5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE NXT: Roadblock (Results & Review - 5 Mar)

3. Tony D Adds To The Family, Lands Opportunity

tony d carmelo hayes
WWE

Tony D’Angelo had a pretty big night at Roadblock, welcoming a new family member and earning his first NXT Championship match.

The Don of NXT extended an offer to Luca Crusifino to serve as his consigliere, a move that felt inevitable the moment an Italian attorney appeared on NXT several months back. That expanded The Family and gave them some added heft after a lengthy run as just a duo of Tony D and Stacks.

Later, D’Angelo beat back Carmelo Hayes to punch his ticket to Stand and Deliver, where he’ll challenge Ilja Dragunov for the NXT title. The match itself was pretty decent, with Hayes flying around the ring and Tony D using his power game to ground the former champion. In the end, D’Angelo showed he wasn’t above playing into Melo’s fears, blaring Trick Williams’ entrance music to distract Hayes and allow the Don to put him away.

D'Angelo will make an intriguing challenger for Dragunov, as he’s shown growth in the ring but remains a goofy caricature – albeit it in a good, harmless way. Still, there’s an opportunity here for the character to evolve, a process that isn’t unprecedented. We’ll have to see what develops during the next month.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.