Views From The Turnbuckle: WWE Survivor Series Review, Star Ratings, Analysis, NXT Review

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of Wrestling Inc. or its staff

Whatever you want to say about Survivor Series, it was certainly conversation worthy. I don’t think it was a particularly outstanding PPV, or even a good one, but you can’t deny it is going to spark a lot of discussion.

Brock Lesnar vs Goldberg: Unrated

Okay so I have a couple theories on why they had Goldberg squash Lesnar. The first would be that Goldberg couldn’t take a bump for safety reasons and WWE couldn’t not have the match so they just had Goldberg come out and kill him as oppose to work a short smoke-and-mirrors match. With their hands tied due to a medical issue they did the only thing they could do.

Theory number two is similar to the first one in that they could not have a long match, not because of a medical reason but simply because Goldberg is almost 50. Instead of having just an outright bad match, they decided to have a short match that would “shock” the audience and get people talking. That way you have greater control of fans’ reactions; instead of them just thinking the match was bad they would be too blown away by the surprising booking that it will drive interest.

Third, something fell through between WWE and contract negotiations with either Brock or Goldberg. I don’t know, maybe Brock wanted a ton of money or he showed up to Survivor Series and he didn’t want to work at all or something so Vince blew a gasket and just had him job out.

Any way you look at it; I think it is a bad look for WWE. For starters, you screwed the fans out of a “dream” match that had the best build on RAW for the last month. Even if you shocked them, I would still be really mad if I paid to see the match live and that is what they got. Second, WWE has spent so much time and effort to build Brock up. I mean, his matches this year have been glorified squashes of Randy Orton and Dean Ambrose, two of the biggest stars in the company. Throw in his wins over Triple H, The Undertaker and John Cena and WWE has created an unstoppable force that seemingly nobody could beat. I theorized two weeks ago that WWE had worked themselves into a situation where it looked like nobody could realistically beat Lesnar; but obviously WWE felt differently and put Goldberg over Lesnar for reasons known only to them.

That is really the biggest problem with the result; WWE has done irreparable damage to Lesnar’s reputation as a huge ass-kicker and their most reliable drawing card. To put a guy over who has been adamant that this is a one-time deal. It wasn’t Samoa Joe, or Kevin Owens or even Roman Reigns who made Lesnar look mortal—it was Goldberg. Even if they have a rematch by recruiting Goldberg for more dates, it still doesn’t make much sense to have him kill Lesnar because now who really believes that Lesnar has a chance. Either way you can no longer really promote Lesnar as the conquering beast and have fans view him as BROCK LESNAR. Needless to say that is a really stupid decision. Lastly, Goldberg, a star from the late-1990s who hadn’t wrestled a match in a dozen years, beat the most unstoppable force the current day had to offer. It just confirms the beliefs that a lot of fans (and almost all former fans) that the stars of the present are inferior to the stars of the past. With this kind of booking it is no wonder WWE struggles to grow its fanbase.

Team RAW vs Team SmackDown: ***1/2

A lot happened in this match so I’m going to break it down in bullet points:

•The finish was pretty good and I’m happy to see The Wyatt family get the win in a big match. In the past they have been marginalized too much in these types of matches so them actually coming up big was nice.

•The match was extremely long, which is fine because it was entertaining, but getting rid of Kevin Owens so far away from the finish felt like a waste, you almost forgot he was in the match.

•Apparently there were no count-outs in this match, which was strange because the previous elimination tag …

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