WWE Survivor Series 2017 Review
After a hugely filling three-course Thanksgiving feast stretching back to Saturday's NXT TakeOver, distended stomachs should have advised against any more wrestling. But there was still one huge dessert left to come, its ingredients impossibly sweet. As it happened, eyes were bigger than bellies; we should have known it'd leave us feeling sick.
If judged on the opening moments, the Raw vs. SmackDown showdown had all the makings of the match of the night. The tantalising, almost-dreamlike opening exchanges between men whose paths have never crossed in the Big E were enough to make you wish you had a catheter installed. It was shaping up to be everything we'd dared hope for. But then that shape took on the distinct and depressingly familiar form of a pear. And with it, despair.
Getting Braun Strowman even higher up his mountain is not a bad thing. But it should have been at the expense of the irrelevant Randy Orton, the fading John Cena, or the incongruous Shane McMahon. Shinsuke Nakamura (or "Shin", as an unbearable Cole insisted on calling him) and Bobby Roode aren't exactly freshly-hatched hens, but they were day-old chicks compared to their SmackDown companions - and at least half of the opposing team. This was not the time for Nakamura's Hideo Itami moment, nor did Bobby need such a Roode awakening. With those brusque, boneheaded eliminations, the air sucked out of the Toyota Center. A watching buddy bluntly opined, "Dumb f*cks." It was 100% accurate.