Segunda Caida

Phil Schneider, Eric Ritz, Matt D, Sebastian, and other friends write about pro wrestling. Follow us @segundacaida

Sunday, November 19, 2017

WWE Survivor Series 2017 Live Blog

"We were all picked essentially at random to be on the brand that we're on, and nobody talks about brand loyalty except for one month out of the year...but tonight, that brand loyalty MEANS SOMETHING for reasons."

1. Elias vs. Matt Hardy

ER: It's so strange to be running a match when the arena is maybe 20% full, feels like those opening card UFC fights where you're hearing individual voices from the crowd and everything is echoing. I think Matt Hardy matches that leave him to sell a specific limb almost always deliver, so I like Elias going after the arm, running the shoulder into the buckle, and breaking out an awesome leaping kneedrop to the arm. The crowd is sparse, but quietly getting into a Hardy comeback, and Elias' double underhook shoulderbreaker is pretty cool, but probably should have been treated as a bigger deal. This never really hits a new level, though. Hardy gets a comeback with the side effect on the apron, but Hardy is moving really slowly these days so even his comeback doesn't feel very exciting. I still like his injury selling, and he takes the post shot great, snaps over on Elias' fishermans suplex neckbrearker, but this was mostly an extended Elias squash.

2. Kalisto vs. Enzo Amore

ER: Crowd is still slowly filling in but my are they silent for this one. Enzo is at least good for a couple dumb bumps a match, and he really whips the back of his head into the mat on that code red, and Kalisto hits a cool rolling death valley driver that I don't think I've seen. Enzo's offense looks pretty bad, that falling boot offense almost always looks dumb. Kalisto gets yanked into the buckle really nicely, but this was nothing to blog home about.

3. Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens vs. Breezango

ER: I don't follow the backstage news as much anymore, but I heard something about Owens and Zayn getting sent home from a tour, and here they are opposite Breezango on a pre-show. And the two of them really lock in those chinlocks. Breeze this rows a nice back elbow but he's mostly in there building to Fandango's hot tag, and his hot tag is good! I liked Fandango's hot jabs and his run up the buckles tornado DDT was nice. Owens finishes with a real nasty pop up powerbomb. He really planted Fandango with it. But this match also wasn't much.

4. The New Day vs. The Shield

ER: This is nuts to see the reunited Shield opening up the PPV, but it's cool to officially open things up with something big. Hey those halfsie Raw/Shield shirts look bad. And I'm into this, as I should be, because these teams should match up well. Kingston's offense looks all flimsy, but we build to Big E's big spear to the floor which always looks the greatest. Ambrose tags in Rollins with the most hilarious fake Ricky Morton hot tag ever, because he "leaps" to tag him, but he's literally standing right next to him. It had to be done to be silly. I think. Thankfully the rebound lariat gets reversed by a huge Big E tilt-a-whirl slam. The New Day stacked splash in the corner is a little silly, but then they shut my mouth by doing a truly silly leaping double DDT with Rollins and Ambrose stacked onto E's shoulders. This whole thing was pretty underwhelming. Roman's spear to Kingston looked nice, but the triple powerbomb somehow looked weaker than Owens' bomb on Fandango.

5. Becky Lynch/Carmella/Natalya/Tamina/Naomi vs. Alicia Fox/Bayley/Sasha Banks/Nia Jax/Asuka

ER: Not enough attention was paid to Lana's awesome Smackdown cocktail dress. Raw team really should run the boards, meaning instead they will just have Tamina eliminate everybody. Tamina has been on the roster for EIGHT YEARS!! She is still really really terrible at pro wrestling. The internet will be furious at the early Lynch elimination. And man they are really actually spending way too much time on Tamina. She is the clear #10 on the totem pole in that ring, and somehow she is being treated as the big star here. It's terrible. I don't so much care about her eliminating Bayley, they've already done the damage to Bayley. But having her treated as as big or bigger star than Nia, and man does Tamina throw some of the absolute worst headbutts I've seen. Tamina has a terrible look, and is really bad at wrestling, and you no longer owe anything to her father. Let the Tamina push DIE. Crowd gets lit up every time Asuka tags in, and her stuff against Carmella looks awesome. That flying hip attack looked near decapitation level. We really have Tamina sitting in the final 4. What have you done. Who wanted this. Sasha is really great at putting over Natalya's stuff, leaning into the 360 lariat and snapping her neck back getting run into the buckles. Boy we are really getting some Tamina Time. Asuka gets the final two eliminations, but man I am confused by sudden big deal in 2017 Tamina. A lot of this was handled pretty poorly. Even the final 2 on 1 was silly, because there wasn't any kind of attempt at a save. They just kind of let Asuka get the pins. This was bad.

6. The Miz vs. Baron Corbin

ER: Miz goes after Corbin's knee and I like how they handle it. Though I was really surprised that they basically had Miz wrecking Corbin the whole match, and had Dallas and Axel at ringside...but Corbin basically took a bunch of damage and then hit his loopy finisher on him to get the win. I have friends over so maybe I missed some of the nuances of this match, but it really felt like Miz worked really hard in this one to wind up with that finish.

7. Sheamus/Cesaro vs. The Usos

ER: The brand vs. brand has been kind of weird as we have a lot of heel champs right now, so we're getting a lot of heel on heel action, so the crowd is just picking guys as default faces. Which I guess is fine. The work in this is both really good, and also not really captivating. They're all doing good looking moves, they just aren't building in a very interesting way. The end run is really fun, but even then it felt like a sudden call to go home. But these guys are all total pros and hit their stuff really well, and they all have cool stuff to hit. The final Uso hot tag is great, with one of them tagging his brother while doing a running no hands dive over the top and into Cesaro. That's awesome.

8. Charlotte vs. Alexa Bliss

ER: Really liked when this broke open with Alexa whipping Charlotte's shoulder into the floor off the apron. Her abdominal stretch was really great too, digging in her elbow into Charlotte's exposed sides, scratching at her. I love how tenacious Bliss is, loved that guillotine choke build. And both of them going after the other's lower jaw was awesome, just grabbing at jawbone to get to a standing position. Bliss eats knees spectacularly on her twisting moonsault, but leans way out of Charlotte's follow up yakuza kick. This was a fun one, probably the best match on the show so far.

9. AJ Styles vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: I'm not sure how well this will go for Styles fans, but I'm curious how they'll work this one. And as many of us assumed, this is an absolute mauling. Brock tosses AJ around like a total dead body, and AJ has some of the more spectacular German suplex bumps. AJ is flying around spectacularly, including a wild bump over the top to the floor. All of Lesnar's knees to the ribs look absolutely devastating. AJ comes back nicely and I always love Lesnar's missed knee bump in the corner. And then AJ gets probably the longest actual run of offense we've seen against Brock in probably 3 years. They flub that corner tornado DDT, but then Brock bumps around big for him, including an awesome moment where he gets run through the ring steps. AJ hits a bunch of big flying moves, and the big moment of AJ locking in the calf crusher was awesome. Lesnar was selling it great, and the size difference was completely erased in that moment. And then Lesnar just smashes AJ's head into the back of the mat a bunch, and it looks horror movie violent. Every time AJ went up for a flying move I got nervous that Brock would catch him, and sure enough, we got there. AJ takes the F5 super great, and this was really fun. I'm happy AJ did as well as he did.

10. Kurt Angle/Finn Balor/Samoa Joe/Braun Strowman/HHH vs. Shane McMahon/Randy Orton/Bobby Roode/Shinsuke Nakamura/John Cena

ER: I know we all want this to come down to HHH and Shane. I kind of want that. HHH looks really stiff...not in his strikes, but in his mobility. But I think overall this is handled pretty well, with everybody getting time to do their stuff.  But we knew where this was going, and it was awful. There were individual moments I liked, but as a whole none of it worked. When one of the things I wrote down as enjoying is "Angle grabbing an ankle lock when Cena was going to do a fistdrop", or "Shane really flew hard into the ring barrier on that dropkick"...that cool stuff is really minor compared to the blatantly awful longform storytelling once we got to Shane being the lone survivor. There was approximately 12 minutes of guys standing around silently making eye contact while breathing heavily. And thank goodness Raw has HHH on their team, so that he can outsmart venerable warrior Shane McMahon. He sacrificed Angle so he can claim the victory for RAW BRAND! Which comes with no actual reward whatsoever, other than bragging rights that not one single person actually cares about in any way. Braun barely gets any sort of comeuppance, gets to choke him down briefly, which will no doubt lead to a 25 minute WM match with a 10 minute HHH cosplay ring entrance. You knew where all of this was going, and knew it was going to be awful. It was. You could see the crowd actively not enjoying much of the last half. It never got to them chanting or singing or something stupid like that, but people just looked tired and bored and defeated. I can't really blame them.

ER: Underwhelming card. The bad stuff was bad, the elimination matches were the worst, and the good stuff was merely good. Nothing stood out as particularly great. These longer cards are almost always the pits, even the ones that look interesting on paper. The upside is that Brock/Styles exceeded expectations. That was a real high point.



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3 Comments:

Blogger Yerfuneral said...

Why do they throw these super long shows the night after NXT the night before? Extra long doesn't mean extra good that is proven almost every week with RAW. Kind of ironic to have all these champ vs champ matches when next ppv is called Clash of Champions.
Sorry, upset that they don't have the newest Asuka shirt in normal people's sizes available during the ppv sale so got to get some venom out of the way.

1) This is the one night the brands go at each other why didn't you book the real dream match. Elias is out and I immediate hope he is facing Aiden English. You had an unbroadcasted at this point ab contest at NXT. Where is our sing off?
We get Matt Hardy. Are the Hardy's not moving the merch like they though they would. They keep putting Matt in these the doors just opened matches. Surprising was such a squash but that is pretty much what they been doing with Matt since his brothers injury. Not sure where it is going but solid starting match.

2) Enzo was a good bump machine and that was about it with Cass. The promos are even more obnoxious and for some reason he is wearing the belt. I admit never went back and watched the cruiser weight classic but for how much potential was shown in the Mae Young Classic and the raves I have heard about the tournie that led into the 205 show; I just don't get it.

3) I guess shouldn't be surprised that WWE is going to the powers that be of the McMahon family is holding certain people back. Bit of a tired angle but has gotten me to kind of pay attention to two guys who I am always going back and forth about.
Nice to see Fashion Police finally wrestling again but we got no comedy moments thrown in and was a bleah match.

4) Why did they start the actual ppv with this? I would have started with Miz/Corbin but that match is probably going to be lame and not get the crowd going. Start with maybe the tag champ match.
Were less then 24 hours from the War Games match so it is making this seem kind of lackluster to me since that is so fresh in my mind. That is the other problem following up the usual above average NXT big show so easy to compare with the previous nights action. The match has it's little moments but you can tell they are feeding into the nostalgia of The Shield. I wasn't around for that stuff. So at the end left feeling, okay what is next?

5) I wasn't sure how they were going to book this with Nia and Asuka on the same side. Smackdown having a bit of a lackluster lineup as far as star power goes. This was more interesting and intriguing with Charlotte on the team. Alexa vs Natalya would have been fine this should be one of your bigger matches but that one little change really hurt this match.
I was hoping for the creation of Nia and Asuka as a tag team. Like Roode I am not getting this face Asuka. Instead we get kind of a correction to the wonky setup of Asuka. I like the correction and they need to take note stop having people rely on one finisher. Loved how each elimination from Asuka was a different finisher.

On paper they seemed to correct this ppv as they built to it. This first half of the ppv has been pretty well on the middle but teasing a downward slope.

9:21 PM  
Blogger Yerfuneral said...

6) The crowd got me to pay attention. Was going to take a break of paying attention because of two guys I could care less about and the drastic size difference. They are both heels so the fans getting so behind Miz made me put my phone down to see if I was missing anything.
Psychology of the match seemed right with the size difference and in the end the size/power couldn't be stopped. Didn't hate the match but didn't change my opinion of either guy.

7) Another heel vs heel. That normally would have worried me but both teams are solid teams that have been tagging together for awhile so I expected it to be a solid back and forth affair and got what I wanted.

8) I just realized the size difference in these single championships are so different. Like the Miz/Corbin they got the psychology right to make up for this, but a more back/forth affair, and both ladies shouting things at each other in the match. Put together really well. I do still kind of wish it was Natalya because the 5 on 5 should have been a bigger match but another heel on heel would have made the pit bull and venom of Alexa Bliss really weird. Great match but not enough to save what has been a luke warm show. We will see what the two main event matches can do.

9) If for some reason you question AJ Styles being one of the best wrestlers in the world because of some of the weirdness to the Kevin Owens feud etc of late this match will help you understand why people think so. I actually liked the promo build up they were having with Jinder/Brock but good choice making the title switch to get AJ in this position. Loved how Styles to me tried best constantly to keep himself close to the ropes because he knew the power of Lesnar. The psychology and execution of the match were ace.
If you would have told me this last year I would look forward to Brock matches I would think you were crazy. This part timer thing helps because I am not seeing him constantly and I imagine I left watching wrestling when he was still green when it came to wrestling entertainment. The only need for one F5 still bugs me but this card between these last two championship matches is up righting thing and saving the day.

10) The star power and strengths are abit closer with these two teams but the Monster Among Men and bump machine that is the kid of the owner definitely left a feeling more in favor for team RAW out of the gate.
This match had a weird psychology to me. I admit haven't seen a proper Survivor Series match in year but was scratching my head a lot.
Such a slow pace at first I didn't get it. Attempt at Shinsuke course correcting? Trying to get so of those things that crowd pops for like the DX crotchshot out of the way? Took so long for even one pin attempt. That had been a plus of this show nothing felt to long or to short to this point. Then it became a mess but it is a way to take Strowman out of the action before letting the guy who less needs to go on a bit of a tear, Cena. Left with veterans without really building up the newer guys but Strowman returns. I thought he got counted out like Nia Jax but thats what the cluster from early created where had no clue who was legal. Why isn't Shane being counted out? This is what the count out of Nia earlier creates. 3 on 1 where Shanes only chance is team RAW imploding. We gets hints of that then I get visions of Russo and Flair with that prolonged ankle lock (at least he sells it unlike Russo and the figure 4) before the HHH quest for glory. What the hell did I just watch. Like Strowman's look after the match I don't get what I just seen before we get a send the fans happy moment to make up for the screwiness.

The 5 on 5's were far from the best in the show. The two singles championship matches ruled. The rest of the card was okay to meah. Should have gone in with the same low expectations I had for Justice League (which fed my inner child nicely) because on paper looked like a decent show but in the end was nowhere decent. NXT was again the better of the two shows for the weekend.

11:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Surprised that the women's singles match is getting any love. Thought it was one of the worse matches of the night.

1:13 AM  

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