5 Ups & 3 Downs From WWE Survivor Series 2023 (Results & Review)

1. A Heatless Championship Match

WWE Survivor Series 2023 Zoey Stark Rhea Ripley
WWE.com

Watching the Women’s World Championship match, it was pretty clearly a well-worked match between two very good in-ring superstars.

But the match between Zoey Stark and Rhea Ripley was a heatless bout, with small bursts of emotion from the fans. As a result, it felt like they were running through the motions of a match, trying to elicit certain reactions and falling short.

Anyone looking to place blame could point to a disappointing build in which the still-new Stark was forced to deliver painful dialogue (not her strong suit) while fans were never given much of a reason to invest in or care about her. If fans can’t get behind the babyface challenger, it’s going to be an uphill battle to win over the crowd overall – and that was saying something given how hot the audience was Saturday night.

Stark is a great wrestler, and Ripley is a tremendous star, but this was seriously lacking and fell flat. It would be great to see them get a proper build and run it back at some point down the line, because both of them deserve a better showcase.

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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.