February 2010, and with one phone call Vince McMahon killed Survivor Series. The idea of Big Vin killing someone with a phone call can’t be at all surprising to you (no one’s seen Ted Turner for a while, have they?) but the news of Vince culling one of the Big Four might shock you, especially as the 31st Annual Survivor Series had just happened.
But it’s true. As a result of Survivor Series 2009 suffering a whopping 26% decline in buys (about 84,000 fewer customers), McMahon made the following statement to investors on a conference call a few months later:
“We think that Survivor Series is obsolete, as far as that title is concerned. It was something that worked many, many years ago, in terms of a creative standpoint, various teams competing.
… Survivor Series, yes, many years ago, was one of the original four pay-per-views, but it’s outlasted its usage and it is one of the things in terms of re-branding, this year and going forward, that will be re-branded. No longer will we have that title, Survivor Series.”
That’s pretty shocking. Sure, Vince has canned pay per view formats before – after all, there used to be a “Big Five” before King of the Ring was (sort of) retired (ish) – but Survivor Series is the second longest-running WWE pay per view of all time, it was the first regular event in WWE’s calendar after WrestleMania. Survivor Series was a big deal, and yet, a little over 22 years after its inception, it was on the chopping block.
Of course, we all know that the pay per view survived (wordplay intended, I know what I’m doing) but the question is this: did it deserve to? Was Vince McMahon right to think that Survivor Series had outlasted its usage?
Let’s start answering that question by looking at the biggest selling point of the pay per view, its USP, the 5-on-5 Elimination Match. Looking at it in isolation, the elimination match is more exciting than a regular tag match. Not only is there scope for Lots Of Business to happen between the ropes, especially in the modern era, but on a very basic level, more pinfalls/submissions equals more excitement, right?
Well, yes and no. Back-to-back eliminations, like Michaels KOing both Mysterio and JBL in 2005, or Kofi Kingston knocking off CM Punk and Randy Orton within seconds, are super fun! However, in the 80s/90s, and even occasionally in modern 5-on-5s, the methods by which people got hastily pinned/submitted could be both laughably weak and damaging to kayfabe.
It’s understandable that, sure, the odd count-out/DQ has to be thrown in there to protect certain wrestlers. When it’s used in moderation, no problem there. However, why is it that, despite Superstars being able to withstand multiple power moves in normal matches, four shows a week, suddenly whenever Survivor Series rolls around, wrestlers succumb to weak roll-ups, Axe Handles from the top, basic clotheslines, slipping on banana peels (no, really) and the less said about conveyor belt of sh*t that was the 2013 Divas 5-on-5 match, the better. When elimination matches are thrown together for sake of it, purely for the sake of maintaining a decades-old brand, rather than telling a story, the in-ring action almost inevitably suffers.
None of this is to say that they didn’t have their uses. Back in the 80s, the Survivor Series match type was both exciting and useful. When your calendar only features four pay per views a year and short TV shows in which the top stars rarely wrestled, the prospect of putting your entire main event scene into one match was a huge draw. The first main event of Survivor Series was Hogan’s Team vs. Andre’s Team. It saw Hogan vs. Andre for the first time since WrestleMania III, and all of their allies were elevated by association with the two megastars, especially Bam Bam Bigelow, who was tasked with going it 3-on-1 when Hogan got counted out.
Not only that, but when Survivor Series was dedicated in its entirety to elimination matches, it had an important function of explaining to the crowd the current structure and depth of the roster. On the first Survivor Series, there were only four matches: a mid-carder 5-on-5, a women’s 5-on-5, a tag team 10-on-10 (Jesus), and a main eventer 5-on-5. Four divisions, clearly demarcated, the major players in each being identified by how they were booked. For the most part, it was easy to tell which team was heel and which was face. It was so simple, and the best wrestling often is.
Of course, such a basic card wouldn’t pass muster today. With three hours of Raw and two of SmackDown, the current roster is more over-exposed than it’s ever been. The appeal of seeing Superstars wrestling in unusual combinations is all but diminished, because most of the current roster have, by this point, wrestled most of the current roster.
With that being said, the appeal of a traditional 5-on-5 elimination match in the modern era rests largely on two things.
First, the multi-man action mid-match. In the current ‘graps’ landscape of wrestling, the in-ring action is by-and-large great in Survivor Series matches. 2016’s 52-minute epic was more stuffed than Batista’s trunks. Every year, there tends to be at least one elimination match worth watching and a handful in the past decade could feature in the top 5 greatest of all time. So if folks are looking for one reason to keep Survivor Series, ‘fun wrestling’ is a pretty important one.
However, it’s in the second facet of a Survivor Series match’s appeal that WWE is currently struggling with, and that’s the storyline/build that goes into putting the 10 wrestlers/teams into the position where they have a big old scrap. While the Royal Rumble match requires only the bare minimum of build going into it, owing to the randomised nature of it and easy-to-understand title shot stakes, for the last few years, the booking that’s been implemented in order to create Survivor Series matches have been inconsistent at best, and permanently damaging at worst.
When looking at the truly elite Survivor Series 5-on-5s, what unites them all is a rock solid story. In 2001, the losing team’s company would go out of business, in 2003 Steve Austin’s team needed to win or he’d be gone from WWE, in 2014 either The Authority would be disbanded or multiple wrestlers would be fired. These are perfect examples of match type and storyline melding perfectly.
However, it’s unfortunately rare. Such is the way with the modern era’s calendar, crammed full of stipulation-specific pay per view formats, that often, instead of a stipulation being implemented in order to match the tone and intensity of the current feud, the current feud has to be augmented in unnatural and forced ways in order to fit the stipulation because, well, it’s that time of the year again. While this augmentation isn’t as jarring as regular Hell in the Cell booking, for the last few years WWE has shown shocking disregard to its own roster for the sake of throwing an elimination match together.
In 2017, the key phrase was #UnderSiege and this was problematic, not least because some wrestlers (and even some of WWE’s Twitter accounts) don’t know how to spell the word ‘Siege’. Despite being a babyface at Hell in a Cell, and using his babyface status to facilitate Sami Zayn’s own heel turn, Shane McMahon suddenly began acting like a total bellend, invading poor Kurt Angle’s show and using a blue army to ambush unsuspecting Raw superstars. Amongst these invaders: Becky Lynch, The New Day, The Hype Bros, Bobby Roode, AJ Styles. All of them were f*cking babyfaces?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WWE?
In order to turn the brand split into Company Warfare ™ for a single, non-canon month, WWE Creative took a hot curl on their current roster. Look, I’m not advocating the basic Team Goody vs. Team Baddy nature of the 1980s Survivor Series matches, but at least they weren’t confusing and infuriating. In 2018, Becky Lynch was tearfully asking ‘why is it so hard to do the right thing’ and now she’s stomping defenceless dudes with zero explanation. They did this in 2016 as well, with Bayley helping long-term rivals Charlotte and Dana clump the Smackdown women around despite being F*CKING BAYLEY. What makes this so goddamn weird is that, come the match itself, despite her team being presented in that segment as purely heelish, the team was still being portrayed as comprising both heels and faces, with the announcers worrying if they can ‘all get along.’
My brain hurts. Stop this. If this is the price that we have to pay in order to engineer a Survivor Series match then maybe they should be destroyed. What’s worst about all of these, is that the brand split actually does make Survivor Series more relevant. Maintaining separate brands and bringing them together for this one night makes way more sense than Team Foley vs Team Ziggler or whatever, but they are handling it in the worst possible way.
In looking at the final piece of the ‘Should Survivor Stay’ puzzle, you have to take into account the show’s heritage and history. Do you actually want there to be no Survivor Series anymore? It’s not like that would spell the end for elimination matches, just book one that makes sense, you did it at Payback 2014. It’s unmistakeably comforting to have Survivor Series around, sure, it’s got some prestige to it, helps break up the year into fairly easy quarters to maintain a regular cycle of fan interest. It’s a recognisable brand and an easier hook for casuals in that regard, and hey, speaking purely from a NERD’S perspective, having 30+ years of stats to pick apart is fun, but does any of these really justify Survivor Series’ existence from a creative standpoint, rather than a business one?
Personally, the risks that WWE have been taking with their characters is too much to justify the pay per view’s existence. This is just me talking, you may think differently, but I would much rather take Money in the Bank and give it the calendar slot previously belonging to Survivor Series, because there are multiple ways that could be cross-branded. Either have two ladder matches, one for each of the world titles, each match being brand exclusive or, maybe better, have two cross-brand ladder matches. One for a men’s briefcase, one for a women’s. Each match could be made up of 3-4 wrestlers from each brand, spots which each man would have to earn by winning matches, and the winning superstar would get to take the briefcase back to their show. Tangible stakes.
Unlike Survivor Series matches, which only have stakes when Creative can create some that make sense, MITB matches are like the Royal Rumble in that they have inbuilt hype. Whoever wins the case is being earmarked as the next champion, as long as you’re not Baron Corbin. The matches have inherent long-lasting booking consequences, which feels much more naturally befitting of a Big Four pay per view.
You may disagree with me, and I really don’t mind, but maybe Vince McMahon was right in 2010. The format has its advantages when implemented correctly, obviously, but in the light of recent booking trends, perhaps the format has indeed “outlasted its usage.”
Maybe after over 30 years, merely surviving is not enough.
What are your thoughts on the above story? Let us know in the comments on Twitter or Facebook.
Comments.
Loading comments…