Sunday marks the 27th Survivor Series, the second longest-running Pay-Per-View event in the WWE behind WrestleMania. Survivor Series started as a Thanksgiving tradition, featuring unique elimination style matches and it was promoted as one of the biggest events of the year. Now, it appears to be nothing more than an afterthought, especially this year.
I’ll start with the main event, Randy Orton defending the WWE Championship against The Big Show. Build-up to this match has been underwhelming. It was made when Big Show demanded the match from Triple H as one of his conditions for not suing The Authority. Big Show and Orton have had hardly no interaction between each other in the following weeks. All that happened was Orton leading The Shield to beat down Show, and Show chokeslamming Orton through a table. In an attempt to make this interesting, Triple H told Orton there will be no interference, and he is on his own, to which Orton replied, “I don’t know if I can beat Big Show on my own.” The thing is, Orton beat Big Show on his own six months ago at Extreme Rules, where Orton was the face and Show was the heel. Now, the roles are reversed, and Orton made that comment because “heels don’t win on there own” or some other thing related to pro wrestling logic. It’s a foregone conclusion that Orton will retain here, Triple H will get involved somehow, despite what was said on Monday, and continue the feud with Big Show.
Next is the World Heavyweight Championship match where John Cena defends against Alberto Del Rio. It’s in Boston, Cena’s hometown, he will come out, get booed by his hometown fans, get destroyed all match, hit the AA and STF, win the match, and nobody will care. They could have added Sandown in the match to make it a triple threat to attempt to make it more interesting, but instead decided to go with a one-on-one match. I don’t think there are many people interested in this match.
The icing on the cake with this lackluster build is the fact that the two most over guys on the roster, CM Punk and Daniel Bryan, are stuck in a meaningless mid-card feud with The Wyatt Family. I’m not sure if the purpose of this match is to attempt to get the Wyatt Family over, or continue the burial of Punk and Bryan. I’m guessing Punk and Bryan will get the win here, but they deserve to be featured in a higher profile at this event.
With a card like that, there is a minimal likely of a truly memorable moment taking place this year. In the past, Survivor Series created moments that are still talked about today. Such moments include, the first event in 1987, The Undertaker’s debut in 1990, The Rock’s debut in 1996, The Montreal Screwjob in 1997, the end of the Alliance in 2001, the first-ever Elimination Chamber match in 2002, and the Rock’s return to the ring in 2011. It’s a shame that this once proud tradition has become nothing more than a typical card. Your fourth-biggest event of the year, WrestleMania, Summerslam, and Royal Rumble, are bigger, needs to be promoted as a big deal, just throwing together a card creates a lack of interest, and shows that the company doesn’t care about making the show the big event it should be.
Until next time, try to survive watching this unmemorable show,
-Nick
