Looking Back On, And Ahead To, Survivor Series

This month sees the broadcast of the 23rd annual Survivor Series, the WWE’s second longest serving pay per view. Over the years the Survivor Series has played host to a tremendous amount of excitement, drama and controversy, including some of the most memorable moments in the promotion’s history. Part of the event’s appeal, of course, is rooted in its unique themed matches, the elimination tag matches that the show was originally all about. Teams of four or five battle each other, with wrestlers eliminated by pinfall or submission until one team is entirely eliminated, leaving the survivors victorious. Indeed, the first five Survivor Series’ consisted solely of such matches, although the fifth featured a novel twist whereby the survivors of all the undercard matches formed two teams for one final elimination tag match. Since then, the traditional Survivor Series matches have varied in popularity, sometimes making up the bulk of the card, sometimes reduced to only one match. Only twice, in 1998 and 2002, has a Survivor Series taken place with no elimination tag matches at all on the card.

The first Survivor Series was designed to follow up on the success of Wrestlemania III, earlier that year. After the enormous success of Hulk Hogan’s clash with Andre the Giant, it only made sense to continue that story and so the main event was set as Hogan’s team vs Andre’s team. With King Kong Bundy and The One Man Gang on his side, Andre’s team was certainly intimidating in size. In the event they would prove too much for the good guys. The first Survivor Series was also notable for the inclusion of a ten-team match, where two teams composed of five tag teams fought each other. In this match, since each individual was a member of a tag team, the winning team still only had to score five pinfalls to win; once a man was eliminated, his tag team partner was eliminated as well.

One of the most important legacies of the Survivor Series came at the fourth event, in 1990, when The Undertaker made his WWE debut. Introduced as part of Ted DiBiase’s Million Dollar Team, ‘Taker made an immediate impact, eliminating not only Koko B.Ware but also opposing team captain Dusty Rhodes. ‘Taker himself was only eliminated by count-out when he continued to stalk Rhodes up the ramp after eliminating him. While Undertaker’s debut remains part of WWE folklore, however, most WWE fans would probably rather forget that this show also saw the introduction of The Gobbledy-Gooker! For those of you fortunate enough to have missed this, this was poor Hector Guerrero dressed in a novelty turkey costume. In the build-up to the show, a huge egg had been shown on WWE programming, with announcers frequently wondering what was in it. The moment when the egg hatched was quite possibly the biggest anti-climax in wrestling history!

1992 saw the first casket match in WWE history, while 1994 featured a guest appearance by Chuck Norris. However, by far the most notorious event in the history of the entire WWE, never mind the Survivor Series, was the 1997 event. This, of course, was the event that included the Montreal screw-job, which in all honesty has been written about more than enough already. This was obviously one of the most pivotal moments in the history of professional wrestling and it also signified a new identity for Survivor Series itself. The following year saw the first time that Survivor Series did not feature any elimination tag matches. In order to maintain the “survival” theme, a single elimination tournament called the Deadly Game was held to crown a new WWE champion. In the final match, The Rock defeated Mankind in a re-creation of the previous year’s screw-job. It was the first evidence of a (possibly rather unhealthy) fixation with Montreal on the part of Vince McMahon.

The 1999 event was most notable for the hit-and-run attack on Steve Austin, which led to The Big Show’s championship win later that night. After two screw-jobs and one case of what was basically attempted murder, Survivor Series had acquired the reputation of a pay per view where something bad always happened. The following year, this theme was played up heavily by the announce team in the run-up to the show, particularly as Steve Austin was back and gunning for revenge on Triple H, who had earlier been unmasked as the man behind the previous year’s hit-and-run. Late on in the show Triple H got into a car, apparently intending to run Austin down again, only for Austin to pick the car up with a crane and drop it from a considerable height. Once again, something terrible had happened at the Survivor Series.

This new identity was short-lived, however. The 2001 Survivor Series became the climax of the disappointing WCW/ECW Invasion angle. The one and only traditional elimination match here was the Winner Take All match in which Vince’s Team WWE took on Shane & Stephanie’s Team Alliance. Although the storyline as a whole had been a great disappointment, taken in isolation this was an extremely enjoyable match. However, with the waning use of traditional Survivor Series match-ups and the fact that storylines like the invasion weren’t around every year, Survivor Series seemed to be in danger of becoming just another pay per view, differentiated from the other monthly shows only by its name. 2002 saw another show without elimination tag matches, although the first use of the elimination chamber kept something of the “survival” theme running.

Since then, the elimination chamber has been moved to No Way Out and the traditional matches have been reinstated, with between one and three of them taking place at every Survivor Series since 2003. This year, it will be interesting to see if the concept is maintained. As yet, only three matches have been confirmed for the show that will take place on the 22nd of November. John Cena will defend his WWE Championship against Triple H and Shawn Michaels in a Triple Threat match, while The Undertaker defends his World Heavyweight Championship against Chris Jericho and The Big Show in another Triple Threat. The hook here is that both champions are defending their titles against teams in matches that are supposedly every man for himself. The other match is Batista versus Rey Mysterio, continuing the feud that began at Bragging Rights.

With so few matches set, it’s hard to make predictions. I’m going to back Cena to come out on top in Raw’s main event but not with any great confidence. Mainly, I think that the Raw title picture needs some stability after the way Orton and Cena have been swapping the belt around, so that’s why I’m tipping the champ to retain. I’d love to see Shawn turn heel in this one, as that would really shake things up on Raw but I just don’t see it happening. I’m also tipping Undertaker to retain his title, although I’m not sure how this will affect Jericho and Big Show’s run as Unified Tag Champions. If ‘Taker does lose, I expect it Show to be the guy who takes it. His deal with Teddy Long to get this title shot could all play into the Vince versus The Undertaker angle that seems to be slowly brewing on Smackdown.

As for Batista, he has to win over Rey or, failing that, give him the beating of a lifetime. Batista’s heel turn seems to have really worked well thus far, so it would make no sense to shut down his momentum this quickly. What else can we expect? I’m guessing that Kofi Kingston leads a team against Randy Orton. Another Intercontinental Title shot seems to be on the horizon for Dolph Ziggler but I wonder if we will also see a Team Ziggler vs Team Morrison bout this time around. Michelle McCool is assembling a team to face a team led by Mickie James. This one will be somewhat bizarre if the teams include women from both Raw and Smackdown, since the two brands were at each other’s throats just last month, but could be fun, as long as the WWE restrict it to the women who can actually wrestle. Beyond that, who knows? That would be six matches, which might well be enough, but it really would be nice for ECW to get on this card. I’d say Team Christian versus Team Regal would be a match well worth making.

This month sees the broadcast of the 23rd annual Survivor Series, the WWE’s second longest serving p

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