Review for WWE Live in the UK: November 2014

In November WWE came to the UK as usual and I usually complain about the pointlessness of releasing it... but... it was in my home town of Liverpool and so I have a slight bias on this set this time. I still feel they should change it to a Best of the UK set rather than including the full shows, but I have to admit these were some pretty good shows on the run up to the Survivor Series PPV.

The two disks features full Raw, Smackdown, Main Event and Superstars shows. Again, it is difficult to get into a show from November with no context. It would be like watching a week of soap now, only having a rough idea of who anyone was and having no idea what has happened and what happened next.

From Raw we have a great match between Jack Swagger and Seth Rollins, Alicia Fox against UK's own Paige which is a good match, though nothing special. Sheamus against Rusev is the same as most boring Rusev matches... boring and pointless. Miz and Damien Mizdow against Los Matadores was fine, but again nothing special. Dolph Ziggler against Mark Henry is pretty good and at least showed why Ziggler was gaining momentum.

AJ and Brie put on a good match made even better by the involvement of Nikki Bella. Doesn't hurt that everyone looks amazing. Adam Rose against Tyson Kidd is all kinds of wrong. I don't get the whole Adam Rose and Bunny thing and the match felt more like something you would see in an Indy match, not on WWE's Flagship show? Finally the match between John Cena and Ryback which has the highlight of the Liverpool crowd singing 'John Cena Sucks' to his music, which actually works. The match itself? It is a by the numbers John Cena match. It doesn't suck, but not a match that people will remember.

Main Event features four matches that have no real purpose. If you are fan of younger or lesser known talents then you may enjoy watching Sami Zayn vs. Tyson Kidd or Alicia Fox vs. Cameron. Though the two matches of Stardust against Adam Rose and Dean Ambrose vs. Justin Gabriel are pretty good. The problem is that this is a 'filler' show and so these matches have no real purpose and it feels it.

The same could be said of Superstars which is almost just a Raw Recap show featuring things we have already seen on Raw and two fairly standard matches from Sin Cara against Curtis Axel and Big E. against Heath Slater. In the context of the WWE week, I understand it, but why not just include the matches as extras instead of the full show which we have just watched?

Smackdown is thankfully better than those shows. Not by much. Again, this felt more like a Raw-Recap show with so many throwbacks to Raw that I had my finger on the Fast Forward for most of the time. The main shock of this show is that it only features five matches. I wouldn't mind this, if it meant they were given time, but apart from the excellent Triple Threat Intercontinental Championship match between Dolph Ziggler, Tyson Kidd and Cesaro the other matches are utterly pointless.

Bray Wyatt against Sin Cara is fine, though far too short. Adam Rose and The Bunny against Gold/Stardust is just too weird to take seriously. Natalya vs. Layla isn't bad, just not great. Finally, we have Kane against Ryback. This match isn't too bad. It's your typical big man match and

So what takes up the rest of the time?

Jericho hosts a Highlight Reel with The Authority which is fine, if a little long as always. Dolph Ziggler talks about being attacked by Luke Harper. Ryback talking about what team he will be on at Survivor Series. Dean Ambrose talking about the situation with Bray Wyatt. These are all fine in general, but I would have preferred either more time to a match or another match. There's no reason why the commentators can't tell these stories while the match is going on. Or just keep them on the App seeing as they keep referring to it every ten minutes.

As a Special Feature we have a wonderful match between The Rockers and The Orient Express. This is made all the more wonderful by the appearance of the Eighth Wonder of the World Andre the Giant. It also doesn't hurt that they have Roddy Piper on commentary. A match between Chris Jericho and Dean Ambrose against Kane and Bray Wyatt is pretty good and despite having no commentary it certainly has some great moments.

Live in the UK November 2014 is the same as the rest of these releases. If you were there it is a nice momentum. If you enjoyed Survivor Series, you may enjoy how these shows built that PPV up. If you an avid WWE fan who must own everything, then you may enjoy this as there are some good matches and moments on here. If however, you are just a casual fan you may not see much point in owning this set. Though the inclusion of the classic match is also a good reason to own it as it is truly a great match and worth the price alone.