WWE’s signature Thanksgiving week event — as Michael Cole was good enough to tell us repeatedly — is over and done, and in many ways, that’s about the best you can say for it; now, we can get back to regular feuds over personal issues and championships, and maybe — Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise — we can go a whole ass year without seeing those goddamned RAW and Smackdown t-shirts.
The Good: The Booking Didn’t Suck
This was not a show with one of those head scratching moments that gave the impression that Vince fell asleep on the shitter and booked the first inane thing that popped into his head after farting himself awake. (Egg bullshit aside, of course.) Roman won. Bianca was the sole survivor and looked strong in doing so. The finish of the men’s elimination tag was particularly good, and you could follow WWE’s logic in plotting out the result: Jeff Hardy — no matter how deeply he’s buried under the earth — still matters to fans, so his loss to Seth Rollins, someone probably getting ready for a title program in the next six months, both makes sense and has some emotional resonance.
Honorable Mentions: Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair match and video package, Roman Reigns v. Big E, a solid RKO outta nowhere
The Bad: Where’s Rocky?
WWE is the keeper of its own history and the framer of its own narrative, and they have not shown any great deal of ethical responsibility in either. (See here, here, here, here and hell, almost anything else the company has ever done.) So you wouldn’t expect Vince and co. to recognize the 25th anniversary of the Rock’s debut out of some obligation to history or a charitable recognition of what he’s done for the company and the industry. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that the guy was going to make some kind of appearance after the repeated video packages throughout the night, and we were especially primed for the Great One after Good Corporate Partner Jimmy Fallon brought up the possibility when Reigns guested on The Tonight Show.
But after four+ meandering and meaningless hours (more on that below), the show signed off with precisely zero live Rock content. Rock v. Reigns is probably still more than a year away (if it’s going to happen at all), and whatever he might have done probably wouldn’t have amounted to much, but when you tease the man, you should deliver. If I didn’t have such a sterling opinion of Vincent K. McMahon, I’d think it was a deliberate attempt to goose viewership numbers with no intention of ever delivering. But that’s a horrible thought, isn’t it? I know Vince wouldn’t treat his fans that way. </s>
Dishonorable mentions: Pat McAfee’s one emotional level, Pat McAfee’s broken volume knob, WWE Survivor Series Brought to You By Pizza Hut and A Shitty Netflix Movie, Vince McMahon’s Missing $100 Million Egg
The Fugly: Four Hours That Didn’t Mean Shit
The rot at the core of WWE — the central problem that poisons everything else — is that the characters (aside from master manipulator Roman Reigns) are not imbued with real human emotions or expected to behave as actual people in a world in which athletic performance and victories matter. They’re all children who ride in tanks or wear silly clothes or frame themselves as “almost a superhero” and are here to do nothing more than make you laugh — that’s not something a grown ass adult can get emotionally invested in, and BRAND SUPREMACY season only compounds the problem. (Fun thought: There’s nothing that says Survivor Series has to be brand vs. brand or that we’re required to have champion vs. champion matches.)
The pre-show match between Shinsuke Nakamura and Damian Priest was a perfect example of what’s wrong with the company and the show. The crowd (“still filing in!”) was colder than Hoth, and Rick Boogs was an annoying distraction — yet because he’s there to entertain the fans, it’s supposed to get heat on Priest when he finally has too much of the guy’s shit and breaks the guitar. The match — one ostensibly between two acts that could actually matter — ends in a DQ, and both wrestlers will move on to silly feuds in which they trade wins and losses and pass their secondary titles around like empty trinkets.
And while the crowd warmed up for the main show, none of the other matches — save Becky vs. Charlotte, which they reasonably built up into a nice worked shoot storyline — felt like they mattered. Yes, Kevin Owens continued his rushed heel turn by walking out on his team, but half of the RAW team was assholes anyway, so who cares? And sure, Omos won a battle royale, but are you ever going to get that 20 minutes of your life back?
No stakes, no meaning, no resonance, no consequences:
WWE Survivor Series 2021.
Jesus, what the fuck are they thinking: more egg caper shit on RAW, weaking the very concept of battle royales by adding another “let’s get everyone on the card” match, Omos, those goddamned t-shirts, everyone in red or blue gear, the modern presentation of Survivor Series
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
