7 Ups And 9 Downs From WWE Survivor Series 2018
Rousey/Flair, Bryan/Lesnar steal show, 'brand supremacy' a joke.
Well, that was a PPV.
Billed for weeks the one time of the year that Raw and SmackDown go head-to-head to determine brand supremacy (or some amalgamation of that), it wasn’t even close Sunday night. Survivor Series was more about how badly the blue brand would be battered by the end of the night.
In many ways, WWE Champion Daniel Bryan embodied his show. He was beaten from pillar to post, put up a good fight, tried like hell, but still fell to a behemoth.
Along the way, there were some good matches, but also plenty of disappointments. Vexing booking decisions, stupid writing, and other questionable moves dragged things down a few notches. We did get a couple great moments, with the cruiserweights, Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey, and Bryan and Brock Lesnar stealing the show. Braun Strowman showed that he’s still a monster too.
But the Survivor Series concept as currently conceived is losing steam. It noticeably dragged down a few matches where fans knew they were watching something decent but weren’t as energized, and even the wrestlers seemed to ratchet it down a notch. It’s hard to ramp things up for some vague “brand supremacy” deal.
Even though there are more "downs" here, the action in the latter half of the PPV is stellar and well worth checking out.
With that said, let’s find out what was Raw and what was SmackDown. Let’s get to it…