That Was Then 11.15.07: Looking Back At Survivor Series 2001 & 2002

Survivor Series 2001

The 2001 edition of the Survivor Series was the culmination of the long awaited, yet terribly botched WWF vs WCW (actually, the Alliance of WCW and ECW) feud. The main event, 5-on-5 elimination match would determine which side would survive beyond the show, while most of the rest of the matches unified the two promotions’ titles into a single set.

The opening match saw WWF European Champion Christian successfully defend against Al Snow. Christian had been teaming with Edge for a couple of years, but they had split up earlier in the year, following which Christian had joined the Alliance with no real plausible explanation or reasoning other than “He’s a heel, and right now only the Alliance guys can be heels.” After a quick IC Title trade with Edge, Christian had won the European Title, and his win over Al Snow here was pretty much a formality to keep him on TV after the Alliance lost the main event.

William Regal, who had been the Commissioner of the WWF before jumping ship and becoming WCW Commissioner, defeated his former servant Tajiri, and then we got WCW US Champion Edge taking on WWF Intercontinental Champion Test to unify the titles. Test had cheated to defeat Edge for the IC Title a few weeks before the show, but Edge later captured the US Title, and thus this rematch. Edge won, but Test’s evening wasn’t over just yet.

Up next, the Dudley Boyz continued their neverending feud with the Hardy Boyz, only this time it was in a cage and would unify the WWF and WCW World Tag Team Titles. There were at least one or two other points during the WWF/Alliance war where one team held both titles, but this time they would be permanently unified. There had been a storyline running where Matt was trying to be the more serious of the two, and was growing frustrated with Jeff’s risk taking, which would often cost them matches, and indeed that happened here as Matt had already escaped the cage and Jeff was on top and could have climbed down for the win, but instead chose to dive back into the cage onto the Dudleyz, who turned it around and pinned Jeff for the win. This furthered the dissension between the Hardyz and also gave the Dudleyz the unified World Tag Team Title, which gave them a reason to stay on TV after the Alliance lost the main event.

The next match was the immunity battle royal between all the leftover WWF and Alliance guys who didn’t have a more important match, and the winner would be guaranteed a job regardless of which side won the main event. Test, who was not even scheduled to be in the match, beat up Scotty 2 Hotty before the battleroyal started and,as you might imagine, ended up winning the whole thing, thus guaranteeing that he stick around after the Alliance lost the main event. I really hope nobody gets upset that I’m giving away the finish of the main event, but nobody in their right mind thought the Alliance had a chance in hell of winning that match, especially after the completely one-sided manner in which the feud had been booked. In Test’s case, he did end up winning this battle royal so he could keep his job, but they never followed up the match with any kind of angle, such as him doing dastardly deeds that would normally get somebody fired, except that they wouldn’t be able to fire him because he had immunity, and this pretty much defeated any real point or intrigue in having him win in the first place.

In the semi-main, Trish Stratus won the WWF Women’s Title in a women’s battle royal in what was seen as a curious move at the time. For as great a worker as Trish developed into later on, she had barely spent any time wrestling on TV at this point and hadn’t exactly set the world on fire when she did, so most people took this as them putting the title on another piece of eye candy, similar to what they had done with Sable and Debra McMichael. Of course, she ended up developing into the greatest women’s wrestler of our generation, but it definitely raised some eyebrows when she got the title.

Finally it’s the big main event with Team WWF, consisting of WCW World Champion the Rock, Chris Jericho, Big Show, the Undertaker, and Kane taking on Team Alliance of WWF World Champion Steve Austin, Shane McMahon, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, and Kurt Angle, promoted at the time as the biggest match in company history, one in which the WWF would be fighting for its very survival. In retrospect, it’s completely laughable that the match was being portrayed as such. Actually, it was laughable even at the time, because nobody thought the Alliance had any kind of serious chance at winning this. The Big Show, who was booked to be little more than a 7 foot tall, 500 pound jobber at the time, was eliminated first by Shane McMahon of all people, before Shane was eliminated following a chokeslam from Kane, a Tombstone from the Undertaker, and a Lionsault from Chris Jericho in rapid succession. Kane, Undertaker, Booker T, and Rob Van Dam all go next, leaving Rock and Jericho against Angle and Austin. Now, time for a bit of backstory here: Angle had been on Team WWF until a couple of weeks before this when he unexpectedly jumped ship, requiring they scrape the bottom of the barrel and get Big Show to fill the spot on the team. Meanwhile, Rock and Jericho had been feuding for a month or so over the WCW World Title, but were trying to hold it together well enough to win this match before worrying about each other. They seemed to succeed, as Rock hit the Rock Bottom to eliminate Angle, leaving Austin 2-on-1, but Austin was able to reverse a rollup to eliminate Jericho and bring it down to Austin vs Rock, which pretty much everyone expected it would. However, Jericho was irate and frustrated at being eliminated, and turned on the Rock, leaving him laying and then walking out on him. Things seemed really bad for Team WWF until Kurt Angle came back to the ring with a chair after the ref got bumped. However, he turned on Austin, nailing him with a chair and allowing Rock to hit the Rock Bottom and pin Austin to win the match for Team WWF, one of the only two times Rock would ever pin Austin.

People complain, perhaps rightfully so, at how badly the WWF vs WCW feud was booked, and how completely one-sided it was, with the WWF handing WCW its ass at every turn. Whether it be because of Vince McMahon just doing what he felt he had to in order to prove that he was superior all along or what, this feud fell far short of the expectations people had for it. The WWF, realizing this, hit the reset button the following night. Steve Austin turned face with no explanation, Vince was a heel again after finally winning the war, Jerry Lawler returned to commentary, Ric Flair showed up and announced himself as co-owner of the WWF, and the entire WWF-Alliance feud was forgotten and never spoken of again.

Survivor Series 2002

By the time Survivor Series 2002 rolled around, WWE was seriously hurting for main event talent. Austin had walked out on the company months earlier, the Rock was off to Hollywood, and the Undertaker wasn’t on the show. Fortunately, WWE had quickly and effectively built up Brock Lesnar as a top player in the company, and had also built a hell of a three way feud between the Guerreros, Edge & Rey Mysterio, and Chris Benoit & Kurt Angle over the WWE Tag Team Title. On top of all that, Shawn Michaels had finally returned from the retirement he had settled into following Wrestlemania 14, and was in the midst of a heated feud against his former best friend, World Champion Triple H.

Sadly, the elimination matches for which Survivor Series had become famous would be greatly reduced this year, and in fact there would be only two. The first one was the opening match, as Jeff Hardy teamed with Bubba and Spike Dudley to take on Rico and 3 Minute Warning in an elimination tables match. Hardy and the Dudleyz won when D-Von, who had been playing a reverend on Smackdown, returned in full Dudley attire and helped Hardy and his brothers put Rico through a table to win. Next up, Billy Kidman defeated Jamie Noble to win the WWE Cruiserweight Title, and then Victoria faced Trish Stratus for the Women’s Title. The story here was that Victoria and Trish Stratus were both fitness models with aspirations of making it in WWE, but Trish was the one who got the big break while Victoria was left behind, and Victoria was obsessed with not only besting Trish Stratus, but actually being her. Think Mickie James, four years earlier, and minus the lesbian overtones. Anyway, this was not just a Women’s Title match, but actually a hardcore match, and Victoria got the win and picked up the Women’s Title after spraying her in the face with a fire extinguisher.

Now we come to one of WWE’s all time crappiest booking decisions, as WWE Champion Brock Lesnar defended the WWE Title against the Big Show. Lesnar had suffered a freak rib injury in a match against the Big Show on a house show shortly before Survivor Series, and apparently they felt the injury was bad enough that they needed to get the title off of Lesnar, so Big Show, who was originally just meant to be a lame duck challenger, ended up going over Lesnar and taking the title when Lesnar’s agent Paul Heyman turned on him and slid a chair into the ring, which Big Show chokeslammed Lesnar on for the pin in less than five minutes. Normally you trust a wrestling promotion when they choose to get a title off of somebody due to injury, but the whole rib injury thing became suspect when Lesnar gave Big Show like three suplexes and the F5. Still, they ended up giving Show the title, having him end Lesnar’s undefeated streak in the process, and this also marked the second time Big Show walked out of Survivor Series a World Champion when he wasn’t ever meant to get the title in the first place. A lot of people were upset with the outcome of that match.

Thankfully, they made up for it in the next match with a triple threat elimination match between the Guerreros, Edge & Rey Mysterio, and Chris Benoit & Kurt Angle for the WWE Tag Team Title. These guys had been putting on awesome match after awesome match on Smackdown in various different singles and tag team combinations, and in fact this feud was considered by many to be the only reason Smackdown was even worth watching at that point. Anyway, Benoit and Angle got eliminated early (and would go on to have a classic singles match against one another at the Royal Rumble), and then the Eddy made Mysterio tap out to pick up the win for the Guerreros. Following that match, we get a brief interlude with Chris Nowinski from Raw and Matt Hardy from Smackdown both coming out to the ring to insult the New York City crowd, but their party ended up getting crashed by Scott Steiner, who was making his big debut that night by suplexing the shit out of both of them to a huge pop.

We finally come to our main event, which was the first ever Elimination Chamber match as World Champion Triple H defended against Shawn Michaels, Rob Van Dam, Booker T, Kane, and Chris Jericho. Triple H was getting a LOT of heat from the internet at this point because people viewed him as abusing his position of power by pushing himself to the moon and holding everyone else down, but I never had a problem with it because, if we’re really being honest with ourselves, who else could WWE have realistically had carry the company? Lesnar was impressive, but wasn’t an established enough name to headline. Booker T and RVD were both popular and were great workers, but neither was anywhere near the point they were ready to carry the company. Jericho may have been ready, but had been holding steady at the IC Title level for months at that point, so a World Title win would have come out of nowhere. Kane was Kane, meaning he looked big and mean but he hadn’t been taken seriously as a true title threat since about 1998. Shawn Michaels had only had one match back by that point, so there really was nobody else to carry the title for Raw but Triple H. Speaking of Hunter, he also suffered a pretty bad throat injury when RVD came off the top rope on him and accidentally landed bad on his larynx, so Triple H was barely able to breathe through the rest of the match, yet toughed it out anyway. He made it though, and finally it came down to he and Shawn Michaels, and Michaels hit the superkick for the win and World Title #4.

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2001 and 2002 were rough years for WWE, but unfortunately for them things would get worse before they’d get better. Check back soon as we look back at 2003 & 2004. Until then, thanks for reading.