wrestling / TV Reports
Stew’s WWE Survivor Series 2022 Review
Image Credit: WWE
6:20pm: Okay, as far as I can tell, the pre-show is not on yet. I guess I’ll have to wait until 7:00pm EST to get my Kayla Braxton fix! But I am ready-to-go for wrestling watching. I have my ice water in my DC Bombshells Zatanna glass. I have my snack of graham crackers and Nutella because I am a fatty fat. I am ready! But I also have at least 30-40 minutes until things commence.
6:22pm: In the meantime, I was beyond thrilled with myself to have hit my goal of 300 movies watched in the year of 2022, and I did it with more than a whole month to go! But to keep to humble, I saw a Twitter friend mention she had just watched her ONE-THOUSANDTH movie of 2022, and those are god-tier numbers. How do you even hit that?! My mind reels!
6:25pm: Okay, I’m going to play Dead By Daylight until wrestling happens. Oh, speaking of video games, I’ve been playing WWE 2K22 a lot lately and uploading to my YouTube channel. Come see how much I piss off my superstars in MyGM Mode because I forget to honor my promises! Sorry, WALTER!
7:09pm: Okay, well those games went poorly. Oh well! Time to tune into the pre-show. Just in time for them to tell me the rules of War Games. I was wondering if they might bring back the Submissions Only rule, but really? I never missed that. I’m fine with it being pinfall/submission.
7:13pm: I like that WWE has unified enough titles that the Survivor Series concept of the last several years is almost completely irrelevant. Or Roman and the Usos could fight cardboard cutouts of themselves.
7:18pm: I’m very interested in the United States title match they are hyping up here. I think WWE in the Helmsley regime is looking to see if they can do one of those situations where someone is going to get more out of losing than by winning. Austin Theory genuinely seems refreshed after his failed cash-in. Do I think he will win tonight? No. I think you have to keep this belt on Seth. BUT this could improve Theory’s trajectory more than having him just fail to cash in on Roman or win the US Title.
Or I’m entirely wrong!
But I think this could be an improvement here for him. Let’s see!
7:22pm: It’s downright painful to see Lawler and Booker T on this pre-show. They are consistently having trouble even talking. I’d like to see WWE replace these guys with some younger people who maybe aren’t quite THERE in the ring. Like they did with Corey Graves after his injury.
7:26pm: I’m opening all of the packets of graham crackers in the box and leaving them to sit out for a few days so the crackers get a bit stale because I AM A MONSTER and actually prefer them that way. But now I need a new wrestling snack. Or dinner. I never ate dinner today.
7:44pm: Dom and Rhea show up to Rey’s house for Thanksgiving! Here are the important details:
-I continue to LOVE heel Dominik Mysterio. He’s a blast. They could have this kid beat Roman right now and I’d pop.
-Rey apparently eats Thanksgiving and celebrates with his family while wearing his mask! I mean, OBVIOUSLY.
That was fun. More of this, please! Dom and Rhea crash Christmas! And New Year’s Eve!
7:57pm: Kayla Braxton, during the prediction segment for the main event”: “I always go against The Bloodline; do you watch the product?”
8:01pm: It looks like we are opening up with the Women’s War Games match, and the part of me obsessed with MyGM Mode says “OF COURSE!” because one of your two best matches has to be the opener. Don’t get “Poor Booking”, Survivor Series!
8:03pm: Oh, and while Ozzy is singing apparently THE ENTIRETY OF WAR PIGS to open the show, I’ll point out I made a cheap Aldi pizza while waiting for my graham crackers to stale.
8:08pm: OH MY GOD, Mia Yim came out wearing a bandana around her face, and I swear to god I thought Reckoning came out of retirement for as second! I wonder what ever happened to her.
8:12pm: Michael Cole says this is Dakota’s fourth War Games match, but doesn’t that count the year she didn’t actually wrestle because she beat up Tegan Nox instead?
8:13pm: NEVERMIND, Cole just brought that up. Glad to see you are reading my article drafts, Michael.
8:20pm: We just take Women’s Matches like this for granted now. Like “Oh, ten great wrestlers out here having a hard-hitting War Games match that the crowd is into, ho-hum”. Think about how that would sound ten years ago.
8:29pm: Sadistic Nikki Cross is the best Nikki Cross. I forgot her NXT era… stuff like laughing while passing out from Shayna’s Kirifuda Clutch.
8:30pm: Bayley, you have the worst record on planet Earth when being in a ring with Bianca Belair and ladders. What are you doing?! Learn your lesson, girl.
8:34pm: Yim tosses Dakota through the ropes and into the cage, and that’s at least the fourth time this match she has taken that bump. She’s gonna be sore later on.
8:40pm: BECKY LYNCH IS OFFICIALLY BACK! Here we go!
8:45pm: Poor camera work there openly catches Bianca yelling “KICK ME” at Io Sky as Io is climbing up the cage, but oh well. It happens.
8:47pm: Io continues to have the best moonsault in the business. She never over-rotates. She looks like she floats in mid-air to hit people exactly with her body and not her legs. Simply marvelous.
8:49pm: Haha, I love this match. This is barely-organized mayhem. So much fun.
8:52pm: I really thought Rhea was going to pick up the W here, but they went with the crowd-pleasing Becky victory, which… it’s hard to argue again. But look at this match:
Rhea looks like a star. Io looks like a star. Nikki looks like a star. Becky, Bayley, Asuka, and Bianca all already are stars. Dakota bumped her tail off to make everyone stand out. Alexa and Mia both look like talented hands who at least matched the others’ levels. EVERYBODY comes out of this looking great. Great opening.
Even though it’s all Bayley’s fault for bringing on those ladders. When will she learn?
9:04pm: We’re following up that match with Finn vs AJ? Man, this show loves us.
9:08pm: Styles and Balor with an Entrance Gear Mask-Off, I guess. Finn’s was better.
9:11pm: It’s always nice to see that Finn Balor shows up to wrestling prepared for a flag football game. Has he ever used that handkerchief thing for anything?
9:16pm: Corey Graves says that we never see an abdominal stretch win a match and now it’s all I want. Someone force a tap with this move, please!
9:25pm: God damn, these two are so good and so smooth. Hard to believe this is only their second WWE singles match. This feels natural.
9:28pm: AJ with a clean win, and doesn’t it feel like he needed that? Ever since he and Omos dropped the tag belts, it feels like AJ has been losing match after match. Tough to see Finn take the loss, but he just won a feud with Edge, so he’s fine. Of the two, AJ definitely had to have it more.
Most importantly, it was a second fantastic match for this show. Not that it’s a surprise to anyone knowing these two.
9:40pm: Ronda Rousey vs Shotzi Blackheart is up next, and you know what? Credit to WWE who CONTINUES to make excellent video packages. The pre-match vignette of the build for this made me care about Shotzi’s chances. Obviously, she will lose, but… now I’m invested!
9:41pm: Here’s your reminder that Shayna Baszler has never won a singles title on the main roster. (Unless she has and I forgot). That’s so weird. And now she’s reduced to being a minion.
9:43pm: All ten women we saw earlier are from Raw, right? Unless Becky returns full-time to Smackdown. Holy poop; who are the women on Smackdown besides these two (well, three with Shayna the Minion)? Raquel, who is doing nothing? Liv Morgan, whose push is dead? Lacey Evans, who no one likes? Oof.
9:46pm: Ha! I guess we had at least 4 planted fans in the front row so that Shotzi could cross-body Ronda and Shayna into them. That was fun to see; it even took me a moment to even realize what had happened. It went “Oh, a cross body off the barricade. Wait, she knocked fans over! Oh they must be indie guys!”
9:48pm: Oh man, that whole video package gets my blood going for Shotzi, and she ends up just getting squashed? Now I know I have a heart because it’s breaking.
9:50pm: I hope Shayna eventually turns on Ronda and gets into a feud with her. Even if she doesn’t win, it’d be nice to see her go babyface because she wants the belt. Then she takes Rousey to the limit.
9:58pm: This Sami/Bloodline storyline is glorious. Sami, Roman, and Paul Heyman (the last of the three just by reacting in the background) really nailed that backstage segment. I’m enamored of this storyline.
9:59pm: Time for Lashley/Theory/Rollins! This is a stupendous card, guys. The Smackdown Women’s Match was the sore thumb so far, sure, but this is probably going to be next level like the first two, right?
10:00pm: Why… why is Austin’s Titantron entrance video a BeyBlades commercial? Am I having a stroke?
10:01pm: Time for everyone’s favorite WWE Raw Superstar! Seth
… Rollins’ entrance music.
10:11pm: Actually, is Seth just a genuine babyface now? Like… he’s the good guy of this match, right? Or do the fans just like him the most? I’m not sure if the Lashley attack on him a few weeks ago was a complete double-turn or not. It felt like it at the time, but Seth hasn’t changed his character at all.
Raw also just fluidly changed KO from heel to face, so they are creating a lot of ambiguity in the roster.
10:15pm: Seth misses the Phoenix Splash, bringing his lifetime success record of hitting that move to 1-and-468.
10:17pm: Lashley with a Hurt Lock on both guys at the same time, and I dig spots like that.
10:18pm: The match rocked. The ending was creative, but it was a letdown because Seth got pinned off of the most gentle Spear in wrestling history. I mean, I get WHY. If he hit that with much force, it could have really hurt Rollins or Theory. But it wasn’t a great optic.
STILL… the match had a ton of wonderful spots and non-stop action. And the Theory build has come true. So I’m fine with one weak resolution. Great PPV so far!
I do wish Mustafa Ali had been part of that match, though. They seemed to be building up his resiliency storyline, but instead, he just ended up being a small road bump everyone ran over en route.
Wait… “road bump”? That’s not right.
Road… block? No, not what I meant. No, that bump thing in parking lots.
Speed bump! That’s the phrase I wanted. Speed bump.
10:26pm: Main event time!
11:15pm: Okay, I took NO notes during the main event, but I have an excuse: my wife fed our cats a dented can of cat food and was having a minor panic attack that they are all going to die from botulism.
I did WATCH the match while I was reassuring her everything was going to be fine and we Googled how rare it is for cats to get botulism. And that is NOT how I expected to spend the men’s War Games match. But here we are. It was another terrific match, and the story went in the direction that it needed to at the point–you can’t have Sami turn yet with ‘Mania still a few months away–so we continue the Bloodline dominance for the time being.
All in all: what a grand show that was. Just sorry I didn’t have more thoughts during the main.
What did you think of WWE Survivor Series 2022? Let me know in the comments. Also, let me know if you have ever had a cat die from eating a dented can of cat food.
Actually?
Keep that shit to yourself if so.
Until next time… take care!
