5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Survivor Series: WarGames 2024 (Results & Review)

3. Weak, Sloppy Weapons Spots

There are plenty of things to praise about the women’s WarGames match, but that doesn’t mean it was all sunshine and rainbows inside the double cage on Saturday night.

The women all worked hard throughout the lengthy bout, and they had several ambitious spots, some of which did not come off as planned. As with all WWE plunder brawls, steel chairs and kendo sticks are popular weapons of choice, almost to a point where they’ve become both normalized and clichéd.

However, several of the chair shots looked extremely weak. Bayley and Nia Jax, in particular, had an exchange that probably looked really good when they drew it up, but it didn’t come off well at all – Nia’s chair shots resembled WCW-era Hulk Hogan’s “wallops”. Naomi went to dropkick a chair into Nia while Jax held the chair at arms’ length from her body, meaning the chair hit air on the recoil. Candice LeRae moonsaulted onto Bayley, who was laid across a chair platform, but she overshot and barely made contact.

WWE relies – perhaps unnecessarily – on the cheat code of plunder to artificially increase the violence in matches like these. However, it only works when the attacks are believable. When the strikes connect and look impactful, it works, but when you can see the strings, it takes you out of the moment and reminds you that you’re watching a contrived, sloppy spotfest.

It would be more meaningful to make the actual tension and violence feel more realistic than to try to orchestrate weapons spots that don’t deliver. But this is WWE in 2024, so expect this phenomenon to continue.

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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.