PWInsider - WWE News, Wrestling News, WWE

 
 

WE HAVE OUR NEW WWE CHAMPION, CELEBRATING 25 YEARS OF UNDERTAKER, BREEZE & ZIGGLER FINALLY FACE OFF, THE DIVAS GO HARD & PHYSICAL, LUNATIC VS. PRIZEFIGHTER, REIGNS AND ALBERTO START THINGS OFF WITH A BANG, WWE'S RESPONSE TO THE THREATS & MORE: ONGOING WWE SURVIVOR SERIES BLOG

By Mike Johnson on 2015-11-22 22:46:00

Welcome to my ongoing blog looking at the 2015 WWE Survivor Series!

Due to issues with the WWE Network stream at my end, I only caught the last few minutes of the Elimination Tag during the Kickoff show but what I saw was solid.  I was really happy to see Goldust back in the ring. I've always liked the Elimination tags and in the past, have called upon WWE to go back and do a complete Series PPV using the tag concept, so I'll be going back to watch the match later.

How can there be four SOLE Survivors, by the way?

The Tyler Breeze Q&A was hardly informative but as a way to showcase the Breeze and Summer Rae personalities, I thought it was fine.  Let's hope WWE finally gets something going with Breeze.

They closed out with a nice video piece on The Undertaker and Kane vs. The Wyatt Family.  Amazing they never got around to telling us who they were fighting for the Wyatts tonight!

The Survivor Series PPV opened with Lilian Garcia singing the national anthem.  That's probably the classiest and best way to respond to the rumors of ISIS targeting the show's venue for an attack today.

The official open was a video on Undertaker's career that was great.

 first match on the PPV was Roman Reigns vs. Alberto Del Rio in the WWE World Heavyweight championship tournament semi-finals.  The announcers pushing tonight was all about whether Roman was finally going to become the man tonight.   Roman was showing off his power early but Del Rio tossed him out and worked him over in a physical manner.  Atlanta was pretty pro-Roman with lots of chants in his favor early on.  They showed HHH watching from a monitor backstage, so the story is going to be that HHH wants someone to be his "man" after Roman turned down the chance.  That makes sense as it gives them another storyline thread to weave over the course of the show beyond who's going to win the belt.  Roman begins to make a comeback but missed a charge into the corner.  ADR had been working over his shoulder and that just made it worse.  ADR continued the beating until Reigns teased the Superman Punch.  Alberto avoided and nailed the Backstabber.  Really nice near fall sequence.   They had another when Roman went for a spear only to be superkicked.  Del Rio used the cross armbreaker and held on even when Reigns powered him over the ropes.  Roman finally got the win with the spear.  ADR lost nothing here.  They took the audience on a night ride here.  Great opener.

Roman Reigns was interviewed by Jojo.  Dean Ambrose showed up and congratulated him and they teased the idea of them facing each other in the finals.  Kevin Owens showed up after Dean left and reminded Roman how close he's been to winning the belt before, only to fail.  Smart way to get the audience sympathetic and to try and get them to want to see the big chase come to fruition.  Owens was his usual good, smarmy self. 

The second semi-final was next as Dean Ambrose fought Kevin Owens.  This should be a good brawl unless they want the winner to save himself for later.  It was a really good, smashmouth bout early.  The idea was that Ambrose took the beating but kept coming back and kicking out.  Ambrose made the comeback and turned a Pop up powerbomb into a rana before hitting Dirty Deeds for the pin.  Another really good bout.

So, it's Roman vs. Ambrose for the belt.  As I reported last week in the Elite section (which you can subscribe to at www.pwinsiderelite.com right now), there was a big push in creative for Ambrose and as I said then, the only way it makes sense for him to get the belt would be if he turns and aligns himself with The Authority.  The stage is now set to see if that is indeed the case.

I really enjoyed the 8 bit WWE TLC commercial!

Next up was a Survivor Series tag.  It's so nice they added one to the PPV.  The teams were Ryback & Lucha Dragons & The Usos vs. The New Day & Sheamus & Bad News Barrett.  The work here could be good but WWE has given us no real reason to be emotionally invested here.  Xavier Woods had the most tremendous pompadour I've ever seen.  New Day had some great mic work coming down to the ring, with the punchline being Sheamus saying they were going to get "Jiggy with It."  The joke died.  The match itself was pretty good with a nice quadruple stereo dive to the outside at the same time, followed by Ryback of all people diving off the top onto the pile.  Big E killed with a spear through the ropes.  New Day felt he was hurt and took him to the back for "medical attention."  That was silly.  Sheamus fought alone against an Uso, Kalisto and Ryback and finally lost.  Good match but once New Day was gone, the crowd lost some interest.

No mention of the Reid Flair tackiness during the pre-match video for Charlotte vs. Paige.

Coverage continues on Page 2!


Page # [1][2][3]

If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!