BRM Reviews WWE Survivor Series 2016 (Worst PPV of the Year)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews WWE Survivor Series 2016 (Worst PPV of the Year)

Post by Big Red Machine » Nov 21st, '16, 03:53

WWE Survivor Series 2016 (11/20/2016)- Toronto, ON

KICK-OFF SHOW:
ARIYA DAIVARI, TONY NESE, & DREW GULAK vs. TJ PERKINS, RICH SWANN, & NOAM DAR- 6.5/10
They kept promoting this as a preview of what we’ll see if we tune in to 205 Live. I feel like I’ve seen this match a million times already, so if this is what I’m going to get on 205 Live, I might not tune in. Also, they had some audio technical screw up which basically resulted in them giving away how much time was left in the match.

KALISTO & KENDRICK BACKSTAGE- Kendrick was WAY too overdramatic. We need to go back to “desperate to win because I’m desperate to keep my job” Kendrick.

KANE vs. LUKE HARPER- 5.75/10

MAIN SHOW:

TEN-WOMAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH: Team Raw (Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Nia Jax, Alicia Fox, & Bayley) (w/Dana Brooke) vs. Team Smackdown (Becky Lynch, Alexa Bliss!, Carmella, Naomi, & Natalya)- 6.75/10
It turns out someone jumped Nikki from behind and she can’t wrestle this match, so Nattie- who just happened to be in the area- volunteers to take her place. So yeah. Odds are that Nattie did it.
The eliminations were all handled well and all of the stuff with Nia was built very well. Personally, I think it would have been better to have Becky eliminate Charlotte and then have Bayley eliminate Becky to win rather than have both of them survive and have Charlotte attack Bayley here. I think it’s better for Bayley if she- who Charlotte thought was going to be the weak link- does what Charlotte couldn’t and brings home the win. Then you can have Charlotte attack Bayely on Raw out of frustration rather than doing it here out of heel meanness just because the plot demands that it happen right now.

ANDERSON, GALLOWS, & ELLSWORTH BACKSTAGE- terrible.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea for Anderson & Gallows to be used for terrible puns. Then Mick Foley showed up to make the mean big kids stop bullying Ellsworth. Foley wants to sign Ellsworth to Raw. Really. Then they wasted even more time with Foley saying that Raw would beat Smackdown. We’ve heard this A MILLION F*CKING TIMES ALREADY! Was one more really necessary?
Then Mick walks away and Strowman shows up and Ellsworth runs away. What a little piece of sh*t.

WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: The Miz(c) (w/Maryse) vs. Sami Zayn- 7.25/10
Miz worked Sami’s leg and Sami sold it very well. We all knew a heel finish was coming, but if Miz was going to retain here, why even put the belt on him in the first place? Due to the brand split Sami won’t have any chance to get revenge, so why not leave the belt on Dolph so we can have a clean finish here?

AJ & DEAN ARGUE ABOUT ANNOYING BULLSH*T BACKSTAGE- they were plugging TLC. How about we use the free TV show to do that and use the PPV for f*cking wrestling. Then Shane McMahon showed up to tell them to get on the same page because “we already lost one. We can’t afford to lose another one.” Why, Shane? Why not? What will happen if Raw wins more matches than Smackdown? NOTHING. So stop pretending that the fate of the world is at stake!

TEN-TEAM ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH: Team Raw (Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, Colin Cassady, Enzo Amore, The Shining Stars, Antonio Cesaro, Sheamus, & New Day) (w/Xavier Woods) vs. Team Smackdown (The Usos, American Alpha, Tyler Breeze, Fandango, the Hype Bros., Heath Slater, & Rhyno)- 5.25/10
Apparently in this match if one member of a team is eliminated, the other is two. That’s stupid.
Enzo & Cass cut a dull pre-match promo, but at least they had something to say. New Day also cut one in which they said absolutely nothing new. I’ve been hearing crap about unity and the important of beating the other show for over a month now. No one from Smackdown got to talk to talk because they’re not important. And speaking of things not being important…
This whole match was booked in such a way as to make absolutely nothing but the little mini-match at the end matter, which is 100% the worst way to book a match like this. If you wanted to give Cesaro & Sheamus another tag title shot, all you had to do was bring up the fact that the last time they had one they had the champions beaten so the champs intentionally got themselves disqualified to save their titles, and the idea of Sheamus and Cesaro coming together to fight a common enemy would mean a lot more if everyone else on the show tonight wasn’t doing the exact same thing. What WWE did here was BURY BOTH TAG TEAM DIVISIONS FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. The last five minutes were good, but everything before that was a gigantic clusterf*ck.

FOLEY & STEPH BACKSTAGE- bad
This was where they decided that Sheamus & Cesaro would get a tag title shot as a reward for winning this match. In addition to my above issues with that, I also hated Foley saying that this would be “the best day in the life of one McMahon and the worst in the life of another” (or however he exactly worded it) based on the results of these Raw vs. Smackdown matches. Really, Mick? Losing this brand battle with absolutely nothing on the line will be worse for Shane than the day Kane electrocuted his testicles? Or watching Kane give his mother a Tombstone Piledriver onto the stage? Or when Orton punted Shane in the head and RKOed his sister? Or when Shane (& Steph, for that matter) were put out of business when The Alliance lost at Survivor Series fifteen years ago?

WWE CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE MATCH IN WHICH IF KALISTO WINS THE ENTIRE CRUISERWEIGHT DIVISION MOVES TO SMACKDOWN: Brian Kendrick(c) vs. Kalisto- 7/10
So Kalisto and Kendrick were having this awesome match and then Baron Corbin attacked for the DQ… meaning that THE ONLY MATCH ON THIS SHOW THAT ACTUALLY HAD SOMETHING ON THE LINE ENDED IN A F*CKING DQ. F*ck this company. Why even do this? Was pissing people off really worth pushing a feud between Baron Corbin and Kalisto? Really? And seeing as how WWE was so intended on pushing 205 Live earlier, let me ask the following: what does it say when one big dude shows up and beats up two cruiserweights, rendering their match completely unimportant.

DANIEL BRYAN YELLS AT BARON CORBIN- he says he will deal with him on Smackdown. Right. Because it’s always a good idea to do a DQ in your title match on PPV to build to a segment with a non-wrestler yelling at someone on free TV. Keep this sh*t up and you’ll be TNA.

As we go into this supposedly important match, Raw is now up 3-1, meaning there is no way that Smackdown can possibly win… and yet no one is even mentioning this. You’d think that Raw commentators would be needling the Smackdown guys while Foley and Steph run victory laps around the ring, but none of that is happening. I guess this stupid brand vs. brand crap wasn’t so important after all.

TEN-MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH: Team Raw (Kevin Owens, Chris Jericho, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, & Braun Strowman) vs. Team Smackdown (AJ Styles, Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt, Shane McMahon, & Dean Ambrose) (w/James Ellsworth)- 7.5/10
Michael Cole asks if Ellsworth is Smackdown’s “mascot,” why isn’t he dressed up in a mascot costume, like the Smackdown fist? This made me SOOOOOOO sad that this didn’t happen.
Things were going fine until AJ and Dean started to fight over nothing, making them both look like babies. Then Dean, the #1 contender, got pinned by Strowman. Then Braun beat up Shane. Then he almost killed AJ. Then he beat up Orton. And then Bray and Jericho at the same time. Yes, that’s right. Braun beat up the entirety of Team Smackdown plus Chris Jericho on his own.
Then he went for a weapon for no reason other than so he could be in position for the spot where Orton cuts him off and so Shane could get his spot in where he does an elbow drop off of a high thing through a table. I was shocked that it looked like Braun was actually going to make it back into the ring after this, but then he didn’t because apparently JAMES ELLSWORTH is strong enough to hold him back. Thankfully, our hero Braun Strowman punished this cheater James Ellsworth by throwing him off the stage through a table. G-d willing, this will be the last we see of James Ellsworth.
Owens got DQed for hitting AJ with the List of Jericho. Did they really think having Owens get DQed in Canada was good idea? Then Jericho was upset and had to pick up the papers, which resulted in AJ being able to make the tag to Orton, who promptly RKOed Jericho and eliminated him, making him look like a moron.
If you had any doubts about the Brock vs. Shane rumors, in addition to getting to be the one whose move eliminated the monstrous Braun Strowman, Shane also got to kick out of Roman’s spear at 3.1 (even as the announcers put it over as “one of the most incredible spears ever”) and as if that wasn’t enough, he did this despite being so injured that he had to be helped to the back by medical personnel.
Dean came back out and attacked AJ, so that should have been a DQ on Team Raw but it wasn’t. Seth and Roman then attack the security guards because I guess they really want to press their luck with this lack of DQ. This was all done so that we could get a Shield reunion spot, which they’ve done so many f*cking times already that it doesn’t feel like it means anything. Then Seth pinned AJ. I would be happy that the world champions were being protected, but the way this show has gone so far, I’m just annoyed at the overbooking.
Speaking of overbooking, Harper was hiding under the ring (seriously… how did Ellsworth not bump into him?) and climbs up onto the apron but no one tried to stop him from interfering. Of course they booked Roman to be the guy fighting the odds at the end. Normally I would be happy that Roman didn’t overcome them, except that Roman is the #1 contender to WWE Universal Title so he shouldn’t have been beaten here.
The finish was Roman about to spear Bray but Orton ran in and took the spear for Bray, allowing Bray to pin Roman with Sister Abigail. So hooray. We finally got ONE moment in these matches that felt like it actually moved a story forward.

GOLDBERG vs. BROCK LESNAR (w/Paul Heyman)- well. That was bullsh*t.
Goldberg squashed Brock. Yes, really. That’s your PPV main event, after all of the build-up for this epic fight, they did THAT. Was the goal here to make their Mania match look good by comparison?


So yeah. This show f*cking sucked. Yes, there was some good action at times, but I have never seen a show more poorly booked that this one. All of that bullsh*t about it being so important for each brand to win? Well no one has even noted that Raw won the night 3-2. The build to this show was terrible. That, in turn, made all of the backstage segments (as well as every word out of JBL’s mouth) absolutely infuriating because it was the same sh*t we’ve been hearing for well over a month OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN about this stupid brand vs. brand feud that no one who isn’t Shane, Steph, Bryan, or Foley cares about. To accomplish this goal, they focused everything on it in a completely monomaniacal way, and booked matches that resulted in basically every single champion or top contender aside from Sheamus & Cesaro, Bayley, and Charlotte looking bad. There were about eight different falls on this show that should have meant something big but never will because of the brand split, so the guys who pinned both tag champs or Becky Lynch or whoever won’t ever get any title shots out of them and there won’t be any opportunity for someone like Sami Zayn to get revenge on the heel who cheated him. Then we got the f*cking bullsh*t main event which they’ve been hyping up as a clash of the titans that got less time than the wrestlers’ combined entrances. This was a PPV, but all we got was a bullsh*t squash in the main event and a bunch of matches in which NOTHING MATTERED. F*ck this company. I really can’t envision a world where this isn’t the worst PPV of the year.


STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
1. Someone needs to explain to Michael Cole that you can’t possibly have two “sole survivors,” because “sole,” by definition, means “one.”

2. JBL, too.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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Big Red Machine
Posts: 27378
Joined: Dec 16th, '10, 15:12

Re: BRM Reviews WWE Survivor Series 2016 (Worst PPV of the Year)

Post by Big Red Machine » Feb 22nd, '17, 08:54

With all of the talk about how important these Raw vs. SD Survivor Series matches supposedly were, it's now two months later and the only thing that happened in any of them has turned out to matter one iota was Nattie jumping Nikki before the match. If they had taken the time they spent yelling at us that these Raw vs. SD Survivor Series match were going to be so important and used that time to actually come up with storylines, maybe people would start to care about their big shows when they come around. the Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royale feels the same way (although they at least cut down on the time they spent pushing it last year).
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
DGUSA Open the Ultimate Gate 2013
ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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