In the handy-dandy, year-old TWB format:
Highlights:
General Observations:
Match of the Night: Randy Orton, The Miz, Daniel Bryan, Kane, and Kofi Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler, Alberto del Rio, Wade Barrett, Damien Sandow, and David Otunga - The formula for a good Survivor Series elimination match is simple. Stock each team with at least four good wrestlers, let each guy cycle through spots, put in something cool for the occasion and then try to tell some kind of story. It's pretty nice if someone who doesn't win all the time gets to win, but that's gravy. Plus, wrestling isn't about wins and losses, remember? I thought they did a tremendous job of setting the stage here and giving everyone a chance to shine.
Obviously, the loss of Cody Rhodes from the match hurt, because he and Damien Sandow had a story going with the Tag Team Champions. Still, at least Sandow got a heavy dosage of attention in this match, as well he should. He's part of the future of the company. The real standouts in the match for me were Orton, Bryan, and Ziggler though, which is unsurprising, at least for the last two. Orton runs hot and cold for me, but when he's on, he's really on. I really dug his borderline psychosis. Maybe it was his admission of hate to Mick Foley before the match that he hated him that set the mood, but regardless, he really worked for me here, especially at the end, when he allowed vengeance to claim his heart. His face, blood dripping down his lower lip, as he pondered kicking Ziggler in the head, was just priceless.
Ziggler was a spotlight guy for his own reasons, both comical and emotional. There's no reason for him to bump the way he did for Kingston's monkey flip, but it worked. Why? Why does anything in wrestling work? It's a spectacle. Bryan also knew this, and of course he hammed it up, both in the ring as a competitor and in the face of his tag partner and virtual husband, Kane. That wasn't to say everyone else didn't shine. They all had their roles too. Otunga flex-pinning on Bryan so nonchalantly that the ref had to admonish him for not having the shoulders down was just awesome as a visual, even if it wasn't on purpose. It's the little things like that that coalesce and make a match that could be as disparate and ego-driven as possible into one, complete tale with several stories entwined into one strong thread.
Overall Thoughts: One of the biggest gripes with WWE is that they tend to put their good guys over at an alarming rate. With twelve PPVs a year, it can be pretty deadening to spend money on them only to find shortterm payoffs happening and not anything meaningful. Obviously, there needs to be some catharsis, but that's why you have more than one feud featured, right?
Survivor Series went heavy the other way, but it worked. The bad guys all were on parade here. Good didn't triumph, and it actually made for a compelling event not just for the in-ring action but for the story implications. We get to see Cesaro continue his path of dominance. Big Show may have lost nominally, but he kept his title and gets to taunt Sheamus again. I mean really, pulling the ref in front of you as a human shield is a damn brilliant move. Most importantly, we got the point of divergence between Ryback and the WWE Championship.
I don't know what role Ambrose, Reigns, and Rollins are going to have going forward. I hope they're not just being fed to Ryback, but then again, we were beaten over the head with Brad Maddox in the previews for the show. For him not to appear would have been dumb. His reach wasn't physical, but it might just have been in his NXT buddies doing his bidding for whatever reason. And Punk? Well, schmozzy title switch at TLC notwithstanding, he's clear to get on his collision course with Rocky at the Royal Rumble. Evil won the day because it had to for good to win out at Mania or sooner.
Then again, at an event known for bad things happening to good people (and yes, I know the fact that Bret Hart is "good" is debatable, but bear with me here), maybe it's a propos that all the bad guys save one team of them won.
Highlights:
- In a bonus traditional Survivor Series match, the team of Sin Cara, Rey Mysterio, Justin Gabriel, Tyson Kidd, and Brodus Clay defeated Darren Young, Titus O'Neil, Primo, Epico, and Game Warden Tensai by a whopping four-to-zero margin. Clay was the only member of the face team to get eliminated.
- Kaitlyn's assailant, who attacked her again before her match, was revealed to be Aksana.
- Eve Torres used the ring skirt to help her retain the Divas Championship over Kaitlyn.
- Antonio Cesaro retained his United States Championship over R-Truth with the Neutralizer.
- AJ Lee tried to goad Vickie Guerrero into hitting her with some bad Photoshops, but ended up getting waylaid by Tamina Snuka instead.
- The Big Show retained his World Heavyweight Championship via getting disqualified against Sheamus for intentionally pulling referee Scott Armstrong into the oncoming path of a Brogue Kick. After the match, Sheamus beat the crap out of Show with a chair.
- Dolph Ziggler was the sole survivor in the announced traditional five-on-five match countering a Randy Orton punt attempt with Sweet Chin Music and a resulting pin.
- Dean Ambrose, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins jumped Ryback and beat the crap out of him after he gave John Cena Shellshocked. As Ryback lay prone, Punk took advantage and pinned Cena to retain his title.
General Observations:
- Bonus traditional Survivor Series match? YES!
- I don't mean to be a raving sexist, but have I mentioned that whenever Naomi and Cameron's butts touch, unicorns farting rainbows toss down Baconators upon third world countries?
- After noting that the fans chose Rosa Mendes' outfit, JBL commented to King "And who chose your shirt?"
- I really was digging Gabriel's and Kidd's tandem offense. I really hope these guys get a closer look on TV, because they're really slick.
- If Mysterio's baseball slide to Young's inner thigh was about two inches to the left more, it would've been illegal. I really dug it though.
- Epico broke out the chained back suplexes. If Eddie Guerrero's snap suplexes were the Three Amigos, would that make Epico's variant Somiga Eerht?
- Finisher spam! Although after seeing a senton atomico, a 450 splash and a springboard elbow, doesn't Mysterio's West Coast Pop feel like, I don't know, a weak stomp to the ribs?
- Kaitlyn may not be the best wrestler, but she's got instincts. I really felt like she had a grudge with Torres when she accosted her early in the match with wild brawling.
- "[Eve]'s our Princess Kate." JBL's non-sequiturs are bizarre and yet amusing.
- When did Torres become the best heel wrestler on the roster? Okay, hyperbole, but that finish with the ring skirt being used to trip Kaitlyn up? That was fucking brilliant.
- Anyone else notice that Torres totally got to second base with Kaitlyn while pinning her?
- "I hate you." Orton has bursts when he's not dull and morose, and they tend to be highlights.
- I really don't like how JBL and Michael Cole clearly don't pay attention to each other, but it did lead to a great exchange when Cole was listing great non-American US Champions. JBL took umbrage because he was zoned out, which allowed Cole to zing back "Oh, I forgot, you live in Bermuda." Political zingers!
- Hey, I thought we agreed Vickie Guerrero wasn't fat?
- "Hey, [Tamina's] just like her father!" Oh, so she killed a ring rat before appearing on the show?
- I thought I felt my chest cave in vicariously when Show countered Sheamus' top rope missile shoulder block with that spear. Slick counter.
- I don't care that Show had to have helped Sheamus out; Sheamus getting him in the electric chair was damn impressive looking.
- In terms of the body of the match, Show/Sheamus II smoked the shit out of their encounter at Hell in a Cell.
- The finish however? It was clever, but the post-match stuff was excessive.
- Sandow tried to high-tail it out of there from Bryan only to be accosted by Kane. I really dig the cerebral part of his character, as it both plays into his braininess and gets people to boo him cuz coward.
- After watching their tag match on Main Event, I hated seeing Bryan and Kane take a step back in their relationship, but a perverse, "it's still real to me, dammit" part of me was insanely pleased that Bryan lasted longer in the match than Kane did.
- Are we getting to the point where Ziggler's bumping is less impressive because he's making the other guy look good and more impressive because it's a spectacle in and of itself? Because there's no other reason why I should have been as impressed as I was by him flopping like a Gabby Douglas/fish hybrid off that Kingston monkey flip.
- Bryan may have rivaled him on the big bump in the match, going butt-first HARD into the turnbuckle off the dropkick miss on del Rio.
- Admit it, your heart sunk too when it was del Rio and Ziggler vs. Orton at the end of the match, didn't it?
- Mr. Socko!
- The shortlist of worse cities than Indianapolis where John Cena could've picked to debut Steelers' color-scheme themed gear: Baltimore, Cleveland, Boston, Dallas. Seriously, that's a heel move if you assume football and wrestling have significant overlap. If not, then it's no big deal.
- The announcers bringing up Ryback's stamina was a brilliant stroke of announcing that actually played well into making Ryback's appetite for destruction even late in the match more impressive.
- I also really dug the psychology early in the match when both Cena and Ryback were fighting over the kill, and Punk really had to play the cagey, wily Champion.
- That suplex through the table. Whew. Good bit of table-turning there by two enemies realizing they can't win the title with Ryback at 100%.
- I seriously didn't recognize either Ambrose or Rollins at first. In fact, I thought to myself that Reigns looked a lot like Al Snow.
Match of the Night: Randy Orton, The Miz, Daniel Bryan, Kane, and Kofi Kingston vs. Dolph Ziggler, Alberto del Rio, Wade Barrett, Damien Sandow, and David Otunga - The formula for a good Survivor Series elimination match is simple. Stock each team with at least four good wrestlers, let each guy cycle through spots, put in something cool for the occasion and then try to tell some kind of story. It's pretty nice if someone who doesn't win all the time gets to win, but that's gravy. Plus, wrestling isn't about wins and losses, remember? I thought they did a tremendous job of setting the stage here and giving everyone a chance to shine.
Obviously, the loss of Cody Rhodes from the match hurt, because he and Damien Sandow had a story going with the Tag Team Champions. Still, at least Sandow got a heavy dosage of attention in this match, as well he should. He's part of the future of the company. The real standouts in the match for me were Orton, Bryan, and Ziggler though, which is unsurprising, at least for the last two. Orton runs hot and cold for me, but when he's on, he's really on. I really dug his borderline psychosis. Maybe it was his admission of hate to Mick Foley before the match that he hated him that set the mood, but regardless, he really worked for me here, especially at the end, when he allowed vengeance to claim his heart. His face, blood dripping down his lower lip, as he pondered kicking Ziggler in the head, was just priceless.
Ziggler was a spotlight guy for his own reasons, both comical and emotional. There's no reason for him to bump the way he did for Kingston's monkey flip, but it worked. Why? Why does anything in wrestling work? It's a spectacle. Bryan also knew this, and of course he hammed it up, both in the ring as a competitor and in the face of his tag partner and virtual husband, Kane. That wasn't to say everyone else didn't shine. They all had their roles too. Otunga flex-pinning on Bryan so nonchalantly that the ref had to admonish him for not having the shoulders down was just awesome as a visual, even if it wasn't on purpose. It's the little things like that that coalesce and make a match that could be as disparate and ego-driven as possible into one, complete tale with several stories entwined into one strong thread.
Overall Thoughts: One of the biggest gripes with WWE is that they tend to put their good guys over at an alarming rate. With twelve PPVs a year, it can be pretty deadening to spend money on them only to find shortterm payoffs happening and not anything meaningful. Obviously, there needs to be some catharsis, but that's why you have more than one feud featured, right?
Survivor Series went heavy the other way, but it worked. The bad guys all were on parade here. Good didn't triumph, and it actually made for a compelling event not just for the in-ring action but for the story implications. We get to see Cesaro continue his path of dominance. Big Show may have lost nominally, but he kept his title and gets to taunt Sheamus again. I mean really, pulling the ref in front of you as a human shield is a damn brilliant move. Most importantly, we got the point of divergence between Ryback and the WWE Championship.
I don't know what role Ambrose, Reigns, and Rollins are going to have going forward. I hope they're not just being fed to Ryback, but then again, we were beaten over the head with Brad Maddox in the previews for the show. For him not to appear would have been dumb. His reach wasn't physical, but it might just have been in his NXT buddies doing his bidding for whatever reason. And Punk? Well, schmozzy title switch at TLC notwithstanding, he's clear to get on his collision course with Rocky at the Royal Rumble. Evil won the day because it had to for good to win out at Mania or sooner.
Then again, at an event known for bad things happening to good people (and yes, I know the fact that Bret Hart is "good" is debatable, but bear with me here), maybe it's a propos that all the bad guys save one team of them won.
