Billed for weeks the one time
of the year that Raw and SmackDown go head-to-head to determine brand supremacy
(or some amalgamation of that), it wasn’t even close Sunday night. Survivor
Series was more about how badly the blue brand would be battered by the end of
the night. In many ways, WWE Champion Daniel Bryan embodied his show. He was
beaten from pillar to post, put up a good fight, tried like hell, but still
fell to a behemoth. Along the way, there
were some good matches, but also plenty of disappointments. Vexing booking
decisions, stupid writing, and other questionable moves dragged things down a
few notches. We did get a couple great moments, with the cruiserweights,
Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey, and Bryan and Brock Lesnar stealing the show.
Braun Strowman showed that he’s still a monster too. But the Survivor Series
concept as currently conceived is losing steam. It noticeably dragged down a
few matches where fans knew they were watching something decent but weren’t as
energized, and even the wrestlers seemed to ratchet it down a notch. It’s hard
to ramp things up for some vague “brand supremacy” deal. Even though there are
more "downs" here, the action in the latter half of the PPV is
stellar and well worth checking out. With that said, let’s find out what was
Raw and what was SmackDown. Let’s get to it…
DOWNS...
9. WHAT WAS THE
POINT OF THE BEATDOWN?
On Raw Monday night, Becky
Lynch attacked Ronda Rousey backstage so badly that her arm was hanging off her
body when she limped down to the ring later. And then Lynch chaired Rousey in
the shoulder a couple times to really injure her. So naturally, the injury was
never mentioned, never referenced and never played into Sunday’s match between
Rousey and Charlotte Flair. It’s a somewhat minor gripe, as the two women had a
great match otherwise, but the fact that the entire beating on Raw was designed
to injure Rousey ahead of Survivor Series and then for it to be wiped clean was
just silly. Hell, just tape the arm and have her wince a couple times to let us
know it still hurts. You know if Lynch was facing Rousey, the arm would have
factored into the match. Just because Becky was taken out of the match doesn’t
mean the injury magically healed itself.
8. ENZO JOBS TO
SECURITY
It says a lot about someone
who was fired continues to insult former colleagues and gets thrown off a plane
to then crash a live TV broadcast.
But that’s exactly what the
former Enzo Amore did at Survivor Series.
In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
moment, Enzo showed up facing the hard camera as the tag match between The Bar
and AOP began. Amore jumped up onto his chair and apparently launched into a
promo of his classics, which lasted a few seconds before security showed up and
pulled him down, forcibly removing him from the arena.
Enzo might have been going
into business for himself, but it was a pretty classless move, considering his
departure and what he’s said and done since leaving.
7. NIA REWARDED
FOR SLOPPINESS
On the one hand, you can
half-understand WWE wanting to cash in on the genuine, organic response that
Nia Jax is currently eliciting from fans after she sloppily slugged Becky Lynch
and broke her nose, knocking her out of the biggest match of her career at a
point when she’s never been hotter.
But then again, WWE has never
been one to really listen to their fans in a timely fashion. See: Daniel Bryan,
circa 2013-14; Braun Strowman, circa 2017-18; Asuka, this spring.
Nia soaked in the jeers and
played to the crowd as they booed her every move. That’s all well and good. But
then she squashed Asuka with three Legdrop and a Samoan Drop, with the Empress
of Tomorrow not getting a single move in. Again, if this is WWE’s way of
enraging fans to cash in on the backlash, it’s a hell of an idea. But this was
a tad ridiculous, with her demolishing the best wrestler on the SmackDown team.
6. UNSEEN
MATCHMAKING
When Dean Ambrose turned on
Seth Rollins the same night that Roman Reigns announced his leukemia had
returned, it was nuclear heat, the kind you couldn’t manufacture if you tried.
Since then, the feud has
stalled with Crown Jewel already in place and Survivor Series right behind it.
Worse, Dean hasn’t provided much of answers save for one good promo.
Sunday, Charly Caruso simply
informed Rollins that he’s been booked in an Intercontinental Championship
match at TLC against Ambrose. And that’s that. A white-hot feud where the two
principle should be calling each other out and challenging the other, and
instead it’s an unknown authority figure booking a title match between the two,
because we have a PPV in four weeks.
Seriously, does anyone
actually think how dumb that sounds when they write it? Why can’t Ambrose
challenge him on Raw Monday night, saying he’s going to take the title he
helped Rollins win? Why can’t Seth tell Dean to meet him at TLC so they can
settle the score?
It’s just stupid, lazy writing
that removes the wrestlers as the people driving the rivalry and instead are
just cogs to plug into a PPV slot.
5. WOMEN’S
MATCH A TOTAL DISAPPOINTMENT
For all the hype that the
women’s division has rightly received in recent years for being light years
better than it was five years ago, there still are plenty of hiccups and
backslides, and Sunday’s women’s Survivor Series elimination match was one of
them.
The match was nothing special,
almost entirely a fast-forward able affair that featured a double countout and
a rollup pin immediately after another pin eating one-third of the
eliminations. The action was fairly pedestrian and unmemorable, even though
fans clearly wanted to get into the match.
It’s really a shame, because
the elements were there for things to click and produce a good match. Asuka was
crazy over, but she ultimately served as cannon fodder. Sasha Banks always gets
a good reaction, but she didn’t really get to stand out too much aside from her
spat with Asuka.
Not every match can be a home
run, but we should be well past the point of a women’s 5-on-5 match being this
disappointing.
4. GETTING
PISSED
You have to wonder if AOP thinks
they were better off in NXT in terms of big matches. There, they battled The
Revival, DIY and others in hard-fought brawls that brought fans to their feet.
As part of the Raw roster,
they defeated The Bar at Survivor Series when Sheamus and Cesaro became
distracted by AOP’s manager Drake Maverick pissing himself in fear of the Big
Show.
Now that is a
sentence you don’t think you’d ever type when the night started.
It was played up for laughs,
but it’s not like Maverick has been interfering in matches for months and was
finally getting his comeuppance. It literally was the first time he interjected
himself, because Akam and Rezar have been dominant since debuting.
Instead, Sheamus was
blindsided while laughing about Maverick’s accident, and he got powerbombed for
the pin. The match itself was fine, but it suffered from the same problem as
others: there was no depth to the match or reason for these two particular
teams (both heels) to be fighting other than Raw versus SmackDown.
3. STUPID BOOKING
Let’s get this
straight: Natalya and Ruby Riott brawled during the kickoff show, so they got
kicked off Team Raw, replaced by Sasha Banks and Bayley, who got beat up by
rest of their teammates on Raw last week. So with a frankensteined team
supposedly at odds with itself against a cohesive SmackDown squad and with Nia
turning on Sasha at the end… Raw still won. The more likely scenario would have
been Sasha and Bayley turning on Nia at the end or walking out on her, but
babyfaces are dumb. They stuck it out for the brand, and still got turned on.
2. SMACKDOWN CHUMPS
2. SMACKDOWN CHUMPS
As a continuation of sorts on the piss-poor booking from
the women’s 5-on-5 match, we saw the same thing play out with the men.
Raw had wrestlers who couldn’t stand each other and in
fact attacked each other multiple times, and yet they not only won, they
destroyed SmackDown, with only two members of their team getting eliminated. It
was the kind of annihilation that leaves you to wonder if it was more the
Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals than Raw versus SmackDown.
And while the whole “brand supremacy” thing is stupid,
it’s ridiculous to watch one show so completely dominate the other, unless it’s
actually going somewhere. Odds are, it isn’t, but we’ll wait and see.
1. ‘BRAND
SUPREMACY’ MEANS NOTHING
The battle for “brand supremacy” was over before it
started.
Raw annihilated SmackDown, winning all six PPV matches
(the kickoff show apparently didn’t count), which at least was something
different, but it really rendered the whole “which brand is superior” gimmick
really pointless.
As mentioned before, it’s far from the only time of the
year wrestlers from the two brands square off, and with nothing other than
bragging rights on the line, what’s the point? Maybe Stephanie McMahon will
fire you if you lose?
The forced conflict really came to light in the champion
versus champion matches for the secondary and tag titles, and the 5-on-5
matches were poorly conceived, as the teams that had the most internal strife
still handily won.
It’s time for WWE to retire this “brand supremacy”
concept for Survivor Series and figure something else out, like recruiting
across brands, or putting something on the line, like #30 in the Royal Rumble
matches.
UPS...
7. THE CREAM
RISES TO THE TOP
Once you got rid of the dead weight in the 10-on-10 tag
team battle, you actually had a pretty nice little match.
The Usos, New Day, Revival and Chad Gable & Bobby
Roode put together a solid mini-match in the latter part of the kickoff show
elimination match. Revival eliminated two teams and showed that they’re still
one of the better duos out there, even though they really don’t get much of a
chance to shine on Raw.
Still, good Lord there’s a lot of dead weight in the tag
team division. It’s like having three Los Conquistadores teams out there.
6. ROLLINS,
NAKAMURA RAMP IT UP
This was getting primed as a “down” because of the slow,
ambling pace of the Shinsuke Nakamura/Seth Rollins match.
But then the two started accelerating and hitting their
signature spots more rapidly, going into a series of near-falls and
counterstrikes. Nakamura hit his patented knee strikes, while Rollins kept
coming with superkicks and his superplex/Falcon Arrow combo. Shinsuke hit the
Landslide, while Rollins nailed a Ripcord Knee.
Ultimately, it was Rollins dodging a Kinshasa and quickly
hitting a curb stomp that was the difference. It was somewhat disappointing as
a match, as it felt like they could have done a lot more.
Plus, there really wasn’t anything on the line – beyond
the nebulous “bragging rights.” It wasn’t for a title; it wasn’t set up by the
two men challenging each other. They just happened to be holding the secondary
title for their respective brands, so they were thrown together. Good match,
but could have been (and hopefully will in the future be) a lot better.
5. SOWING SEEDS
FOR THE FUTURE?
The post-match beatdown Charlotte Flair put on Ronda
Rousey could just as easily have been issued by Becky Lynch if she had still
been in that slot, and you have to wonder if that was the point – the beating
was what was important, not the person issuing it.
Rousey was walloped with a kendo stick to the point where
there were marks across her arm and back. She was Pillmanized with a chair
after being dropped by Natural Selection on it. And for suffering that beating,
Ronda was booed by the Staples Center.
You could almost see Rousey looking like she either was
going to quit, or completely turn on the fans. It was the second time inside of
a week that Ronda got beat up by a WWE Horsewoman and the attacker was loudly
cheered. And if that was the point – sowing the seeds for Rousey to become the
villainess and enlist her charges to help her – then that’s actually really
great work.
If it was just a happy circumstance, this still was a
pretty cool visual and showed a vulnerable side of Rousey while elevating
Charlotte and the women’s division a little more.
4.
CRUISERWEIGHTS SHINE
On a night when every other match was all about “brand
supremacy” and forced conflict, one match stood out: the Cruiserweight
Championship match between Buddy Murphy and Mustafa Ali.
The two got a nice video package outlining the rivalry,
which helps for the fans who don’t watch 205 Live. Murphy and Ali didn’t hold
back, firing off a series of fast-paced, high-impact moves. Murphy used his
strength to control, but Ali’s unpredictability and speed helped him stay in
the match, hitting a spike rana and around-the-world draping DDT for
near-falls, and a Spanish Fly off the announce table that drew a “205!” chant.
In the end, Murphy hit two powerbombs and Murphy’s Law
for the win to retain his title, but the two men showed that the
cruiserweights, when given the opportunity, can steal the show.
3. BRAUN GETS
HIS GROOVE BACK
While SmackDown looked like a bunch of chumps, they at
least in turn made Braun Strowman look like Superman.
Braun plowed through four wrestlers in short order,
demolishing Jeff Hardy, Rey Mysterio, The Miz and Shane McMahon with running
powerslams to capture victory for his team. He looked as dominant as he ever
has, which really helps after he was blindsided by Baron Corbin and squashed by
Brock Lesnar a couple weeks ago.
And then right after the match, Corbin blasted Strowman,
reigniting that feud, so at least Braun has new cannon fodder to destroy.
It’s a shame though, because Braun should have been
marching into Survivor Series as the champ, not rehabbing his cred at the
expense of SmackDown.
2. CHARLOTTE,
ROUSEY GO FULL TILT
It’s rare that the announcers nail their commentary, but
when they talked about Ronda Rousey being in the toughest fight of her young
career and Charlotte Flair being in one of the most physical matches she’s had,
they weren’t kidding.
Flair and Rousey had a fiery, explosive match that saw
neither able to put the other down, despite numerous submission and pin
attempts. It was the definition of a seesaw battle, with control rocking back
and forth throughout, with Rousey bleeding from the mouth for much of it.
The match was somewhat unorthodox, as Ronda’s style is so
un-WWE, and Charlotte just rolled with it, which made it more enjoyable. The
ending also was interesting, as Flair couldn’t put Rousey down, so she opted to
just kendo stick her into oblivion.
It might have felt like a cop-out with a DQ finish, and
even might have been the original plan had Becky Lynch been in the match, but
it worked.
1. BRYAN COAXES
SURPRISINGLY STRONG MATCH
Daniel Bryan sure as hell looked like he was a dead man
walking about 3-4 minutes into his match with Brock Lesnar, as Brock hit
numerous German and belly-to-belly overhead suplexes on D-Bryan.
But one low blow changed everything, and the result was a
pretty incredible little match. Sure, Bryan being a heel underdog was a weird
dynamic, but it allowed him to stomp and kick Brock with such viciousness that
it made it plausible that he could win.
Of course, he didn’t (gotta keep Brock strong for when
Roman Reigns returns, PAL), but Brock looked like he was in trouble for much of
the second half of the match. That’s more than we could say for the past
several Lesnar matches.
It would have been interesting to see this match when we
were first supposed to in 2014, but it wasn’t a letdown on Sunday, at least not
as bad as you might have initially thought it could be.
No comments:
Post a Comment