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The first companion book in the WrestleMania Era series, The Greatest Champions Of The WrestleMania Era, is also available now! ”The Doc” Chad Matthews has been a featured writer for LOP since 2004. Initially offering detailed recaps and reviews for WWE's top programs, he transitioned to writing columns in 2010. In addition to his discussion-provoking current event pieces, he has written many acclaimed series about WrestleMania, as well as a popular short story chronicle. The Doc has also penned a book, The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment, published in 2013. It has been called “the best wrestling book I have ever read” and holds a 5-star rating on Amazon, where it peaked at #3 on the wrestling charts. Follow @TheDocLOP QUESTION OF THE DAY: At this stage of your fandom, do WWE PPVs sell themselves or do you still rely heavily on TV hype to get you deeply invested? The following is a case study of WWE’s product for the month of March 2016. Is WWE Television That Important Anymore? In the opening section of the February Month-in-Review, I suggested that the TV product was going to need to be great to fully sell WrestleMania this year. It appears as though my comments may have been hastily made. WWE has at least seemed to try to adequately hype Mania 32, unlike a year ago when they seemed to just be unconcernedly going through the motions, but they have once again fallen short of most diehard fan expectations. Even someone as generally positive about the product as yours truly has been somewhat underwhelmed. After the February 29th Raw, I ended my 20+ year relationship with wrestling on Monday nights, concluding after a multi-year thought-process that WWE’s TV product had become to professional wrestling what the regular season has become for professional basketball and baseball: something best appreciated by watching highlights or via some other means of minimal fan investment until the situations with real stakes arise (the playoffs in sports; the PPVs in sports entertainment). Here I sit as excited for WrestleMania as ever – listen to my podcast from this week if you want to catch my infectious enthusiasm – but I’ve watched less WWE TV in the last month than in any previous WrestleMania Season. I think that begs the question – can you reach a point as a fan when WWE TV is borderline irrelevant? In the WWE Network Era, with the fixed monthly cost, I’d argue that the answer is unequivocally “Yes!” Much like Sportscenter does so well to recap the important happenings from major events, avenues such as WWE’s website, YouTube, and the Network-produced “This Week in WWE” can tell you everything you need to know about WWE TV storylines and do it in a fraction of the time in such a way that makes it seem twice as interesting. I suggested this approach years ago in passing, but never followed through on it. One month into it, it’s worked wonders for me. Maybe you should try it. I mean, as the headline suggests, is the TV product really that important anyway? WWE Roadblock Review Match of the Month: Dean Ambrose vs. Triple H at Roadblock With all due respect to the respective winners of this award from January and February, Ambrose vs. Triple H is my current frontrunner for 2016 Match of the Year. The Roadblock main-event suited my preferred wrestling style but, more than that, it was phenomenal example of how to achieve all the desired results necessary to be deemed a “classic” in as simple a fashion as you’re going to see in 2016. Psychologically sound, physically stimulating, and aesthetically pleasing, it was structured similarly to last year’s most underrated match, Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins at Elimination Chamber, but the Architect should take some notes on how his mentor performed against his fiercest rival; Triple H worked as athletically as a man of his age and size could, but he worked so smart. When Rollins comes back, I hope he adopts a smarter style and picks and chooses his spots of athletic brilliance a little better (like HBK was prone to do). Meanwhile, Ambrose proved yet again that there’s really not a style of wrestler that he cannot work against. I’d like to see Ambrose vs. Triple H revisited on a grander occasion someday. Previous winners: Ambrose vs. Owens at Royal Rumble (Jan) and Ambrose vs. Reigns vs. Lesnar at Fast Lane (Feb) Wrestler of the Month: Chris Jericho March offered one of the tightest races for WOTM since I started doing these monthly reviews a year-and-a-half ago. Ambrose made a strong case for a third straight win, what with his providing a weekly highlight on WWE programming and his third consecutive Match of the Month award. I’m unsure if it was simply a “more of the same” kind of thing with him (no matter how good “the same” has been) or if it was a combination of that plus the stellar work of his competition, but Ambrose did not do enough for me to give him the three-peat. It boiled down to Triple H and Chris Jericho. The Game, despite all the complaining I’ve seen about his feud with Roman Reigns, was incomparable on the microphone in the last 4 weeks. His “obsession vs. dream” promo on the go-home Raw for Mania was outstanding and mirrored the rest of the incredible work he’s done on the stick this month. Plus, he had arguably the best match in 2016 in the middle of March at Roadblock and a really good TV match with Dolph Ziggler on Raw to boot. Y2J was the winner by a HHH-sized nose after laying out all of the relevant data on paper. He began the month with one of the best pure tag team matches of the decade; it would be worth your while to go back and re-watch Y2AJ vs. New Day in Chicago. The heel turn after that match had been quietly building for several weeks and he executed it beautifully. His in-ring segment on Smackdown later that week which saw him burn the Y2AJ shirt and explain his reversion to the dark side was on-par with Triple H’s verbal offerings, as was the outstanding promo he cut in Toronto before his match with Jack Swagger at Roadblock. This has been Jericho’s best year since 2012 by a mile. Previous winners: Dean Ambrose (Jan and Feb) April Predictions For my full thoughts on WrestleMania 32, check out “The Doc Says” podcast linked below. Obviously with WrestleMania being on the third day of the month, WWE in April will take shape very quickly. I believe that Shane McMahon is going to win on Sunday or that, if he doesn’t, we will see a change in the authority figure direction in the near future, perhaps as soon as the post-Mania Raw next week. My official prediction is that John Cena will, on behalf of the WWE Universe, help Shane defeat Taker so that the other McMahons are removed from power; that, in turn, will be the catalyst for the long-awaited Taker vs. Cena match next year prompted by a year-long story of the Deadman trying to get one last Mania match. With how much emphasis has been placed on the changing of the guard aspect of the Shane-Taker-Vince storyline, it would surprise me if WWE didn’t follow through on it. It’ll be refreshing if that happens considering that the Authority has been in power for almost three years. I do, for the record, neither agree with conceptually nor actually believe that a brand split is on the way. I do, however, believe that Shane’s potential run as the GM-type will be short-lived. Dean Ambrose should have a huge month. The follow-up to his feud with Brock Lesnar is going to be one of the most intriguing stories of the post-Mania season. I think Lesnar ends up wrestling again on May 1st in Chicago at Payback, but I have a feeling that it’ll be against Bray Wyatt. Where does that leave Ambrose? Though I think he gets right into the WWE Championship picture potentially, your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not he wins it. I’d like to think that WWE would see a big picture forming with the Lunatic Fringe and peg him as the favorite to win the Royal Rumble and WWE Title at next year’s Mania, so maybe keeping him out of the title scene for a bit would be smart. Then again, how do you maintain his momentum after facing Lesnar at Mania if not with a WWE Title chase? Enter Jericho? The other feud that was victimized by the audible to Ambrose-Lesnar coming to fruition the month after the Show of Shows? I would dig that. I believe we will see the rebranding of the Diva’s division to the Women’s division and I think Sasha Banks as the new champion will be the vehicle. Will Bayley join the party in April? It makes sense, though I do get the feeling her time in NXT is not yet complete. With all the teases of Balor Club happenings on social media, I do think that it’s time for Finn to get called up too. One if not both will make his/her debut on Raw next week. The Doc Says…”Here’s Your Ultimate Guide to WrestleMania Weekend 2016”
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