WWE SURVIVOR SERIES

 

Brooklyn

SHINSUKE NAKAMURA vs. DAMIAN PRIEST (9:25): This was pretty dull and uneventful. Since they showed two old clips of The Rock (2 years ago on the first Smackdown on Fox and 23 years ago at Survivor Series when he won the title & joined Shane & Vince to become The Corporate Rock), named the battle royal the 25th Anniversary Battle Royale of The Rock's Survivor Series Debut (yeah, they actually did that), and had Vince McMahon carrying around Cleopatra's golden egg from the movie Red Notice that stars The Rock (and Vince said The Rock gave it to him)...I kind of figured The Rock would show up at the end of this show to set up his Wrestlemania match against Roman Reigns. Nope. The Rock didn't show up. Not sure what all that crap about The Rock was for then. So nothing exciting or eventful happened. Well...were the matches any good? Nope. It probably didn't help that AEW just put on one of the great PPV's of all time last week. The other huge problem with Survivor Series is that every match is meaningless. None of the titles are at stake. The winners get nothing but bragging rights. The other problem, at least on this particular show, was that Smackdown announcer Pat Macafee was doing announcing for the whole show. I don't really understand what exactly he's doing...but he seems like he's playing the character of a really excited WWE fanboy. Either way, he's the most annoying announcer of all time. Corey Graves, who usually never deals with him because he's on RAW, mentioned multiple times tonight how Macafee keeps talking and never takes a breath. Anyway, this opener was the first of the typical Belt vs. Belt matches. Nakamura is the IC champ, Priest is the U.S. champ. Nakamura always come to the ring with a sidekick that plays an electric guitar for no good reason. Priest ended up breaking the guitar and hitting them both with it causing him to be DQ'd. This was not very good. * 

BECKY LYNCH vs. CHARLOTTE FLAIR (18:15): Considering the show ended on a sour note with Reigns winning and that's it...maybe they should have made this match the main event. This was by far the best match on the show. It was pretty rough and sloppy at times, though entertaining throughout. This "feud" stems from the two having to trade belts when they were drafted to opposite shows. Apparently, Flair was scripted to hand Lynch her belt but instead threw the belt on the mat. Shocking! Lynch won by cheating and holding the ropes. So the first two matches didn't have clean finishes. The WWE knows that this is a PPV and supposed to definitive, right? The ending of feuds, clean wins, big, long matches. Sadly, the WWE has treated most of their PPV's as just random TV shows without the weight. We're supposed to see who's the best champ on each brand. We didn't in the first match and didn't in this either since Lynch cheated. **1/2

TEAM RAW (SETH ROLLINS, FINN BALOR, KEVIN OWENS, BOBBY LASHLEY & AUSTIN THEORY) vs. TEAM SMACKDOWN (DREW McINTYRE, JEFF HARDY, KING WOODS, HAPPY CORBIN & SHEAMUS) (30:00): Seriously, I think it took like 15 minutes for the introductions of everyone in this match. Thank God they didn't do individual introductions for the battle royal. When looking at both teams in this, the one thing that I was thinking immediately was: damn, the WWE has very few stars. Roman Reigns is the big star of the WWE these days. Is there even a #2? Jeff Hardy was the most popular in this match, which is kind of sad considering his glory days were 20 years ago. Austin Theory was in this match instead of Rey Mysterio because of a RAW storyline. I think that tells you all you need to know about how dimwitted the brains behind creative in the WWE are. Austin Theory and Johnny Gargano were in a heel group together for the last two years or whatever. Gargano is, of course, one of the best wrestlers in the world. So of course they bring up Austin Theory to the main roster instead of Gargano. Fuck...how is this company still alive with all the bad decisions they do on a regular basis? The final came down to Seth Rollins and Jeff Hardy. The crowd loved Hardy so of course he lost. Usually these 5 on 5 matches are pretty fun but this one was completely forgettable. **

OMOS (BATTLE ROYALE) (10:45): The last two in this battle royal were Ricochet, one of the most exciting wrestlers in the world, and Omos, a tall, boring, unathletic dud. Guess who won? Pizza Hut sponsored this match for no reason so they had a bunch of Pizza Hut pizzas by the announce table. R-Truth took a slice and tried to give it to Omos for some reason. That was about the height of the entertainment value in this match. The WWE is super profitable...why are they putting gold eggs from Netflix movies and Pizza Hut pizzas in the middle of their show? It makes it look so fucking low rent. *

RK-BRO vs. THE USO'S (14:50): I really thought that this would be a great, wild, fun match with a hot crowd. The crowd was into Randy Orton and they loved his RKO on one of The Uso's after he tried a top rope splash. But the match shockingly wasn't that entertaining. I don't know what happened. Maybe because who the hell cares who wins this? It's not for a title, so there's no drama present. **

TEAM RAW (BIANCA BELAIR, RHEA RIPLEY, LIV MORGAN, CARMELLA & QUEEN ZELINA) vs. TEAM SMACKDOWN (SASHA BANKS, SHAYNA BASZLER, SHOTZI, NATALYA & TONI STORM) (23:45): If you're wondering how good of a match this was, let me just tell you that the crowd started doing the wave during it. Bianca was the last member of RAW still alive and she won by pinning Shotzi (her last name, Blackheart, is gone for no good reason). They did a bunch of stuff with Shotzi and Sasha Banks fighting each other. I don't really remember too much of anything else going on. This was mostly ultra dull. *1/2

ROMAN REIGNS vs. BIG E (21:55): I thought that maybe this would be a good, long, exciting match. I was wrong. Maybe the crowd was tired, because they weren't that into Big E winning nor did they really boo Reigns hard if at all. The show started at 7:30 and ended at 11:30. The reason is because there were 5 to 10 minute of Peacock commercials between every match. Plus you had 3 minute introductions to everyone in those elimination matches. I complained about Full Gear going long but this show was a chore to watch. I'm not entirely sure why this match didn't work. It never really heated up into anything dramatic. Big E was on offense for awhile then Reigns was on offense for awhile. The crowd was tired. Reigns ended up winning and that was it. I guess at least they did a clean finish, although that wasn't shocking considering the WWE obviously was always going to push Big E like they did Kofi when he was champ. The WWE doesn't have a PPV in December so this was the last one of the year. Ugh. What a boring way to end the year. **