6 Positives And 4 Negatives Heading Into WWE Survivor Series 2016

With both the Raw and SmackDown go-home shows in the books, this Sunday’s Survivor Series is just about upon us.

It brings down the curtain on a fairly lengthy build, the seeds of which were sown way back at the start of October when Goldberg first appeared on ESPN’s SportsCenter teasing a potential return to the ring. The following week, SmackDown then set the wheels in motion for a series of elimination matches, challenging Raw to men’s, women’s and tag team showdowns. And after much ado, we now know those line-ups for the respective brands, and truth be told it makes for a fairly exciting card.

As ever, we’ve seen our fair share of ups and downs along the way, from questionable scripting to bombshell announcements—not to mention the returns of some megastar names.

This article reflects on all of that drama as we look back at six positives and four negatives heading into Survivor Series.

First off we’ll address the negatives, and in particular this "fantasy warfare" tagline that WWE has looked to shove down our throats at every available opportunity.

I get that it’s a tie-in to the WWE 2K17 video game. And I get that Goldberg’s unexpected return to a real-life ring does kind of fit the definition of fantastical. But it takes the biscuit a little when they’re trying to claim that the entire show is made of up dream matches.

Sure, the matches look exciting enough, but the idea of this SmackDown vs. Raw feud being a “fantasy” doesn’t really hold up since the Brand Split simply hasn’t been going long enough at this point. Just a few months back we were seeing these guys mixing it up on a regular basis. Take the Miz and Sami Zayn for example; they’ve met in singles action three times already this year, so their match this Sunday hardly falls into that "fantasy" category.

I could make more comparisons between guys like Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, or the Usos and the Club, but either way the point remains the same; it hasn’t been long enough to start calling these meetings “fantasy” matches, and to do so sounds slightly naïve, at best. At worst, it kind of insults our intelligence…