4 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (Nov 9)

1. Survivor Series Doldrums

Raw Survivor Series team
WWE.com

This really can’t be stated enough, but the current construct of Survivor Series has rendered one of WWE’s oldest PPVs one of its most useless.

By having Raw and SmackDown squaring off against each other – a month after the draft, mind you – when they can’t really interact with each other, you end up having the two shows plugging matches by trying to find artificial ways of building tension. So instead of the two teams for the men and women building the match up with actual rivalries between the brands or (gasp!) having actual stakes to fight for, we’re left with the teams dealing with internal strife, fighting over who is the captain, and thus matches and brawls amongst themselves.

It says a lot when the men’s and women’s teams are having almost exactly the same problem: the five wrestlers can’t get along and keep fighting with each other, both in matches and afterwards. That’s how lazy the booking is around Survivor Series.

Throw in the champion versus champion matches that are barely getting mentioned right now and you have a virtually skippable PPV, storyline significance-wise.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.