Gimmick Some Lovin': The Survivor Series Match

My Rating

This move is almost a surefire way to add an extra star to any match's rating.

In the case of January 4, 1999 No Disqualification Match, I gave two different ratings, one for the action of the match itself and one for the match's place in storytelling and professional wrestling canon as a whole.

I'll be doing the same here, as the match means very different things on those two levels.

As a match, a self-contained demonstration of bell-to-bell storytelling, this one is stellar; it features incredible action (like the McMahon elbow drop or Strowman's manhandling of his smaller opponents), well-paced and well-planned eliminations, and some of Corey Graves' best commentary to date (I nearly fell off the treadmill on rewatching this one when he referred to David Otunga as "Jennifer Husband"). As an individual worked match, this one goes 9/10.

WWE would sadly never live up to the potential this picture shows.

However, this one doesn't exist in a vacuum, and its place in the overall WWE stories of 2016 and 2017 is problematic, to say the least.

Wyatt and Orton win the match for Smackdown, and celebrate with Harper as a united Family; the story was interesting at the time, and growing tension between Orton and Harper would only intensify the following month when the trio captured the blue brand's Tag Team Championships.

The story grew throughout the rest of the winter, with Orton outing himself as a double agent after Wyatt's World Championship victory in February, meaning that, ultimately, the finish of this contest was only a means to help set up, at best, the second-worst match at Wrestlemania 33.

Regardless of what the internet revolt would have been at the time, a Reigns victory would have worked far better with long-term storytelling, and at least would have been consistent with the character's story arc; ever since Mania, neither Orton nor Wyatt have done much of note, and their characters have not lived up to the boost this match's finish supposedly bestowed.

That wasted opportunity, in my mind, lowers this match's score to 6.5/10; it's still good by itself, but ultimately its aftermath squanders 54 minutes of fantastic wrestling.

Meltzer Says

Meltzer bestows a near-perfect 4.5 stars to this contest, but I'd be interested to see if his opinion is soured by current context as well. Another interesting aspect is that both men's elimination matches on this show (the match covered here and the ten-on-ten tag team contest) received four stars and change from wrestling's Roger Ebert.