WWE Is Jumping the Gun By Making Survivor Series a One-Night Tournament

Introduction: WWE, in their infinite wisdom, had their World Heavyweight Champion wrestling against Kane, of all people, on a house show during their European tour. I’m not even going to get into the massive insult that match does to the intelligence of the Irish fans in attendance – how did a guy who was kidnapped and had all of his powers stolen get a championship match – but, as I’m sure you know by now, Seth Rollins attempted a sunset flip powerbomb from the top turnbuckle on Kane in the waning moments of the match. Unfortunately, Rollins landed awkwardly when he came off of the turnbuckle and he collapsed to the canvas. Moments later, he got back up and powerbombed Kane from the turnbuckle through a table, but when he attempted to move towards Kane and make the cover, Rollins collapsed again and had to crawl over. In what can only be seen as a pyrrhic victory for both Rollins and WWE, he had to be carted out of the arena and subsequent tests revealed that he had suffered a torn ACL, MCL, and medial meniscus. Now Rollins will be out for six to nine months and WWE has announced a title tournament for Survivor Series to crown a new champion. Obviously, Rollins’ injury has left WWE in a tough spot, but by choosing to hold a one-night tournament at Survivor Series, they are only exacerbating the problem.

First, a confession – I grew up in the 80’s, meaning the Big Four (or Five, if you count King of the Ring) were my bread and butter, and of those, Survivor Series was probably my favorite, simply for the fact that you were guaranteed to see some quality tag team wrestling (which I have talked about how much I love before), and a lot of the time, you would see pairing that you would not get to witness otherwise. And, like many other fans my age, I thought Deadly Game, the 1998 version of Survivor Series that also featured a tournament for the vacant WWF title, was incredible when it happened. But in the ensuing seventeen years, I have had time to reflect on the legacy of Deadly Game, and specifically what is has meant to Survivor Series, and I can honestly say that I despise Deadly Game, and there’s a good chance that I will end up despising this tournament version of Survivor Series as well.

Why the change of heart for a PPV that was actually very historically significant? For the simple fact that Survivor Series has never quite recovered from that fateful night in 1998, and the landscape of WWE pay-per-views (now live specials) is a duller place because of it. Sure, the prospect of a wrestler “surviving” each round to move on fits with the overall theme (as did the inaugural Elimination Chamber match, which debuted on Survivor Series in 2002), and WWE has, with the exception of 2002, thrown us at least one traditional Survivor Series match on the pay-per-view each year, but I want more. And this is not even a situation like with War Games, where Vince will not do it because he did not create it; four-on-four or five-on-five elimination style matches are almost synonymous with the WWF/WWE. Without them, Survivor Series is basically about as meaningful as Battleground or *shudder* last year’s edition of TLC(S).

“But Wyatt,” you are saying right now, “this year’s Survivor Series will feature a tournament to crown the top champion in the entire company!” And you are absolutely correct, but that, to me, simply is not enough. I want an event full of tag teams that were recruited by their captains in an effort to prove their superiority over whoever they are currently feuding with (or, ones that were randomly selected and make no sense and may or may not be able to work together), but maddeningly, it seems like, apart from Royal Rumble, WWE has done their best to homogenize the twelve monthly live specials. Yes, Extreme Rules and TLC feature gimmick matches, but those can happen on any live special any month of the year (and sometimes do). People love Royal Rumble not just because of its tradition or because it crowns the next Wrestlemania main eventer (in fact, that has probably worked against the overall reception of that special the past two years), but because fans know they are going to see something that they only get to see once a year. Just as there are battle royal matches that happen throughout the year, Survivor Series matches are just different enough from the multi-person tag team matches that we get with regularity that they still feel special (like the Rumble). By dedicating the event to a tournament format for the second time in its history, even with one traditional Survivor Series matchup already announced, WWE is essentially placing the focus on something other than what the event was traditionally, and should still be, known for.

And I understand completely the importance of not leaving the WWE World Heavyweight championship in limbo, I really do, but I also think that last year’s Survivor Series, which did not feature a match for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, was drastically improved for that fact. The entire build-up for Survivor Series was for a five-on-five traditional Survivor Series elimination tag team match. I have made no secret my feelings on that main event (that Sting’s WWE debut sullied what should have been a career-defining performance on Dolph Ziggler’s part), but I will not deny that I was more excited about last year’s Survivor Series than I had been in quite some time, because the most important match on the show was actually one that fit the theme of the event. That is the way that the Royal Rumble works, and that is the way that Survivor Series should work as well. In 1998, Deadly Game changed all of that, and I was hoping that this year would continue the trend of returning the focus to matches inspired by the theme of the event.

Granted, even before Rollins’ injury, it was unlikely that the show would be main evented by a Survivor Series match, unless the improbable trend of Undertaker main eventing every show he has appeared on since returning prior to Summerslam continued. But with a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match having already been announced and featuring a challenger that a portion of the fanbase still does not want to see in the title scene, there was a very real possibility that the Survivor Series matchup between the Brothers of Destruction and the Wyatt Family would be the one that received the lion’s share of the attention. Even if it did not go on last, I would have been okay with that, because it preserved the importance of the theme of the event. And yes, it is entirely likely that the match in question will still take place in the spot immediately preceding the main event, in order to give the semifinalists of the tournament a chance to rest before the main event. But that does not change the fact that all of the focus over the next few weeks is going to revolve around the tournament.

And let me state for the record that I am not opposed to the prospect of a tournament, as King of the Ring was also one of my favorite annual events (I was extremely happy to see it return this year, even if the format could have used some work) and Wrestlemania IV remains one of my favorite Wrestlemanias to this day. So why am I so disappointed that this tournament is taking place at Survivor Series, even if a Survivor Series match is likely to get favorable billing? Because it feels so unnecessary.

Rollins has been firmly established over the past eighteen months as a classic dirty coward* heel who will do anything to avoid losing his title. Using that logic, how difficult would it have been for Rollins to kayfabe convince the Authority that he would be ready to defend his title at Tables, Ladders, and Chairs, and to allow him to pick a proxy to face Roman Reigns at Survivor Series, with the winner of that match allegedly facing Rollins at TLC? We know as well as Rollins does that there is no chance that he will be ready for TLC, but it is the perfect example of Rollins taking up Bray Wyatt’s mantra of “anyone but you, Roman” by picking someone that he knows will put Reigns through his paces and decrease his chances of actually making it to TLC. That match becomes the co-main event, the Survivor Series match between the Brothers of Destruction and the Wyatt Family takes its rightful place as the main event, and TLC actually has a reason for existing this year.

And that last notion is perhaps the most important one. As someone who actually attended TLC(S) last year, that was absolutely a live special that did not need to happen. Aside from an excellent Intercontinental Championship match, the fun of seeing Mizdow do his thing for the entirety of their match against the Usos, and Bray Wyatt moving to 2-0 when my friends and I are in attendance (which still was not enough to make up for the utterly awful ending of that match), Tables, Ladders, Chairs, and Stairs was basically as forgettable an event as WWE has run in recent memory. No, it was not December to Dismember bad, but perhaps worse, it was unremarkable in every sense of the word. In the scenario that I laid out in the last paragraph, Rollins is forced to relinquish his title when he is not able to defend at TLC, so the Authority announces that the one-night tournament will take place at TLC, and that some or all tournament matches will feature the traditional TLC gimmicks, culminating in a TLC match for the vacant WWE World Heavyweight Championship.

Again, this gives the Authority the perfect opportunity to stack the deck against Reigns (because, c’mon, we know he is winning this thing, right?), putting him situations that leave him at a drastic disadvantage going into the tournament final, which is already a match that he is not especially suited for. As it stands, there is a strong possibility that the Authority will find a way to do this at Survivor Series anyway, but it would have been much easier at TLC and it would have played into the theme of the event. And, like I already said, anything to make TLC actually matter this year.

I realize that this column is likely coming off negatively, just a couple of days after a column about what is likely the worst-case scenario for Alberto Del Rio’s return, but I criticize WWE because I love professional wrestling, and I have loved it for as long as I can remember. These columns are not intended simply to disparage the product; instead, they are intended as constructive criticism because I think we all know that WWE could be doing so much better. They have the talent and these last two episodes of RAW have actually been really good. But then I read a news post about how WWE thinks bringing back “big names” is the right direction to go in the wake of Rollins’ injury and short of bringing Brock Lesnar back earlier than they had intended, I think we can all agree that trotting out a bunch of part-timers is not any kind of long-term solution, and after the RAW that opened with Stone Cold, Brock Lesnar, and the Undertaker (and also featured Shawn Michaels and Ric Flair) performed even more poorly in the ratings than the RAW that preceded it, it may not even be a short-term solution anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how WWE could bring some excitement back to their product by diversifying their in-ring presentation, and I think that goes double for the live specials. Now that WWE is moving into the post-PPV, WWE Network era, it is becoming more and more apparent that the Live Specials just are not treated with the same importance by management that the pay-per-views once were, and, as a result, they often feel like just another edition of RAW. As I mentioned earlier, a big part of that is because so many aspects of the PPVs have been standardized – the entrance areas and overhead lighting, a lot of the graphical presentation – and because standout PPVs like King of the Ring and Survivor Series have been essentially marginalized, either by being removed entirely (like the former) or by only paying lip service to the original theme (like the latter). By postponing their tournament by three short weeks, WWE could have continued the positive trend of last year’s Survivor Series and made TLC a much more meaningful show. In total, that would have been less than six weeks from Rollins’ injury until a new champion was crowned, which is still significantly less time than Daniel Bryan or Brock Lesnar held the title without defending it.

That does not sound unreasonable, does it?

Wyatt Beougher is a lifelong fan of professional wrestling who has been writing for 411 for over four years and currently hosts MMA Fact or Fiction and reviews Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

*Yes, that’s a euphemism for “chickenshit”.