10 Match Star Ratings For WWE Survivor Series 2019

Thank Christ this pulsating few weeks is over.

Keith Lee Roman Reigns
WWE

Survivor Series is the strangest f*cking thing.

The build is profoundly annoying. It's impossible to not watch the mass brawls - a sensory overload of action, primary colours, and screeching commentators - without asking endless questions of the characters. Why are they bothered about brand supremacy, selectively, at this time of year? Didn't the draft just happen? Who is brawling with who, exactly? If somebody threw a different coloured t-shirt on, would anybody notice? Would anybody care? Why are the Street Profits so enthusiastically 'Team RAW'? They weren't not even on the main card. They were in the NXT system for years, in which they enjoyed a hugely rewarding, sentimental journey. WWE lifts you out of one plot hole and slams you into another so hard and so often that it's enough to cause a migraine.

But it doesn't matter.

WWE has almost broken the rule of build with this Survivor Series model. It's like Vince Russo throwing a swerveball that is somehow knocked out of the park. The men and women in these t-shirts are great, and they wrestle other great men and women they don't usually wrestle.

Really, it's just WWE's usual way of doing things, intensified: sh*t, brainless TV with very good PPV action...

10. KICKOFF: Cross-Brand Tag Team Battle Royal

Keith Lee Roman Reigns
WWE.com

It comes to something when one is appreciative of Dolph Ziggler purely for wearing a colour-coded cap. His sartorial choice helped clarify the stakes, but since there were no actual stakes, this was a confusing version of a match that is confusing in itself for the first five minutes.

The Forgotten Sons were eliminated almost immediately, but hey, at least WWE remembered to put them on the card. This is actually progress for what is just the weirdest premise for a gimmick of all time: if the Forgotten Sons weren't going to do something to make you remember them by within months, the act was only ever going to envelop itself in irony. This Forgotten Sons analysis is driven by the specific dread that comes with reviewing a meaningless battle royal, because what else is there to say beyond "Some boring and slow elimination teases and punches happened, and none of it remotely mattered"?

Dolph Ziggler skinned the cat about a million times. If he does it a million more times, there still won't a be a soul alive who will compare him to 1995 Shawn Michaels. Robert Roode devised a fairly interesting elimination.

Remember when he won the RAW Tag titles with Dolph Ziggler because Paul Heyman "wanted to do something with him"?

Star Rating: ★¾

Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!