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That Was Then 11.18.07: Looking Back At Survivor Series 2005 & 2006

November 18, 2007 | Posted by Sam Caplan

We finally come to the end of the road with my look back at every Survivor Series ever. We started with Team Savage vs Team Honky back in 1987 and have come all the way up to Randy Orton hitting the RKO on Triple H to win the elimination match for his team, but now we’ve got just two more to go, so let’s GIT ‘ER DONE!

Survivor Series 2005

Survivor Series 2005 would again almost completely jettison the elimination match concept, as there was only one elimination match on the entire card. It was, however, a Raw vs Smackdown match and was the main event of the evening. The rest of the card ended up meaning very little.

The show opened with the first match in a Best Of Seven series between Chris Benoit and Booker T. For those of you who know your wrestling history, these two had a famous Best Of Seven series in WCW back in 1998 and, perhaps hoping to recreate some of that magic, WWE decided to have them do it again here, only this time with the US Title on the line. Booker won this first match after Benoit missed a headbutt off the top rope and Booker rolled him up for the win. After this, there is the infamous segment in the back where Vince McMahon calls John Cena his nigga, and then Booker T says “Tell me he did not just say that!”, and then Trish Stratus successfully defends the Women’s Title against Melina.

Now we get a Last Man Standing match between Triple H and Ric Flair. These two had of course been close allies since late 2002 when Flair became Triple H’s advisor and a member of Evolution, but as we all know Evolution gradually began to disintegrate, and as people left it came down to just Triple H and Flair and then they too eventually were at odds. Flair was now at the point in his career when he was no longer being taken seriously as anything, but he had managed to defeat Triple H in a cage match the previous month at Taboo Tuesday, so this was the rematch from there. Much like the superhuman effort it took for Flair to beat Triple H the month before, he was again seen as giving Hunter the fight of his life, and in the end it took three Pedigrees and a sledgehammer to finally put Flair down for the ten count.

After that, John Cena defended the WWE Title against Kurt Angle. These guys had been feuding for most of the fall, with Angle beating him in nearly every non-title situation, and usually doing it cleanly, but couldn’t beat Cena when the title was on the line. This was also right around the time the fans started seriously turning on Cena, as he would get booed in a lot of his matches against Angle, and was when a lot of people started calling for the end of the Cena Experiment, which actually didn’t end up working out half bad for them. I still think that when the REAL next big thing comes along, Cena will be the Bret Hart-esque sacrificial lamb who gets jobbed out to him, but as for his feud with Angle in 2005, I figured that they were having him spend so much time working with Angle (and Jericho before him) because he still wasn’t the greatest worker on the planet and they were hoping he’d grow some skill by working with these guys. Anyway, Daivari was the guest ref for this match which screamed of screwjob, but he ended up getting bumped, and so did two more refs before Cena finally hit the FU and yet a fourth ref counted the fall.

After Teddy Long defeated Eric Bischoff via a run-in from the Boogeyman, it’s main event time, as Smackdown’s Batista, Randy Orton, JBL, Bobby Lashley, and Rey Mysterio took on Raw’s Shawn Michaels, Kane, Big Show, Chris Masters, and Carlito, elimination style. This was right after Batista tore that muscle in his back, which eventually led to him giving up the World Title, but he was still determined to work through the injury, and everyone thought he was crazy, but here he was. He did end up getting brushed out of the match fairly early on, and in the end Michaels once again wound up at a 3-on-1 disadvantage, this time against Randy Orton, JBL, and Rey Mysterio. Michaels hit the Sweet Chin Music first on Mysterio and then on JBL to eliminate both, and it again came down to him and Orton, and again Orton hit the RKO to pick up the win for his team. The Smackdown locker room all came down to the ring to celebrate, but then the Undertaker (who was feuding with Orton), came to the ring and, as Orton bailed out, Undertaker ended up taking the rest of the locker room apart singlehandedly.

Once again, this seemed less like the culmination the Big Four PPVs are supposed to be as it did the continuation of a lot of feuds and angles that would run through to later PPVs.

Survivor Series 2006

Finally, we come to last year’s edition of Survivor Series, and it was a total nothing show, which opened with Ric Flair leading Sgt Slaughter, Dusty Rhodes, and Ron Simmons against the Spirit Squad’s Johnny, Kenny, Nicky, and Mikey. The fossils get eliminated one by one until Flair is left 3-on-1 against Johnny, Kenny, and Mikey, and he comes back to eliminate them one by one to win the match for his team, becoming a two time survivor. After that, we get Evil Chavo Guerrero, who was pissed off that Benoit and Mysterio were the only ones reaping the windfall of Eddy’s death, challenging Chris Benoit for the US Title. Benoit makes him tap to the Crossface, and then we go to the Women’s Title match with Mickie James defending against Lita in Lita’s last match in WWE. Mickie wins, and then Lita gets all pissed off that the fans weren’t giving her a respectful goodbye like they did for Trish Stratus and, after Cryme Tyme comes out to sell her shit in a ho sale, Lita gets pissed off and bolts.

Up next we get our next elimination match of the evening, as Triple H, Shawn Michaels, CM Punk, and the Hardyz team up to take on Edge, Randy Orton, Mike Knox, Johnny Nitro, and Gregory Helms. I’ll give you one guess who wins this one! Michaels eliminates Knox in like 40 seconds, then Punk makes Nitro tap to the Anaconda Vice, then the Hardyz eliminate Helms, then Michaels eliminates Edge, leaving Orton 5-on-1. He tries to run, but gets thrown back in the ring and takes a Sweet Chin Music and Pedigree to complete the burial in about 11 minutes.

The next match saw Ken Kennedy taking on the Undertaker in a First Blood match. MVP ran in to try and hit Kennedy with a chair, but misses and hits Undertaker, busting him open and giving the win to the Undertaker. Undertaker kicks Kennedy’s ass after the match, but Kennedy still got the win. The semi main was another elimination match with John Cena, Rob Van Dam, Sabu, Kane, and Bobby Lashley taking on Big Show, MVP, Test, Umaga, and Finlay. Umaga goes nuts and hits Cena with a monitor to get disqualified about 30 seconds in to protect him and his monster rep, and then it comes down to Big Show against Cena and Lashley, and Lashley spears Show into the FU for the win.

Finally, it’s main event time, as Batista challenged King Booker for the World Title. Batista had of course been the champion a year before, but had to give up the title due to accumulated injuries, and had finally returned to action the previous summer and had been chasing Booker for the title ever since. Interestingly, these two got in a legit fight a few months before this, which was won by Booker, but no mention of it was ever made during the program and it was never played off, I guess because they didn’t want to make Batista look like a pussy. I usually like to say more about a main event than this, but there really isn’t much more to say, and Batista wins the title after hitting Booker with the belt.

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I was really hoping to have a lot more to write in the final column of the series, but WWE really didn’t give me much to work with here, and I think it says a lot that if you go back ten years or more, I can go on for pages about all the stuff that was going on and around Survivor Series, but by 2005 and 2006 it had become such an afterthought (along with the rest of their product) that I end up with a column like this. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?

Thanks a lot for those of you who stuck it out with me through this whole feature, and I’d love to hear what you have to say about it, so feedback is always welcome! I may do this again for the Royal Rumble, so stay tuned, and until next time, this is the Robust One signing off, thanks for reading.

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Sam Caplan

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