12/18 WWE Roadblock Review: WWE closes 2016 with an average main event, another Women’s Title change

WWE Roadblock Review
December 19, 2016
By: Adam Martin of Wrestleview.com

Since becoming the full-time recapper for RAW in the last few weeks, I was interested to see what kind of a final effort we would get from the red team to close out 2016.

It’s no secret that RAW has been a consistently hit and miss program in the weeks leading up to this show. One week the pacing will be great and the storytelling will be rather entertaining, only for the following week to leave you completely underwhelmed.

This unfortunately was how RAW decided to close 2016 with the final WWE Pay Per View of the year. We were treated to a very average main event effort between Kevin Owens and Roman Reigns, a decent match from Sasha Banks and Charlotte and the end to The New Day’s longest reigning tag team championship run.

Nothing stuck out or made you want to tune into RAW tomorrow night.

Such is the stale WWE product these days.

WWE closes 2016 with an average main event

I’ll be the first one to say I’m really glad to not be writing a review where Roman Reigns became a double champion on Sunday night. After his complete disaster of a title run last time, I see absolutely zero upside with Reigns as Universal Champion and while the Kevin Owens title run has left more to be desired, it’s certainly the better trajectory path at this time. I just don’t get what a lot of fans see in the Reigns presentation.

Things got even sillier with the finisher trade offs between Reigns and Owens tonight, especially Owens connecting with a cannonball in the corner only for Reigns to pop up with a Superman “out of no where” spot. That was rough to watch. At this point the WWE really needs to find some kind of interesting way to present Reigns. Even Rollins, who has started to gain some momentum with fans, got sucked into the yeah-boos to close the show.

I did see some positive feedback to the Chris Jericho interference finish, but even that left a lot to be desired when Corey Graves acted completely shocked like we had all been fooled. Were we really fooled or was this just a nice way to save face with Reigns in a main event scenario? I know Graves doesn’t write the scripts, but man was that annoying. Even the attacks on Owens and Jericho by Reigns and Rollins was meh. Not a good closer tonight.

Another Women’s Title change

While this wasn’t nearly as good as the match they had on RAW a few weeks ago, Sasha Banks and Charlotte put forth another strong effort on Sunday night in Pittsburgh. Sure I have my moments of frustration with both women in the ring. I can’t stand Charlotte talking to herself during match and Sasha Banks is way too counter heavy with her offense presentation. Despite some flaws, they have good chemistry and really picked things up in the last 15 minutes of the 30 minute time limit. Even the overtime finish came off really strong and created a fun “anything can happen now” sports type atmosphere. WWE kept hammering home that this was it between Sasha and Charlotte. We’ll see.

Random Thoughts

* New Day has started to lose stream. Dropping the titles was a good call.

* I actually enjoyed Sami Zayn surviving Braun Strowman tonight.

* Seth Rollins and Chris Jericho worked hard. The crowd just wasn’t into it.

* The only interesting Cruiserweight is Jack Gallagher. That’s it.

Overall Impression

This was a very lackluster way for WWE to end the year and man are these brand-only PPV specials starting to get tiring and forced.

Wrestleview reader Brian tweeted at us with the same feeling.

34% of our readers gave the show a Thumbs In The Middle as of late Sunday night.

I was one of them. This wasn’t a terrible show by any means. But man, it left you with just about no interest whatsoever heading into RAW tomorrow night and the many weeks we have ahead until the Royal Rumble.

Agree? Disagree? Let me know your Roadblock thoughts in the comments.

Follow me on Twitter: @adamwrestleview