Jey Uso, Dolph Ziggler & Seth Rollins all lost their matches, Carmella jumped Sasha Banks from behind, & The Street Profits argued with Big E about who would win this Sunday.
Surely nothing repeated itself as we’ve finally reached the go-home show for Survivor Series. Plenty of spots were still available for Smackdown’s Teams & the ever looming invasion of RAW has been present all month. Who made the cut for Sunday & how many redshirts crossed into enemy territory? How about we take a look.
Don’t Poke The Dragon
I don’t think I can stress enough just how much better this show is when Daniel Bryan is on it. He’s a great wrestler obviously, but makes sure you understand his motivations clearly & also dips his toes into other things outside of his current feud, allowing you to get excited for something possibly down the line. His main focus is Roman Reigns & Jey Uso for their attack from a couple weeks back, but he also gives Sami Zayn some attention backstage as he hasn’t forgotten about The Intercontinental Championship either.
He does get revenge on Jey Uso here in a match I don’t have to tell you is pretty great. Mr. Small Package makes an appearance & takes advantage of Jey during his Splash for the flash pin. Nobody capitalizes on mistakes like Daniel Bryan & I still pop for him sneaking a Small Package in during big matches. It’s the polar opposite of The Diva Driver roll-up & is based on scouting & technique, not “Whoops, we’re out of time, end the match”.
I’m a little disappointed this leaves Bryan with nothing to do for Sunday. I suppose you can argue that Uso & Bryan on the same team is too combustible, but Owens has had an issue with Jey too & RAW’s Team basically hate each other’s guts. I’ll just assume Adam Pearce saw RAW’s Team has the combined weight of a semi truck & decided he needed a big for Hoss Warfare. The good news is that once the random aside that is Survivor Series is over, we’ve got a pretty great main event program brewing with either Daniel Bryan or Kevin Owens in line to step up to Roman Reigns. Definitely looking forward to either of those options.
Heir Bud
The Final-er Chapter between Rollins & The Mysterio Family takes place with Disciple Murphy finally overcoming his lord & savior Waluigi Seth. I honestly cannot recall the last time Murphy got a decisive, clean win, so no complaints about the outcome. Cole tries to tell us it’s the most important win of his career & has never heard of The Cruiserweight Championship, I guess.
I think my favorite thing about this is it reminded us just how good Murphy & Rollins are in the ring. That’s not something we’ve really seen since this saga started six months ago. It’s been all gimmick matches, kendo sticks & amateur optometry since, so it was nice to see a solid back & forth between two great workers. With Murphy now accepted by The Mysterios, that hopefully gives him more of a spotlight going forward & we can get more matches like this in the coming weeks.
With this win & Rey’s from last week, it appears this thing has been wrapped up or at the very least approaching the finish line. They’ve given Rey & Murphy their wins back (Dominik… not so much) & Rollins has been bested, so please let’s move on. I don’t care if Rollins becomes a Vape God & feuds with The Street Profits & Mysterio goes up against Chad Gable to see which one is shorter. Please for the love of wrestling, let’s be done with it.
Master Of The Universe
Contract signings are about as played out as it gets in professional wrestling. There’s really zero room for innovation & they end in a fight nine times out of ten, so the only way to really come away with a good one is to subvert the expectation of violence & crush it on the microphone. Thankfully, we have two guys who can do just that. McIntyre has been a solid talker all year, but it’s Roman Reigns’ entitled prick-ness that wins the evening.
There’s a lot to like about this from Roman insisting to sit at the head of the table to him condescendingly saying he likes Drew. My favorite part is how he steals a page out of Sami Zayn’s talking point with Lashley about how The Intercontinental Championship is more important than The United States Championship & applies it to he & Drew’s titles. Zayn thinks he’s a bigger deal since he’s champion of all the countries, while Lashley is just champion of one. In Roman’s eyes, McIntyre is champion of just one planet, but Roman is champion of ALL OF THEM. What a deluded jerk. He’s great. Part of me wishes it was Orton out here instead & responded with a long winded explanation of The Fermi Paradox & how he is truly the better champion, but sadly we missed out.
There’s also this little nugget from the way back machine when Reigns was feuding with John Cena. Basically it was Cena saying that he stills exists because the younger talent could never step up. Here, Reigns tweaks it a little bit with him saying guys get main event pushes in WWE only when he decides to take a vacation. Roman Reigns morphing into the guy he hated is great character work, added on to already fantastic character work he’s shown since returning earlier in the year.
I don’t understand why we can’t have this the entire build for Survivor Series. Color coordinated t-shirt invasions are fun & all, but just let these people interact like normal wrestling feuds. As it stands right now, this is the only match slated for Sunday that I really have interest in story-wise, & wouldn’t you know it, it’s due to segments like this. It also helps that I’m really torn how this is going to shake out. Part of me thinks Roman should roll, but then another thinks Drew takes it, only to get annihilated by Reigns after & Miz cashes in. A lot of options on the board with actual consequences, which is what makes it so interesting.
The Man-DeLorean
Asuka & Sasha Banks have more or less the same contract signing segment from earlier, just without the signatures, furniture or any sense of a build. I feel like somebody needs to take a step back before these shows hit the air & make sure things aren’t too similar. Sometimes you get shows that have back to back matches with distraction finishes or interference & it makes me think that people are just writing individual segments & not a show as a whole. I know there’s a team of writers & that’s most likely the case, but somebody’s got to give the final draft a once over & check for redundancies.
The two ladies & Cole try their best to make us care with the 90 seconds they’re given, but nothing really lands. Cole mentions their much better feud from a couple months ago & all that does is make you notice how bad this one is. There’s also Sasha Banks’ inability to keep a straight face during promos, so she turns it into weird passive aggressive laughter a bunch of times & it’s awkward as hell. Asuka throws out Road Dogg’s New Age Outlaw introduction, which is fun because Asuka, but also not fun because Road Dogg.
As my time travel pun from the title suggests, we head back to last week & the week before with the Carmella ambush, that Sasha really should be on the look out for by now. She definitely learned nothing from Bayley this past year about paying attention to the show & how to counteract getting snuck up on. Carmella at least has the courtesy to mix it up & add a little more to the beat down than Superkick into a Facebuster this time around. The only saving grace of the entire thing is Asuka hilariously standing there disinterested during all of it. You’d think she’d maybe join in to soften her opponent up for Sunday or go after Carmella given their history.
Actually, probably best Asuka leaves Carmella alone.
**Shudders**
Dead & Boated
Natalya & Tamina had a wrestling match.
…
You want more? Really? Ugh… Fine.
We finally round out Smackdown’s Women’s Survivor Series Team with Bayley being announced for the squad with a line of throwaway dialogue backstage & the losers bracket finals between these two. I’d like to point out the other losers weren’t available for this match due to broken wrist, getting fired, & being too good for this show anyway, so we’re stuck with this 56 second barn burner of a contest. I was hoping the running gag of Natalya being useless in every match would continue for the month, ultimately leading to her not making the team. I’m guessing Green’s shoot injury forced them to rework the final grouping & you can’t have her out-pathetic Tamina in the ring.
That leaves us with the quintet of Natalya, The Riotts, Bianca & de facto Captain Bayley against RAW. I feel like just Bayley & Bianca could roll by themselves, but I’m also preparing myself for the inevitable Lana victory after she’s kept the announce desk industry afloat during these uncertain times. This match maybe can be great, but the women’s elimination match always feels rushed during Survivor Series. You might get an exciting finish, but everybody else usually gets Diva Driver’d & sent to the back. We’ll see how it goes. I’m setting the over/under for transitional move pins at 3.5 for the entire night, so place your bets accordingly.
I Hereby Rescind All Brand To Brand Invitations Going Forward
Big angry rant time.
I’ll start by saying I understand it’s a go-home show & this is the exact kind of thing you’d expect to find on one with guys from different feuds lumped together into one bigger match. You want to get everybody involved heading into the pay per view since you can’t always squeeze everything in individually on the other weekly shows. I get it. The problem is that almost all of this makes no sense.
Nearly everybody here has questionable motivations at best. We start backstage with The Street Profits continuing to talk shit to Big E about New Day Wolfpac (shout out to Big E doing an Undertaker-like entrance complete with the hat, which upon further review, is just a fucking sombrero). The rest of New Day come out to the ring & instead of calling out Mr. Profits, decide to pay homage to The Undertaker by doing some of his more famous taunts.
This for some reason brings out Sami Zayn, who was involved with Taker one time, so feels compelled to yell at New Day about it. He mentions his big match against Lashley coming up & how he doesn’t want to get hurt going into it, but agrees to a match nonetheless. You’d think The Profits would interrupt or The Hurt Business given who’s in the ring, however a bunch of randoms show up in their place. So rather than build heat with the actual players involved for Sunday, New Day & The Profits continue their socially distanced insults, while Zayn & Lashley continue their feud by shouting each other’s names out loud each week like you just remembered something after trying to think of it hours before.
Ziggler & Roode stop by & want a shot at The RAW Tag Team Titles despite not being on that show & Xavier Woods is like “Yeah, sure. That works.” Dude, what? King Corbin comes out in between to tell New Day to get lost since they don’t even go here & nobody else out here makes sense. You know your segment is in trouble when out of eight people, King Corbin is the most sensible person. Just to recap, you have The Intercontinental Champion whose opponent is nowhere to be found for Sunday, a guy on Smackdown’s Men’s Team with none of his teammates alongside, two guys not scheduled for the show altogether & both sets of tag champions out there but teaming with each other despite nonstop shit talking for weeks. Holy hell, you guys.
That’s not to mention that the whole thing takes 35 minutes of real time on a two hour show. Keep in mind this opened & at that point there was still three spots to fill for Survivor Series. In lieu of qualifiers, we get Adam Pearce announcing two of them even though everybody else had to earn a spot & another match that was less than 1/35th of the time this whole thing took. You couldn’t have Otis in a ten minute match to earn his way & cut this in half? And unrelated but I’m rolling, is that Kevin Owens has been nowhere to be found these past two weeks. You know, the guy actually appearing at Survivor Series.
Overall
Worth Your Time: Murphy vs. Rollins, Bryan vs. Uso
If You Have Time: Reigns & Drew’s Contract Signing
Don’t Waste Time: 8-Man Tag, Natalya vs. Tamina, Asuka & Sasha’s Promos
And there you have it, everybody. Sorry for shouting at the end there, but the build to this particular Survivor Series might be the worst one yet. Everything that wasn’t related to Sunday was pretty solid, while the rest just wasn’t. That’s probably not a good sign as we head into the show this weekend. In case you’re wondering, here is your finalized Survivor Series card & I threw in my picks, just so you can all laugh at how bad I am at them tomorrow night.
Survivor Series Card & Predictions
Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre
Sasha Banks vs. Asuka
Sami Zayn vs. Lashley
The Street Profits vs. The New Day
Women’s Survivor Series Match: Team Smackdown (Bayley, Natalya, Liv Morgan, Ruby Riott, Bianca Belair) vs. Team RAW (Lana, Peyton Royce, Lacey Evans, Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler)
Men’s Survivor Series Match: Team Smackdown (Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, King Corbin, Jey Uso, Otis) vs. Team RAW (Braun Strowman, AJ Styles, Riddle, Keith Lee, Sheamus)
Interbrand Battle Royal: Elias (RAW)
So that’s a 4-3 win for RAW since Smackdown never wins this thing anyway. But who knows. If nothing else, the wrestling should at least hopefully be enjoyable. Who am I kidding? That’s the only thing that can be enjoyable since this show is devoid of purpose. How about you guys? Got any picks for Sunday? Think Smackdown can finally win one of these? Devoid of purpose?
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