When the Survivor Series match lost its appeal

[arthuradams2002]

We have heard the rumor that they are thinking of doing away with the Survivor Series concept and introducing a completely new gimmick PPV. Back when Survivor Series began in 1987, you didn't have every wrestler on the roster shown of TV every week. Plus, it was something special to see a whole bunch of various wrestlers in the ring at the same time. Nowdays, six mans and eight mans are usually what they do on the last show before the ppv. How many times do we see babyfaces from ppv matches 1,2,3 & 4 take on heels from ppv matches 1,2,3, & 4 ?

[sniper47]

To me, it got too predictable in the first decade of the 00's.

["Hollywood" Cactus Matt]

As much as I bash Vince Russo - and I do, a lot - he had a good thing going with his "give everyone something to do" plan. I remember in years prior, you'd have a feud or angle start just in time for Survivor Series, culminate in an elimination match at the PPV, and that was the end of that.

Nowadays, I'd love to see actual midcard feuds, but since those are hard to come by these days I guess it won't bother me too much to see it go, but I can only wonder what could have been...

[Steveweiser]

The death knell was the 10 man tag or whatever it was at Bragging Rights a month before Survivor Series. Sure, it wasn't elimination rules, but it was still a crap load of men in one match.

[allenfan69]

I loved it back in the days before Raw, when every guy didn't wrestle every guy. With the Survivor Series, you had the cool prospect of, "How will British Bulldog do against Ted Dibiase?" or something to that effect.

Now, though, most every matchup has been used, so the luster has been off Survivor Series for years.

[Deleted]

Personally, the DX/Rated RKO match will always be at the bottom of my list.

However, Survivor Series was originally built where every match used the PPV's match structure. Hell, there were even matches between two squads of 5 tag teams.

Eventually, though, the match that made the PPV was pushed to the mid-card, and fittingly enough, given more mid-carders.

Now, there were some unique takes on it lately, but the whole thing got predictable. Finally, "Bragging Rights" came along...

[MAGGLE]

Probably after 2005, after Smackdown vs Raw it all lost its meaning. I mean we just got faces vs heels and that with no build up after that.

[crash1984]

Survivor Series has always been about random teams vs. Random team but over the last few years rather than building it as a 5 vs. 5 match it has been built as a 2 vs 2, 1 vs.1, 1 vs.1, 1 vs.1 all in one match. What I mean by that is there is little effort to cross the fueds into one big one for instance look at the Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Jeff Hardy, CM Punk and Matt Hardy vs. Edge, Randy Orton, Johnny Nitro, Mike Knox and Gregory Helms match from Survivor Series 2006 and how it was built up or better yet how it was not built up.

To begin lets look at the feuds that those five guys were in. DX (HHH and HBK) were in one with Orton and Edge. Then Jeff Hardy and Johnny Nitro were also in one at the time. CM Punk and Mike Knox were in one as were Gregory Helms and Matt Hardy. So far so good. However this is where it turns bad. Rather than building it up as one big feud it was built up as three separate feuds in one match. Why was there not any stuff between say Gregory Helms and CM Punk or Edge and Matt Hardy? This has been the style of build up for nearly every Survivor Series match since 2006.

[FunkerCM]

Surivivor Series matches lost their appeal as soon as Raw went 2 hours and they were throwing random guys together in tag matches every Monday night.

The novelty of seeing guys like Jake Roberts, Ricky Steamboat and Jim Duggan teaming up just wasn't there any longer.

Shame really as for the first 2 years especially Survivor Series was outstanding.

[MolotovMocktail]

Switching to five man teams from four bogged it down, IMO. Four-man teams just seemed more balanced and cohesive.

The overabundance of gimmick PPV's and the fact that people from various teams would wrestle each other over the course of months rather than the Series being their first encounter also killed some of the luster.