WWE Survivor Series WarGames 2025: 8 Nightmares That Could Come True

John Cena, not WarGames, is the name on everyone's lips heading into this year's Survivor Series. That perhaps tells everyone where people are at with the double cage gimmick in 2025. Triple H spoke of not booking around a calendar like his father-in-law Vince McMahon had become prone to doing when he took the book in 2022, but that didn't last. Now, that's exactly what Hunter is doing.

How else could one explain the lacklustre builds and thrown together nature of these WarGames matches? The women's one has been particularly poor. The babyface and heel teams have been constructed because it's November, not because they all had storylines worthy of WarGames. It's really as simple (and unfortunately so) as that.

This weekend's Survivors PLE could be a nightmare then. 'Super Cena' might need to put on his cape and perform miracles. Look, the titular bouts will provide thrills in the heat of the moment, but their dual exhibition atmospheres are undeniable. Worse, at time of writing post Raw on Tuesday, the show only has 4 matches, and 2 of them are inside the double cage.

That hasn't left a lot of scope for anything else. It could also force WWE's creative team to lean on some of the laziest tropes around in order to give Survivor Series 2025 something/anything to shout about. Putting so many top names in a dangerous match type might prove disastrous too - 2024's card proved that the fallout from these brawls can be grim.

Here's the worst of the worst that could well happen in San Diego.

Like, at all.

Surely Triple H could find room for one of the blighters here. He’s running a traditional elimination match on SmackDown before Survivors, which doesn’t make much sense. There, Sami Zayn leads his squad (comprised of Shinsuke Nakamura, Rey Fenix and the Motor City Machine Guns) opposite Solo Sikoa and his MFT crew. They've had some build on TV, so why aren't they on a PLE that's struggling for card fillers to round things out?

OK, so returning to a full card of elimination bouts might not work in the modern era, but it kinda sucks that WarGames has replaced them as the go to match type for this PLE. Admittedly, that hasn’t been a huge problem since Hunter took the pen due to the strength of some WarGames matches, but 2025’s pair feel weak. As referenced during the intro, only 4 bouts have been announced for this weekend's show thus far too, so there’s definitely space.

You can't hype a "Traditional Survivor Series Elimination Match" heavily yet pop it on SmackDown the night before Survivor Series. Well, WWE can, but it's stupid. Things might be different if the PLE was stacked full of hot, must see issues, but it isn't. If anything, it's crying out for some easy plays to keep things busy.

Sami and pals vs. Solo and family would be the easiest one Triple H could pluck from his playbook. The one hyped for Friday's SmackDown is already in the can and was taped last week, but there's still time to make a formatting change and include an old school eliminator just to keep the traditionalists happy.