Review for WWE Survivor Series 2017

Survivor Series this year was one of the best built PPVs of the year. The Smackdown vs. Raw theme was fantastic and made it a PPV that I was so looking forward to. Some of these matches such as AJ Styles against Brock Lesnar was a dream match and one that I had wanted to see for years.

So why is this PPV so disappointing?

This PPV started so well with an amazing six man tag match between Raw’s The Shield and Smackdown’s The New Day. I do think this should have been ‘elimination-style’, but the match itself was amazing.

It was followed by a good Women’s Survivor Series match. My issue with this match was that because Asuka was involved I knew that WWE wouldn’t waste her first loss on a random multi-tag match. The match itself was odd to some extent. Having both popular stars Becky Lynch and Bayley eliminated in the first five minutes was stupid and having most of the Raw team eliminated quickly was ridiculous. However, the ending was fabulous and saved the match from being unwatchable.

Match between US Champion Baron Corbin and Intercontinental Champion The Miz was a good match. It was a little short and really should have been a workhorse match to show why these two mid-card belts are important. Instead, the match was a little run-of-the-mill. Granted both still looked great, but it wasn’t very memorable.

Next we had the match of the night between Raw Tag Champions The Bar (Cesaro and Sheamus) and Smackdown Tag Champions The Usos. This match was amazing and possibly one of the best tag matches I have seen in a long time. These two teams are the best in tag team wrestling and showed just why this is the case. I loved every second of the match and would easily have this in my Top Ten Matches of the Year.

Next we had the Raw Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss against Smackdown Women’s Champion Charlotte which was a pretty good match. It had a great build and the match itself was very competitive. What I loved about this match was that unlike a lot of the smaller women like Sasha Banks, Bliss always looks and feels that she could hang with someone the size of Charlotte and this made the match a lot more enjoyable.

All seems so far so good, right?

This is when the PPV fell off a cliff. The problem being is that at this point it was Raw 2, Smackdown 3 and so if Smackdown’s AJ Styles won then the final match would be pointless. They should have booked this a bit better to avoid this as all it did is make me think ‘Well Lesnar’s winning’. My other issue is that the match felt a little flat. Considering this is a dream match, it was given a mere 25 seconds more than the Women’s match and if I’m honest was a little boring. I have commented previously that Lesnar’s matches are becoming very formulaic and boring, but this made this highly anticipated match even worse. I also expected Jinder Mahal to have cost AJ the match to at least give us a reason to want to see the rematch at the next PPV… as no one really wants to see that. As it is, it was just a by the numbers match and this is not good enough.

Finally, we have one of the worst booked Survivor Series matches that I have ever watched. The confused, befuddled look on Braun Strowman’s face at the end of this match mirrored my own when this match ended. This will no doubt be the meme used anytime WWE does anything insane. This match was horrendously booked.

Firstly, the teams made no sense. Team Raw were too overpowered with only Randy Orton and John Cena on Smackdown who could believably go toe to toe with the likes of a Triple H or Braun Strowman. It is good that new stars were included like Shinsuke Nakamura, Booby Roode and Samoa Joe, but they were used so poorly with all three being eliminated first and as soon as John Cena was eliminated you knew that Smackdown was losing. I understand Shane McMahon wanting to be involved, but surely there were other people who could take his place. I had horrendous flashbacks to the 2001 Alliance vs. WWE match and that’s not a good thing.

The ending made no sense and as I say that face of Strowman was how I felt at the ending. I hope they go somewhere with some of the threads of storylines that are obviously leading towards Royal Rumble, but I doubt it. Unfortunately, this was a terrible end to what was almost a perfect PPV.

The three matches from the Kickoff are included and they are fine, but you can understand why they were on the pre-show. Matt Hardy against Elias was fine and hopefully WWE really do push the ‘Woken’ Matt Hardy to the moon which is where that gimmick belongs. Cruiserweight Championship between Enzo Amore and Kalisto was fine, just too short and really could have been saved for the 205 Live show. We then come to Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn against Breezango which should have been a highlight, but really showed why Owens has fallen out of favour with WWE. Hopefully, he can park his attitude and be the performer we know he can be.

Survivor Series 2017 was such an amazing PPV until it came to the last two matches and then it just fell off a steep cliff. I finished the event confused as whether I enjoyed it. Based on those last two matches? No, I didn’t. Based of the previous five? Yes, I did. As I say, the tag matches between The Shield and New Day and Usos and The Bar were simply fantastic and I can’t dismiss the entire PPV because it tripped at the last hurdle.

It is worth purchasing and even if those two matches are awful there is a morbid curiosity to relive them to see just what WWE did. This is not the best PPV of the year, but it is certainly the best start to a PPV, just a shame it was let down by the main events and hopefully WWE can learn from this in the build to the Rumble and Wrestlemania.