7 Survivor Series Statistics You Need To Know

On Sunday, WWE will hold the 32nd annual Survivor Series PPV, the company’s second-longest running special behind only WrestleMania. Referred to in the early years as the Thanksgiving Tradition, Survivor Series took place on Thanksgiving Day in its first four years, then on Thanksgiving Eve for the next four years. While Survivor Series has been exceeded by Royal Rumble and SummerSlam as significant PPVs, it still is one of the Big Four and thus continues to garner a fair amount of attention from longtime fans.

The event is centered around the traditional Survivor Series match, usually a 5-on-5 or 4-on-4 elimination contest, with each side having some loose affiliation and reason for feuding with the other camp. This year’s incarnation is no different, with the battle lines being drawn between Team Raw and Team SmackDown.

As one of WWE’s oldest and most unique events, it seems like there’s a missed opportunity to play up its history by tying it in with some of the more interesting facts and statistics from over the years.

WWE does this to great effect every year with the Royal Rumble, so why not with this show? Who has eliminated the most wrestlers? Has anyone ever run the table and eliminated an entire team? (It has happened, but not by someone that anyone would suspect.)

Let’s break down the Survivor Series elimination matches and the hundreds of different wrestlers who have competed in them.

This Sunday’s bouts will bring the total to 83 elimination matches (not counting the 2002 Elimination Chamber match, as it was not a traditional Survivor Series match).

The vast, vast majority have been men’s bouts, as fewer than 10 have featured women – eight, to be exact, one of which was a 7-on-7 bout – 2013’s Total Divas versus True Divas. The largest men’s SS matches have been 10-tag-team (20-man) elimination matches, which took place at the first two Survivor Series PPVs in 1987 and '88 and have returned in recent years.

Several wrestlers will enter their first Survivor Series elimination match on Sunday, joining a group of about 300 different grapplers who have competed in these contests. Despite having been retired for eight-plus years (save for one match earlier this month), Shawn Michaels has competed in the most Survivor Series matches, entering 11 of them. The next closest is Randy Orton with 10. Kane has competed in nine, while Big Show and Davey Boy Smith have wrestled in eight elimination matches.

By comparison, 119 wrestlers have competed in only one Survivor Series match.