WWE Survivor Series 2014
WWE Survivor Series 2014 (11/23/2014)- St. Louis, MO
If Survivor Series is a â€"Thanksgiving week tradition,†then why is it usually NOT on the week of Thanksgiving?
OPENING SEGENT- Yes. An â€"opening segment.†The purpose of giving away a free month of the WWE Network, including this PPV, was to prove to people that the WWE Network really is worth the $9.99 a month. That just watching Raw is not the full WWE experience. That you NEED to watch the PPVs because they give you something that you can’t get on Raw. So the worst possible thing they could do was start this with a long talking segment that they do every single week on Raw.
So… what, you ask, was the content of this opening segment? They clarified the stipulations of the PPV… which is exactly the thing they should have been using Raw to do! The stips are that if Cena’s team loses, everyone but Cena will be fired, but if the Authority loses, they will be out of power and only Cena will be allowed to bring them back.
FATAL 4 WAY MATCH FOR THE WWE TAG TEAM TITLES: Goldust & Stardust(c) vs. The Usos vs. The Miz & Damien Miz-Dow vs. Los Matadores (w/El Torito)- 6.25/10
Jerry Lawler brings up a good question: When Sandow is tagged into the match, why doesn’t he just stand there like Miz is doing on the apron.
My brother, who hasn’t been a wrestling fan since 2004, watched this match with me. When Torito dove onto the pile, the first words out of his match were â€"why wasn’t that a disqualification?†So it’s not just me who feels that the lack of DQs in four-way matches is dumb.
The match had good action, but not much else going for it until the finish, which could have interesting repercussions. Hopefully
THE ADAM ROSE SHILLS TOYS- dumb. He also gives a conflicting origin story for The Bunny. Now he was working kids’ birthday parties instead of being a drunk in Times Square. Slater-Gator show up to stir up some sh*t. The result is a tag match. I thought that Rose and The Bunny were going to wrestle each other tonight.
EIGHT WOMAN TAG TEAM ELIMINATION MATCH: Paige, Cameron, Summer Rae, & Layla vs. Naomi, Emma, Alicia Fox, & Natalya (w/Tyson Kidd)- 0.75/10
No pop for Summer Rae. This crowd is dumb. In fact, you would never believe who got the biggest pop out of these eight women. It was Emma. Yes. Really. Emma.
Anyway, WWE did such a great job of building this match up on TV that the fans were chanting â€"WE WANT MIZDOW!â€
Summer Rae worked over Naomi’s arm… by doing a big splash onto it. Yes. Really. She actually did it twice. No one in the crowd gave a sh*t about this match.
Alicia Fox is now using her tilt-a-whirl backbreaker as her finish, as she should be. There was a lot of bad wrestling in here, but I had mostly forgotten it by the end because of Naomi’s awesome new finisher. That’s actually most of what saved this match from being a dud.
KICK-OFF SHOW RECAP- so this â€"new and improved Fandango†is doing the same gimmick and the same finisher. How is this â€"new and improved†in any way?!
BRAY WYATT vs. DEAN AMBROSE- 6.5/10
They do stuff. It was entertaining. Ambrose then gives into the temptation that Cena resisted at Wrestlemania and gets himself DQed. He goes nuts and beats the crap out of Bray, using a chair, and a table. He then celebrated by standing on a ladder. This took a long time, but at no point did referees or security or anyone else show up to stop him.
TEAM AUTHORITY PEP-TALK- long, boring, and terrible.
SLATER-GATOR vs. ADAM ROSE & THE BUNNY (w/the Exotic Express)- 0.5/10
The first spot in the match was Rose tagging himself in. The referee enforced this, declaring â€"TAG! Adam in. Let’s go, Bunny. On the outside.†That had me rolling in laughter.
The Bunny got the pin on Slater. Rose stood there shocked and stunned as The Bunny did the trust fall and the Rosebuds carried him out victoriously. This wasn’t bad… but it had no business on a PPV.
ROMAN REIGNS INTERVIEW- He said that if he was in St. Louis he would â€"cock this fist and make it rain in that b*tch.†I’m really not sure what that means. Does he think he can punch the sky to make it rain?
He says he will be back in a month. Once again, this wasn’t bad. It just didn’t belong on a PPV.
TEAM CENA BACKSTAGE- bad
Cena, Dolph, Big Show, and Ryback talk. Erick Rowan sat in the background and played with a Rubix’s cube. Then he got up, took off his mask and said â€"win.â€
WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: AJ Lee(c) vs. Nikki Bella (w/Brie Bella)- DUD!
Brie jumps onto the apron, forcibly kisses AJ, then Nikki gives AJ a forearm and a Rack Attack and gets the win. AJ sold it as if she had died, so she might well be done with the company. Brie was happy about this. They played it off as if either Brie was happy because she thought she might be able to get a title shot, or that this was Brie’s way of getting revenge on AJ for costing Daniel Bryan the World Heavyweight Title at WrestleMania XXVIII. Either way, it is dumb and makes Brie into a heel.
They announced Bray vs. Ambrose in a TLC match for the TLC PPV.
TEN MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH WITH THE STIPS NOTED ABOVE: Team Cena (John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, Ryback, Big Show, & Erick Rowan) vs. TEAM AUTHORITY (Mark Henry, Kane, Luke Harper, Rusev, & Seth Rollins (w/Lana, Tripe H, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, Jamie Noble, & Joey Mercury)- 7.5/10
Big Show eliminated Mark Henry after one big punch. The crowd went nuts for this.
After all of their attempts to build him back up, they had Ryback get beaten after just two moves. Yes, one of them was a curb stomp, but still… he got up after it!
Wow. Michael Cole all of a sudden started to get REALLY bent out of shape about Seth Rollins illegally coming into the ring. When others did it he didn’t care much, but when Rollins did it, Cole acted like he was murdering babies in the ring.
Big Show randomly turned on Cena. I presume this is in exchange for not being fired (or possibly being immediately rehired after being fired as per the stips of the match).
Ziggler looked like a star, fighting back valiantly and eliminating two guys from a 3-on-1 situation and almost getting Rollins several times before Hunter screwed him. Then STING showed up.
Not to crap on this because I did think it was pretty darn great, but I think it would have been so much more awesome to just have the lights go out, then have them on again with Sting right there in the ring and have Hunter just sh*t a brick. I also think that the staredown went on for WAY too long. It seemed almost ridiculous that Dolph and Rollins were out for quite that long.
Anyway, it looks like they’re doing Sting vs. Triple H at Wrestlemania. Also, the Authority is gone.
Because of the situation with the WWE Network and their gamble of giving this show away for free, this was a situation where WWE needed to deliver something special, and, unfortunately, they didn’t. They gave us an episode of Raw with a big result and surprise at the end. We had a PPV quality surprise and a PPV quality stipulation, but nothing close a PPV quality show.
If Survivor Series is a â€"Thanksgiving week tradition,†then why is it usually NOT on the week of Thanksgiving?
OPENING SEGENT- Yes. An â€"opening segment.†The purpose of giving away a free month of the WWE Network, including this PPV, was to prove to people that the WWE Network really is worth the $9.99 a month. That just watching Raw is not the full WWE experience. That you NEED to watch the PPVs because they give you something that you can’t get on Raw. So the worst possible thing they could do was start this with a long talking segment that they do every single week on Raw.
So… what, you ask, was the content of this opening segment? They clarified the stipulations of the PPV… which is exactly the thing they should have been using Raw to do! The stips are that if Cena’s team loses, everyone but Cena will be fired, but if the Authority loses, they will be out of power and only Cena will be allowed to bring them back.
FATAL 4 WAY MATCH FOR THE WWE TAG TEAM TITLES: Goldust & Stardust(c) vs. The Usos vs. The Miz & Damien Miz-Dow vs. Los Matadores (w/El Torito)- 6.25/10
Jerry Lawler brings up a good question: When Sandow is tagged into the match, why doesn’t he just stand there like Miz is doing on the apron.
My brother, who hasn’t been a wrestling fan since 2004, watched this match with me. When Torito dove onto the pile, the first words out of his match were â€"why wasn’t that a disqualification?†So it’s not just me who feels that the lack of DQs in four-way matches is dumb.
The match had good action, but not much else going for it until the finish, which could have interesting repercussions. Hopefully
THE ADAM ROSE SHILLS TOYS- dumb. He also gives a conflicting origin story for The Bunny. Now he was working kids’ birthday parties instead of being a drunk in Times Square. Slater-Gator show up to stir up some sh*t. The result is a tag match. I thought that Rose and The Bunny were going to wrestle each other tonight.
EIGHT WOMAN TAG TEAM ELIMINATION MATCH: Paige, Cameron, Summer Rae, & Layla vs. Naomi, Emma, Alicia Fox, & Natalya (w/Tyson Kidd)- 0.75/10
No pop for Summer Rae. This crowd is dumb. In fact, you would never believe who got the biggest pop out of these eight women. It was Emma. Yes. Really. Emma.
Anyway, WWE did such a great job of building this match up on TV that the fans were chanting â€"WE WANT MIZDOW!â€
Summer Rae worked over Naomi’s arm… by doing a big splash onto it. Yes. Really. She actually did it twice. No one in the crowd gave a sh*t about this match.
Alicia Fox is now using her tilt-a-whirl backbreaker as her finish, as she should be. There was a lot of bad wrestling in here, but I had mostly forgotten it by the end because of Naomi’s awesome new finisher. That’s actually most of what saved this match from being a dud.
KICK-OFF SHOW RECAP- so this â€"new and improved Fandango†is doing the same gimmick and the same finisher. How is this â€"new and improved†in any way?!
BRAY WYATT vs. DEAN AMBROSE- 6.5/10
They do stuff. It was entertaining. Ambrose then gives into the temptation that Cena resisted at Wrestlemania and gets himself DQed. He goes nuts and beats the crap out of Bray, using a chair, and a table. He then celebrated by standing on a ladder. This took a long time, but at no point did referees or security or anyone else show up to stop him.
TEAM AUTHORITY PEP-TALK- long, boring, and terrible.
SLATER-GATOR vs. ADAM ROSE & THE BUNNY (w/the Exotic Express)- 0.5/10
The first spot in the match was Rose tagging himself in. The referee enforced this, declaring â€"TAG! Adam in. Let’s go, Bunny. On the outside.†That had me rolling in laughter.
The Bunny got the pin on Slater. Rose stood there shocked and stunned as The Bunny did the trust fall and the Rosebuds carried him out victoriously. This wasn’t bad… but it had no business on a PPV.
ROMAN REIGNS INTERVIEW- He said that if he was in St. Louis he would â€"cock this fist and make it rain in that b*tch.†I’m really not sure what that means. Does he think he can punch the sky to make it rain?
He says he will be back in a month. Once again, this wasn’t bad. It just didn’t belong on a PPV.
TEAM CENA BACKSTAGE- bad
Cena, Dolph, Big Show, and Ryback talk. Erick Rowan sat in the background and played with a Rubix’s cube. Then he got up, took off his mask and said â€"win.â€
WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: AJ Lee(c) vs. Nikki Bella (w/Brie Bella)- DUD!
Brie jumps onto the apron, forcibly kisses AJ, then Nikki gives AJ a forearm and a Rack Attack and gets the win. AJ sold it as if she had died, so she might well be done with the company. Brie was happy about this. They played it off as if either Brie was happy because she thought she might be able to get a title shot, or that this was Brie’s way of getting revenge on AJ for costing Daniel Bryan the World Heavyweight Title at WrestleMania XXVIII. Either way, it is dumb and makes Brie into a heel.
They announced Bray vs. Ambrose in a TLC match for the TLC PPV.
TEN MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH WITH THE STIPS NOTED ABOVE: Team Cena (John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, Ryback, Big Show, & Erick Rowan) vs. TEAM AUTHORITY (Mark Henry, Kane, Luke Harper, Rusev, & Seth Rollins (w/Lana, Tripe H, Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley, Jamie Noble, & Joey Mercury)- 7.5/10
Big Show eliminated Mark Henry after one big punch. The crowd went nuts for this.
After all of their attempts to build him back up, they had Ryback get beaten after just two moves. Yes, one of them was a curb stomp, but still… he got up after it!
Wow. Michael Cole all of a sudden started to get REALLY bent out of shape about Seth Rollins illegally coming into the ring. When others did it he didn’t care much, but when Rollins did it, Cole acted like he was murdering babies in the ring.
Big Show randomly turned on Cena. I presume this is in exchange for not being fired (or possibly being immediately rehired after being fired as per the stips of the match).
Ziggler looked like a star, fighting back valiantly and eliminating two guys from a 3-on-1 situation and almost getting Rollins several times before Hunter screwed him. Then STING showed up.
Not to crap on this because I did think it was pretty darn great, but I think it would have been so much more awesome to just have the lights go out, then have them on again with Sting right there in the ring and have Hunter just sh*t a brick. I also think that the staredown went on for WAY too long. It seemed almost ridiculous that Dolph and Rollins were out for quite that long.
Anyway, it looks like they’re doing Sting vs. Triple H at Wrestlemania. Also, the Authority is gone.
Because of the situation with the WWE Network and their gamble of giving this show away for free, this was a situation where WWE needed to deliver something special, and, unfortunately, they didn’t. They gave us an episode of Raw with a big result and surprise at the end. We had a PPV quality surprise and a PPV quality stipulation, but nothing close a PPV quality show.