check out Bryan/Vinny's review of the match, they explain it a bit better than I do.

[Big Red Machine]

As an example of why I don't get why people are being so hard on the women's match being backwards, I know of no one who let their enjoyment of Danielson vs. KENTA from GBH V: Night 2 be affected by this even though it was KENTA working on Dragon's arm/shoulder the whole time and Dragon was the one in the sympathetic light even though he was the heel.

1. it was many years ago, and people probably don't even remember it
2. Kenta was always considered to be someone who hurts people regardless if heel/face

I see what you're saying here, but the problem with Sasha/Chalotte is not exactly that they changed roles, because they didn't, Charlotte wasn't acting like a babyface and getting sympathy, Sasha wasn't doing heel things; problem is that Sasha, as the babyface, didn't have the fire to hold 2 seconds and retain, and then she just lost again in sudden death. So here, the problem is not that Charlotte got a babyface style win, but rather that Sasha looks stupid, weak, all that babyface fire with her broken nose and she couldn't hold a submission 2 more seconds. check out Bryan/Vinny's review of the match, they explain it a bit better than I do.

I've listened to it, and I disagree with them. You should listen to Lance's.

[KILLdozer]

It was just the wrong move for the time for it to be changed hands between these two, again.

[cero2k]

Meltzer's ratings are out

Rusev beat Big Cass - DUD
Sheamus & Cesaro beat Big E & Kofi Kingston - ***½
Sami Zayn beat Braun Strowman - *1/4
Seth Rollins pinned Chris Jericho ***
Rich Swann beat Brian Kendrick and T.J. Perkins - *3/4
Charlotte beat Sasha Banks 3-2 in an Iron Man match - ***
Kevin Owens beat Roman Reigns ***

[cero2k]

I've listened to it, and I disagree with them. You should listen to Lance's.

I read the column he posted about the match. Seems like the only difference is he is blaming the commentary team while I'm blaming the agent who put the match together. I'll give in and say that what he says makes sense, but things were still not done properly, and I personally hadn't noticed the Figure 8 was so powerful because I don't remember anyone building up that move as Lance said it is. It also doesn't help that one night before I saw Paige VanZant get choked out instead of tapping out, and here, as killer as the F8 can be, babyface Sasha couldn't hold it 2 more seconds. I just don't think this finish (two tap outs one after the other) protects Sasha that much if she's not getting another shot for a while. I wouldn't even have a problem if Sasha had tapped out like 30 seconds before the end of the 30 minutes, survive those 30 seconds under a submission, and lose again in sudden death

[Big Red Machine]

I've listened to it, and I disagree with them. You should listen to Lance's.

I read the column he posted about the match. Seems like the only difference is he is blaming the commentary team while I'm blaming the agent who put the match together. I'll give in and say that what he says makes sense, but things were still not done properly, and I personally hadn't noticed the Figure 8 was so powerful because I don't remember anyone building up that move as Lance said it is. It also doesn't help that one night before I saw Paige VanZant get choked out instead of tapping out, and here, as killer as the F8 can be, babyface Sasha couldn't hold it 2 more seconds. I just don't think this finish (two tap outs one after the other) protects Sasha that much if she's not getting another shot for a while. I wouldn't even have a problem if Sasha had tapped out like 30 seconds before the end of the 30 minutes, survive those 30 seconds under a submission, and lose again in sudden death

If she's not getting another title shot then she doesn't need to be protected.