10 Big Concerns Heading Into WWE Survivor Series 2020

The last of WWE's 'Big Four' PPVs is almost upon us, where the superstars of Raw and SmackDown won't just unite under one roof, they'll be facing each other. We are, of course, talking about Survivor Series - the one night a year where brand supremacy becomes the be all and end all as both of the company's brands duke it out in an assortment of matches.

What will the brand war look like this year? Well that's pretty hard to predict given that a lack of coherent storylining has made it difficult to get as invested in the whole brand wars arc as previous years. Nonetheless, SmackDown's Universal Champion Roman Reigns will take on Raw's new WWE Champion Drew McIntyre, U.S. Champion Bobby Lashley will face off against Sami Zayn, Raw Women's Champ Asuka will collide with SmackDown Women's Champion Sasha Banks, the Street Profits will take on The New Day and, of course, there will be two Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown five-on-five elimination matches.

We'll also be celebrating the 30th Anniversary of The Undertaker (and perhaps even bidding a final farewell to him too).

There's a lot happening at Survivor Series and, in ways, it still doesn't feel like enough - as a number of nagging issues and a lack of coherent planning threaten to undercut what should be a prestigious event...

It's hard to get excited for a PPV when very little effort has gone into crafting the matches that take place at it. Survivor Series' legacy as a tag-team series PPV has resulted in it becoming all about brand warfare over the last couple of years - just as it did many times during the original brand split - but never has it felt quite so flat.

We knew that the event would see Raw and SmackDown face off and WWE programming has behaved like it was aware of that, simply relying on our knowledge of what usually happens at Survivor Series to build the upcoming edition. But that's not how you build a PPV.

Infighting among the teams with little-to-no interaction between the superstars of either brand, there has been no build whatsoever. All you have to do is look at the WWE Championship picture, where former champ Randy Orton was more focused on Drew McIntyre and The Fiend than SmackDown's Roman Reigns, and now that McIntyre's won the gold back and swanned into a match last-minute that WWE led us to believe he wasn't going to be part of, what was even the point in him losing the title in the first place?

Survivor Series 2020 stands on ceremony to its detriment. The only matches on the card are there because the event dictates them to be, so no effort was made on the part of the company to build anything meaningful around them.

Speaking of which...