Survivor Series Recap and Review---It Was Pretty Shitty And Pretty Obvious
Ahh yes, the ending we all knew was coming but at the same time everyone was like “they aren’t actually going to end like that, right?” Well, they did. Reigns won the title, clean in the middle of the ring over Ambrose in a fairly quick match. Sheamus and HH came down, Sheamus cashed in, and Reigns was the champion no more. They legitimately did the ending I predicted was going to happen, and people called me crazy for saying they’d put the strap on Reigns for 3 minutes before taking it off and putting it on Sheamus. Guess what? WWE sometimes does the thing that you tell yourself is worst for business.
We all thought maybe there was a chance they’d do something really cool. Some sort of swerve NOT including Sheamus. But nope. They are dead set on Reigns being a face. Making him Cena 2.0. Never giving him a heel run. They want us to feel bad for him, a la Daniel Bryan, as he chases the title. Not sure that’s what’s going to happen, but I see why they’re doing it.
And I will say- Reigns is fairly over when he’s fighting people like Alberto Del Rio. When he’s up against people that the crowd generally doesn’t care about, Reigns is over and popular. Which is why it makes sense for them to use Sheamus to get Reigns over as a face even more, because fucking NOBODY likes Sheamus. NOBODY. Not even in the good way, the classic heel way. He’s “turn the channel, I legitimately am not entertained by this guy” bad. But with Reigns and Sheamus feuding, you have no choice but to cheer for Reigns, which is all they really care about. And I can kind of buy into that. His matches are good, he just has to get better on the mic. But I’ve been saying for a while, I don’t hate the guy. I just like other people more and wish they would build credibility for literally anyone else so the story isn’t so obvious.
Featured on Barstool
As for the rest of the PPV, it generally just wasn’t very good. Ambrose vs Kevin Owens was decent enough match, as was Reigns vs ADR. Despite the obvious outcomes, the matches were good.
The 5 on 5 traditional survivor series match was a mixmatch of guys without any story behind it, because WWE doesn’t know how to write midcard stories. But the New Day stole the show, as they always do. Especially Xavier Woods’ stunning hair.
Charlotte vs Paige made you remember how good all the NXT womens matches were. Why can’t they duplicate those matches in WWE? And why the fuck is Sasha not being Sasha on the main card? She’s the most talented of the women, let her loose.
Ziggler jobbed to Tyler Breeze, which was rather sad. Breeze couldn’t even win big matches down in NXT, and now he’s going over former champ Ziggler at PPVs? Yikes, not a great sign for Ziggler, who is just cashing paychecks to show up now. They aren’t going to book him strong, they aren’t giving him compelling storylines…he’s in purgatory despite his greatest efforts to get out of it. He’s jobbing to young talent like Y2J, except not because he wants to.
And finally, Undertaker and Kane vs the Wyatts. The entire PPV was set around the Undertaker’s 25 year anniversary. So would something cool happen? Would the match have some sort of twist or turn or anything? Nope. Two old geezers squashed the Wyatt family, bringing Bray Wyatt’s record in big matches to something like 2-453. They build him up, build, build, build, only for him to lose every big match ever. He has no credibility as this “face of darkness” at all. I don’t know why they decided to take someone as talented as him and have him continually lose. If I had to guess, it’s because they treat fans like we’re goldfish and just don’t remember anything more than what happened a week ago. The writing is so lazy and inconsistent, they just don’t care if it makes sense. It’s the exact opposite down in NXT, where everyone has a compelling storyline and all the angles and big matches make sense.
Not the best PPV by a long shot. I see where they are going with the Sheamus/Reigns thing, with Reigns eventually capturing it and proving that he could do it all by himself, blah blah blah. The ol’ underdog story…despite the fact Reigns is a mountain of a man and wears a bulletproof vest in the ring. The story makes sense otherwise, I suppose. And who knows, maybe this is just setting up an even bigger swerve down the road? A guy can dream.