WWE's Survivor Series PPV has come to a close, and there were a few surprises during the event which took place on the WWE Network the evening of November 18. This was an evening where wrestlers from WWE's premiere shows, Raw and Smackdown, would face each other in numerous matches to determine who is the dominant brand.
There were three Survivor Series elimination matches: men's, women's, and tag team. Additionally, there were three champion vs. champion matches--four if you count Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte. According to commentator Michael Cole, Raw swept the evening, with Smackdown losing all its matches. However, Smackdown's tag team match on the Kickoff Show beat Raw's, so Cole's ability to count is subpar at best.
The evening delivered some thrills, chills, and yawns. That may not rhyme, but that's all I've got after watching an almost 6 hour long PPV. Like every human on the internet, I have opinions about how everything went down at the Staples Center in Los Angeles during Survivor Series. Here are the rankings of all the Survivor Series matches, presented in the order they aired on the PPV.
Match Card:
- Tag Team Survivor Series Match [Kickoff Match]
- Women's Survivor Series Match
- Intercontinental Champion Seth Rollins vs. United States Champion Shinsuke Nakamura
- Raw Tag Team Champions AOP vs. SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Bar
- Buddy Murphy (c) vs. Mustafa Ali (Cruiserweight Championship)
- Men's Survivor Series Match
- Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte
- Universal Champion Brock Lesnar vs. WWE Champion Daniel Bryan
Tag Team Survivor Series Match (Kickoff Show)
I completely forgot about how long it takes to kick off each Survivor Series match, as everyone gets an entrance. I'm all about the luchas having a tag team, but the team name "Lucha House Party" is pretty awful. Then, there's The Ascension. I feel bad for them. Remember when they were this really dominant force in NXT, then when they came up they were repackaged as a poor man's Legion of Doom and buried? Raw's tag division is packed with potential that feels wasted, as Raw doesn't really care about it.
This match was doomed from the start. There were a few botched moments and others where I thought someone was close to dying. Most of the time, the only thought in my mind was, "Is this over yet?" The only highlights were Chad Gable German suplexing Big E and Bobby Roode giving E a neckbreaker. It picked up toward the end, but it's hard to really get excited about this when Smackdown is the only show with a strong tag team roster.
3.5/10
Women's Survivor Series Match
Three of the participants in this event weren't booked until the Kickoff Show. I just want to make note of that because it seems bonkers to me. I made a little joke on Twitter that anyone that hits Nia Jax turns face, but it didn't seem like so much of a joke five minutes in. It's reality. Jax has tons of heat from fans because she busted up Becky Lynch.
The first 10 minutes of this match felt like they moved too quickly, with lots of eliminations happening in quick succession. I think my expectations for this match are askew from watching 1987's Survivor Series earlier this week, where all the matches were like 45 minutes long. Anyway, the last few minutes of the women's Survivor Series match were totally not what I expected, in a good way. I was pumped for a Jax/Asuka rematch, but what we got was a Jax stampede, and it worked. WWE played really well into Jax being a monster, and this ended up being a really nice opening match.
7/10
Seth Rollins vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
I'm going to be honest here, which is what I'm supposed to be doing anyway. I spent a good amount of this match trying to decide if the dude in the second row was Enzo Amore or not. He kept hiding his face behind the dude with sunglasses and long hair, but I got some quick glimpses of him, and I'm like 75% sure it's Enzo. Note: I was later notified by someone sitting two rows behind this guy that it was Enzo, and he got kicked out.
As for Rollins vs. Nakamura, this is exactly what I expected from these two. It was a solid and enjoyable match, with lots of back and forth moments, proving why they're two of the best competitors on their respective brands and in WWE as a whole. The finish was fantastic, and this is the finest match from Nakamura we've seen in quite some time, even though he lost. If WWE were smarter, they'd put both these gentlemen in a match against each other soon.
8.5/10
AOP vs. The Bar
Drake Maverick peed his pants, and that was the highlight--or lowlight from my perspective. Also, Enzo Amore got kicked out. As far as these champion vs. champion matches go, this was the one I cared about the least. AOP just became Raw's tag team champions, and I don't find them interesting at all. Big Show's presence in this match seemed utterly pointless, but apparently, he was needed in order to make Maverick urinate into his own pants. It made no sense.
2/10
Buddy Murphy vs Mustafa Ali
This was not the outcome I wanted. I'm a huge Mustafa Ali fan, and I was really pulling for him to win. These guys put everything out on the line for this match. It was filled with tremendously dangerous spots, and it's another amazing match for both these men. Like all 205 Live matches, it felt buried in the card, this time between a man peeing himself and the titular Survivor Series match. However, it was a fantastic transitional event to bring the crowd back and breath new life into them in order to get through the second half of the show.
8.5/10
Men's Survivor Series Match
This is the fun I'm looking for in a Survivor Series match and a little something different from what we saw from the women earlier. Raw's team isn't so much of a team as it is a barely-functional group of men about to implode. Meanwhile, Smackdown is working together real well, even though they're a bit outpowered. Speaking of outpowered, the clothesline that Braun Strowman gave to Shane McMahon during his second coast-to-coast is one of the highlights of the night for me. It was just utter domination for team Raw, which was kind of expected for the match. However, I like seeing those types of elimination matches from time to time.
7.5/10
Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair
I wasn't expecting Charlotte to be so dominant so early in this match. I was also not expecting to like Rousey as much as I do. She's really improved as a competitor since Wrestlemania earlier this year. She's not on the same level as Flair or Becky Lynch, but Rousey puts on consistently entertaining matches, and she was actually getting the crowd pumped up. There were a few times where I really felt this match could go either way, and that's exactly what I want out of it. This was, so far, Rousey's best match in WWE.
The DQ finish I was not entirely into, but it really works for the overarching Lynch/Rousey storyline that's been built up the past few weeks. We got to see Flair at her breaking point, where she's lost it and she gave the Natural Selection to Rousey onto a chair, which was the icing on the cake. I was a fan of Flair's before, but I'm now a super fan.
8/10
Brock Lesnar vs. Daniel Bryan
I don't feel great about a heel Daniel Bryan, especially when there hasn't been a lot of establishing of Bryan as a heel, since he turned less than a week prior. During the match, Lesnar suplexes Bryan, walks around for a few minutes, bear hugs him, suplexes him, repeat. This match is filler. It's nothing but stalling. By the 9-minute mark, I have had enough of this. This is why I can't stand Lesnar as champion. It's paced so incredibly slow and is never competitive. It didn't get interesting by any means until about 12 minutes in. After this point, it became like a solid match with Daniel Bryan doing his whole "underdog rising to the occasion" thing, even though he's a heel now, and the effect isn't the same. There were genuine moments where I, as well as the audience, really thought Bryan was going to win--he didn't--and were feeling the spirit of the match. And that last third of the match was a ton of fun, but it still doesn't make up for 12 minutes of "more of the same" from Lesnar. Why is he still here?
5/10
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