WWE Roadblock – Review
After being completely burned by the abysmal bore that was Fastlane a few weeks ago, I had very little hopes going into Roadblock, and ultimately it was only just marginally better than Fastlane.
Roadblock, the WWE Network exclusive event was live over the weekend (Saturday 12th) and it was the first major event/PPV that I didn’t even bother staying up for.
And, thankfully I made the right decision as if I’d had stayed up until 4am, I would’ve have been a rather grumpy boy.
The night as a whole was just rather forgettable, nothing was at stake, most of the matches felt completely pointless, such as the title match between Charlotte and Natalya.
Nattie has never been in the running for the Divas Champion – she’s C league at best – so why she was thrown into a title match is just pointless as everyone and their mothers knew that the current champ, Charlotte, would keep the title going into Wrestlemania.
However, there was one glaring issue with this match and perfectly shows why Natalya is a terrible wrestler.
Near the start of the match, Nattie tries to do a submission move on Charlotte, but everyone sees as clear as day Natalya tap Charlotte’s sides for her to give her hand so Nattie can do her move.
It was lazy, dumb and just ruins the whole experience.
Yes, we all know wrestling is scripted, but we don’t want to see proof of that in the middle of a match; it’s like seeing someone from backstage accidently run into shot on your favourite TV show; it shatters all immersion.
Another dull match was between Chris Jericho and Jack Swagger.
Why did these two need to fight, there’s no rivalry between the two, no heat which made the match, although performed well with Jericho pulling some decent Heel moves and his rant at the Canadian audience at the start was mildly entertaining, but the match still felt like filler.
But, there was one match that wasn’t just dull, it was insulting – and that match is between Bray Wyatt and Brock Lesner.
It was billed as Bray V Brock on advertising and last week’s RAW, yet what we got was Bray standing on the side lines twiddling this tumbs with Lesner Suplexing Luke Harper for a few minutes before Lesner wins the match via One Fall.
Afterwards Bray just walked off and that was the end of it.
It is mind-boggling that they thought this was a good idea, give us Bray V Brock but instead have Bray do nothing and Harper get beaten up.
This was easily the worst match – not just for Roadblock, but the worst I’ve seen in a while.
The entire night felt like an episode of Raw where they just get two wrestlers to fight against each other with no real meaning behind the match – it’s just filler for the main match.
This, in Roadblock’s case, was WWE World Heavy-weight Championship match between Triple H and Dean Ambrose.
To be honest here, I wasn’t expecting much from this match, I sensed it going the same way as the Triple Threat match at Fastlane, and even though the ending was exactly as I and everyone else predicted (Triple H taking home the gold) it was still a pretty good match overall.
Ambrose took some crazy leaps from the top rope to pull a flying elbow on the champ, Hunter did a number of head-decapitating clotheslines that even I felt the impact from – the two of them worked well of one another.
The highlight from the match is at the end when Ambrose tried to put Triple H through the announcers table with an elbow drop only to find himself crashing through when Hunter rolled out of the way before pulling off the Pedigree to win.
Overall, the night was another boring, throw-away and predictable experience, if Wrestlemania is going to be like Roadblock and Fastlane, it’s going to be a very boring summer.