So, back to that lapsed fan who decides to tune in to Survivor Series. WWE knows they have to hook them with a knockout show, but they also have to assume that some of them havent seen Raw in the buildup, so they might need to recap the main storyline a little. However, opening with a 20-minute promo between Vince McMahon, Triple H and Stephanie and John Cena is just brutal and inexcusable. If they wanted to do a five-minute rundown and pump people up, fine. But come on. We certainly didnt need this, and lapsed fans didnt need to sit through a live retelling of everything that the promos videos go through in pretty good detail. They probably enjoyed seeing Vince, but they tuned in to see wrestling. It also was thoroughly confusing why WWE chose to add yet another stipulation to the match (only Cena can bring the Authority back) just hours before the match takes place. Unless Cena is going to embrace the hate and turn to the Dark Side, why would he ever bring them back? And why add this stipulation so late? Couldnt it have been done on Smackdown? Its almost as if the writers realized they needed another plot point and heaped it on. But all it did was serve to make the storyline just a little more convoluted and thats not a good move.
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.
