United We Spear: WWE Survivor Series 2013 Review

The star of the night
Photo Credit: WWE.com

In the TH style.

Highlights:

• The Miz defeated Kofi Kingston with a counter pin reversal. After the match, Kingston slapped Miz in the face.
• Roman Reigns threw four spears, the final one on Rey Mysterio, to be the sole survivor in the traditional five-on-five elimination match.
• Big E. Langston retained the Intercontinental Championship with a Big Ending on Curtis Axel.
• Team Total Divas defeated Team Not-Total Divas when Natalya Neidhart tapped AJ Lee with the sharpshooter.
• Ryback laid down an open challenge that was met by Mark Henry. Henry won the ensuing match with the World's Strongest Slam.
• John Cena retained the World Heavyweight Championship over Alberto del Rio with the Attitude Adjustment.
• Daniel Bryan and CM Punk defeated Erick Rowan and Luke Harper when Punk hit Harper with the Go 2 Sleep.
• Randy Orton used some timely distraction from Triple H, Stephanie McMahon, and Kane, a RKO, and a punt to defeat The Big Show.
• After the match, Cena came out to pose down with his belt against Orton and his belt, teasing unification.

General Observations:

• Booker T showed up to the pre-show with a bun in his hair, looking like the world's lowest rent samurai.
• Meanwhile, Mick Foley's head looked like a mushroom.
• Miz offered his hand to Kofi Kingston before the match and didn't pay off with shenanigans when Kingston reciprocated. Mind games?
• After a seeming Code of Honor, Miz and Kingston followed up with a shitload of pins and counters.
• I wouldn't be mad at all if it turned out I jumped the gun on Miz turning heel from Monday. He doesn't need a shift in alignment as much as he needs a clear focus as a babyface. Kingston, on the other hand, has been stale as all get out. Turn him heel. Let that slap be his precursor.
• Triple H starting out the pay-per-view? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
• Zeb Colter comes out and immediately lambasts the crowd for twerking. Colter mentioning twerking made this pay-per-view worth the purchase already.
• Dean Ambrose as the first guy eliminated? I didn't see that coming.
• I love the double team offense that the Real Americans are always seemingly building. In this match, they broke out an Antonio Cesaro catapult into a Jack Swagger powerslam.
• "Cesaro's swinging him so much his twin brother's dizzy!" JBL upon seeing Cesaro Giant Swinging one Uso. He'd follow up with another Giant Swing on the other one.
• Roman Reigns' spear frenzy was great during this match, but the most impressive looking finisher was Rollins giving the curb stomp to Jey Uso. That move carries such a viciousness mixed with a juxtaposed panache.
• "You came all the way back to get dogged down?" Reigns, to Rey Mysterio, taking a page from the Mark Henry school of trash talk.
• Then again, Reigns' final spear, right into a hard-charging, would-be-619ing Mysterio was maybe his best one all year.
• Bratty Randy Orton appeared to interrupt an Authority meeting backstage to meet with Passive-Aggressive Stephanie McMahon! It would have been all I wanted in a segment, if Too Cool for School Triple H wasn't there.
• Jerry Lawler teased that Andy Kaufman might still be alive, and that he'd know if he was there. I would not wear a pair of pants for a solid year if Kaufman made his return to public life in WWE.
• Big E Langston showed off some major hops for a dude with the chest the size (and shape) of Canada.
• HOW THE FUCK DID CURTIS AXEL RUN GAME ON A PERFECT PLEX ON LANGSTON? He got honorary hoss honors for that one.
• AJ Lee gave the most damning with faint praise pep talk, and it was sublime. Lee is the best actor in WWE by far.
• For a match WWE gave no fucks about laying out, most of the women in the Total Divas Memorial Let's Get Everyone a PPV Paycheck Match seemed to bust their asses. Nikki Bella's Argentine backbreaker was the highlight for me.
• Jojo Offerman made her in-ring debut and... well, she didn't do a whole lot. Hey though, she's still the only person Randy Orton follows on Twitter.
• Ryback really took the bullying character given to him to heart, as he made fun of a CTE sufferer, a stroke survivor, and Booker T.
• When Mark Henry's music hit, my heart skipped a beat. He was looking pretty lean as well.
• Henry got down on all fours and just merked Ryback with a headbutt. I thought it was a homage to the Dogface Gremlin himself, Rick Steiner, but Twitter and announcers kindly illuminated it to me as a tribute to Junkyard Dog. If that's the case, the move was even more awesome.
• The thing about having two guys like John Cena and Alberto del Rio who've wrestled a billion times in the past going together is that they could play with their history and do all kinds of cool counters. The best was del Rio gouging Cena's eyes from the Five Knuckle Shuffle.
• Johnny Fabulous Alert! Of course Cena was going to greet his dad after winning, but seeing J-Fabs is never a bad call.
• BIG JOHNNY! BIG JOHNNY! Sure, he was only there to hawk the rumbler thingy toys, but man, J-Fabs AND Johnny Ace on the same show, within five minutes of each other? SAINTS BE PRAISED.
• Erick Rowan broke his hoss out by countering a double suplex attempt by Daniel Bryan and CM Punk into a double suplex OF Bryan and Punk.
• Bryan and Punk peppering Luke Harper in the corner with kicks showed some interesting synergy. I hope I get to see more of these guys as a team.
• Harper countering Bryan's rana into a Liger bomb from the top? PURE. SEX.
• During their jockey session with Bray Wyatt after the match, I almost was sure Punk was going to turn on Bryan.
• The main event got a "Daniel Bryan!" chant early on, which warmed the cold, black cockles of my shriveled heart.
• Randy Orton had his troll game turned up to 11. The crowd chanted "Take it home!" and he responded by stalling and flexing his arm. He's had a wonderful year fucking with the crowds, hasn't he?
• Oh God, not another "distract with theme song" ending. WWE should put that shit in mothballs not to use for another 10,000 years until the next harmonic convergence.
• PUNT. Although Orton only grazed show with the Punt, I was glad to see it back. Hopefully, Show can go on a small vacation to recharge his batteries.
• Cena coming out at the end to have a belt posedown? Okay, unification it is.

Match of the Night: Cody Rhodes, Goldust, Jey Uso, Jimmy Uso, and Rey Mysterio vs. Antonio Cesaro, Dean Ambrose, Jack Swagger, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins - This match was set up from jump to make Roman Reigns into a certified beast, which meant stacking the deck against him early on. The babyfaces had to start eliminating the "good" wrestlers from the match early and often, which gave the match a slow motor to start with. However, once the endgame became clear, the beginning portions of the contest made sense and provided a context for what would follow.

While Reigns would be the star, the match was laid out not to have him be a singular world-beater, but to have Seth Rollins as his page/assistant/squire throughout. Rollins, who has blossomed into one of WWE's most complete all-around wrestlers, was able to act as an emergency tag, deus ex machina, and a huge bump absorber. For all Reigns' big spears to take out 80% of the face team, Rollins' curb stomp on Jey Uso was probably the most visually appealing finisher of the night in any match. And other guys got their shine here too, especially Antonio Cesaro with his big swing or Rey Mysterio shaking off his ring rust.

But yeah, Reigns took center stage here and commanded the spotlight be shone on him. He threw four spears, each one more commanding than the one that preceded it. Of course, Mysterio taking the final one like he just took a bomb to the gut was the capstone on that run, but Reigns didn't just finisher his way to prominence. He talked shit. He rammed into the pole. He asserted himself when he needed to, and his ring presence was that of the general in the match. This guy's gonna be a fine singles wrestler one day, and this match was his coming out party.

Overall Thoughts: Survivor Series was described by people I respect and usually agree with on Twitter as a show that felt like running in place. If the show had began with the Intercontinental Championship match and ended with the tag attraction match, I would have agreed completely. However, I thought WWE moved three major chess pieces forward (and one minor one), and all of them have WrestleMania implications. Obviously, the unification tease was the biggest tea leaf laid down on the table. Without the benefit of any other storyline material and given that the march to WrestleMania has had kickstarts at the Series in some years, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking it as a precursor towards the big event down in New Orleans. Then again, they didn't give any other tell except for a pose down with the respective belts at the end of the show. Maybe they're going to unify at TLC? Who knows at this point.

Two other big happenings felt a bit more earth-shattering to me. First, Roman Reigns getting the godfather treatment in the elimination tag match was a potential tell towards their Royal Rumble fans. The Rumble has a 2012 feel where one guy has everyone's hope of getting the win (Chris Jericho/Daniel Bryan) but they feel like they'll come out of leftfield for something different (Sheamus/Reigns?). Either way, Reigns' star as a solo breakout star felt like it was forged. I also don't think Big Show getting punted is insignificant either. The move puts people on the shelf, and in some cases, it literally changed personalities, Husky Harris into Bray Wyatt to be most specific. Kofi Kingston slapping The Miz at the end of their match felt like a signpost moment as well, but I'll believe they're changing his direction when I see more than one singular moment.

The problem with the show was that all these moments nucleated around the bookends. Everything else made for maximum dryness and rut-spinning, even if some of the action was pretty good. However, I can get great wrestling on an average episode of RAW. I need events, moments, points of inflection on the pay-per-view. Maybe everything can't be super memorable, but the show layout precluded any upward momentum. While I thought overall Survivor Series was a worthwhile show, it was poorly laid out and felt like a chore to get through at times.