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Follow @TheDocLOP QUESTION OF THE DAY: What did you think of WWE Roadblock? Favorite match? Do you see any changes to the Mania card ahead? A mixed bag of a show last night. The match I was most excited to see - Brock Lesnar vs. Bray Wyatt - got scrapped at the last minute. I've never been a fan of the bait-and-switch tactic in pro wrestling, so I sincerely hope that protecting Wyatt at Roadblock leads to something big for him at WrestleMania and eventually puts the Lesnar match in a proper spotlight. I'm giving that a pass. It was an eventful night overall. NXT made the most of its opportunity, as did Natalya and Dean Ambrose. There are some intriguing possibilities coming out of tonight, but I urge fans not to get their hopes up that said possibilities will yield major WrestleMania changes. Though I will discuss two audible options, the payoffs to the potential angles stemming from the two headlining matches may not come for awhile. The New Day retaining against the League of Nations was a solid opener. If this was a preview of what's to come at WrestleMania, then I think what I was originally viewing as a lifeless, heatless feud will actually turn out just fine in the end. I just want to see Kofi, Big E, and Woods prominently positioned in three weeks because they so very much deserve it. Nothing to write home about here, but I saw enough to make me think that a Mania match with three weeks of TV juice behind it could be a solid addition to the Show of Shows. Go order your Booty-Os! (**1/2). The Realest Guys in the Room vs. The Revival showed the difference between a match with two great tag teams and a match with one great tag team and a pair of thrown together singles wrestlers. On Twitter, I mentioned the "This is Wrestling" chant that you hear on NXT and how "This is Tag Team Wrestling" would have been an appropriate chant for Revival vs. Enzo and Cass. What a match! It was obvious to me that these two teams must have been working together a lot in the last few months. Their match at TO: London was fine, but this match was fantastic. Absent were the miscues and in their place were crisply-executed, organically drama-enhancing hope spots. If you get a chance to watch this again, pay attention to wrestler positioning; it's flawless. Enzo, Cass, and Carmella are going to be a great main roster act this year I believe. Post-WrestleMania Raw debut perhaps? One of the best ten-minute matches you'll ever see. It's been a great week for tag team wrestling! (***3/4). I watched Jericho's promo but checked in on the sleeping little ones during the match with Swagger. I'm sure it was fine. Those two could have a solid match together with their eyes closed. Charlotte vs. Natalya for the Diva's Championship was a really good match that holds up well against the matches that Charlotte had with Becky Lynch earlier in the year; maybe just a notch below the Lynch vs. Charlotte match on Smackdown from early-to-mid-January. Generally, I favor uninterrupted PPV matches, but I have a bone to pick about Nattie. She's the Tony Allen of women's wrestling. Wrestling, like basketball, can be simply boiled down to a pair of primary tasks. In basketball, it's offense and defense; in wrestling, it's moves and expressions. Nattie, like all-world defender Tony Allen, is great at one of those things (moves) but terrible at the other (expression). Just as Allen is an offensive liability, Nattie just doesn't have it when it comes to expressing emotion. In terms of executing and accepting moves, she is highly underrated and for just that alone deserves to be more involved in the division. Look at that Figure Four/Eight sequence for proof that her selling isn't up to par, though. She was in that hold apparently blocking the transition from Four to Eight, but I couldn't tell that based on her expression, which wandered somewhere between "I've got to poop" and a silly grimace you might make at a 3 year old. Nevertheless, at what she's good at she was very good and Charlotte continued to get back to where she was down in NXT (***1/4). Lesnar vs. Luke Harper, essentially, was not what I had tuned in for. My general stance on bait-and-switch: don't do it. If you don't want me getting excited about Lesnar vs. Wyatt and being disappointed that I didn't get to see it, then don't advertise it in the first place. Bottom line. Still, I'm hoping to see that go somewhere in the future because I remain enamored by the prospect of those two feuding. So, let's get to the first of two booking scenario mentioned in the intro. Wyatt getting a stay of execution thanks to his "deal with the devil" suggests that he's possibly back in play for a prominent Mania role. Here's what came to mind for me and has been on my mind since the night after Fast Lane: if John Cena does indeed get cleared in time for Mania, you need all of one week to hype Cena vs. Taker. You don't need much of a storyline, as the match sells itself. Taker tells Vince he's despicable and won't fight for him, he moves onto Cena, and Wyatt's deal with the devil yields the Eater of Worlds moving into the Cell with Shane 'O. Though I favor this scenario greatly, I do realize it's a real long shot. I believe Wyatt will have a fairly big role at Mania, but the payoff to the "deal" may come after Mania. Sami Zayn vs. Stardust was a curiously booked encounter. I get that Zayn is supposed to be an underdog, but against a ghost of mid-2015's past like Stardust? Some social media pals noted that Stardust vs. Stephen Amell may get set-up for Mania and that this was a way to re-introduce Cody to a relatively prominent position by dominating a popular newcomer. That works for me. I'm a big Rhodes fans; the most underutilized guy on the entire roster in my mind. That said, Zayn fighting from the ground up against someone so recently irrelevant doesn't exactly reflect well on him. Hindsight may help my perception here if, in three weeks, Zayn is fighting Owens and Stardust is in a celebrity angle with the Green Arrow again (**1/2). Match of the Night for me was Dean Ambrose vs. Triple H, even though the NXT Tag Team Championship match gave them a good run for their money. The Lunatic Fringe is the hottest act in the game right now and earning a visual fall over the World Heavyweight Champion just three weeks before WrestleMania only served to enhance his cause for a huge 2016. Ambrose was superb here. The match was reminiscent of my 2014 Match of the Year pick between Triple H and Daniel Bryan. Trips excels in a role that allows him to employ his skills as a technical wrestler. It'll be interesting to compare the matches with Ambrose at Roadblock and Reigns at Mania in about a month's time. I plan to discuss Reigns vs. Triple H heavily on this Wednesday's episode of "The Doc Says" podcast, but I think that match may surprise people with its quality. Ambrose vs. HHH reminded us that the Game can still go at a high level; maybe we didn't need the reminder, but it has been two years since he's had a match that wasn't overbooked to delight. A sure-fire Match of the Month contender that fits right into the Match of the Year discussion to this point (****1/4). The other scenario I want to discuss, which was brought up in a social media conversation, is the prospect of Ambrose using the visual fall to work his way into the main-event for the WWE Title. I don't see that happening; I think the Dusty Finish was there to reinforce that Ambrose is a huge star and not to somehow put him in a position to, as so many fans have said, "save the Reigns vs. HHH match." However, they certainly could add Ambrose and move Wyatt back to the originally planned match with Lesnar. It's a lot of jockeying for a show that's already sold 84,000 tickets. We'll see.
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