WWE Roadblock 2016 Review: What we learned, takeaways, future projections

What we took away, what we learned and what the future holds for the superstars of Monday Night RAW following the final pay-per-view of 2016, WWE Roadblock: End of the Line.

It’s the end of the line for WWE pay-per-view events in 2016. And yes, I’m sure I’ll be making plenty more puns as I go along here so just prepare yourself for that. In any event, WWE Roadblock: End of the Line is in the books, and while the 15th and final PPV certainly wasn’t the best show of the year, it definitely wasn’t the worst either. Airing live on the WWE Network from the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, PA, the superstars of Monday Night RAW gave us plenty to talk about heading into tomorrow night and into 2017.

We saw one of the greatest feuds of the year come to a close as two women made history, watched as others got started with a shocking heel turn and saw the end of the longest tag team title reign in WWE history. Big Cass took a countout loss in a short match with Rusev on the pre-show to kick off the action for the night and will try again tomorrow night on RAW in a feud that’s really just getting started and could be interesting if done correctly. But let’s move forward to the action on the main card and take a full look at WWE Roadblock: End of the Line, starting with the Tag Team Championship match.

RAW Tag Team Title Match

Sheamus & Cesaro vs. The New Day (c)

What we learned: We learned that it’s a new day in the RAW tag team division. I told you more puns were coming. But it is true. The 483-day title reign of The New Day, the longest in WWE history, has finally come to an end after Kofi Kingston and Big E were shocked by Sheamus and Cesaro in the curtain jerker on Sunday night.

But before we got to the match, we naturally had to sit through an in-ring promo from your world-famous two-time champs, and they’re just starting to get a little more stale with each passing week, wouldn’t you say? In any event, we were treated to a good match to start the night. A good pace was set from the start as both teams came out with a lot of energy, and we got some good spots and multiple near-falls and it looked for a minute that The New Day was going to retain yet again.

But seeing as how Demolition, who is part of that class action lawsuit against WWE, is now out of the record books, it was time to end this long reign of The New Day and I really dug the finish with the phantom tag and all. It was something original and it make Sheamus and Cesaro really look like they were on the same page, if only for a moment as the new champions took a different approach to accepting the belts from their opponents following the match. While Cesaro embraced The New Day, Sheamus just grabbed the belts and started posing, which led the Swiss Superman to leave the ring and join his section of fans in the crowd. Good match. Great ending. And plenty to look forward to.

What’s next: Well, you’d have to figure that The New Day will exercise their rematch clause and we can probably expect a promo on RAW from them talking about their historic run and how they want to start a new one, etc. Maybe that match just ends up taking place on Monday night but I personally hope that creative keeps the titles off of them for a while. They’re really onto something with this Cesaro and Sheamus pairing and I’d like to see them run with these belts for a bit. With any long championship reign comes the need to shake things up a bit, and it’s no different this time. There’s a lot of good tag teams on RAW and I’d like to see some new matchups take place as we head into 2017. Everybody came out of this just fine. The New Day will still sell merchandise and it will be interesting how things change as they become the chasers. And the new champs will continue to bicker a little bit about which one of them is the reason for this new reign.