10 Big Talking Points From WWE Survivor Series 2017

While there were wins for Charlotte Flair and Baron Corbin in their respective champion vs champion bouts, as well as that standout performance from Asuka, it wasn’t such a great night for NXT alumni when it came to the evening’s main event.

The show-closing five-on-five men’s elimination match featured a quartet of graduates from developmental—Bobby Roode and Shinsuke Nakamura in amongst the SmackDown ranks, as well as Samoa Joe and Finn Bálor on the Raw side.

Each of those four had been huge stars and former world champions in their NXT days, though you wouldn’t necessarily have thought that based on the Survivor Series main event.

Nakamura, Roode and Samoa Joe were the first three to be eliminated, and though Kurt Angle then took John Cena out, Finn Bálor was the fifth to go. That meant that of the first five eliminations in that multi-man match, four of them had involved graduates from the developmental brand.

It also meant that of the remaining five guys, three weren’t even full-time performers, which hardly seems like the best strategy for building up your stars of tomorrow.