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Survivor Series is a WWE Pay-Per-View event with many years of history behind it. The show was first held in 1987, a few months after WrestleMania III. That made Survivor Series the second of the "big four" PPVs that WWE became known for (SummerSlam would follow in 1988 and Royal Rumble debuted in 1989). Over the last 33 years, the focus has shifted away from the original concept of 5-on-5 elimination tag team matches and the show is generally a regular PPV with only one or two of those elimination-style matches.
This year is the first Survivor Series that will feature a World Title match since 2015, as WWE has put a majority of the focus on the brand versus brand story. Rey Mysterio vs. Brock Lesnar has the chance to be an extremely good match since in recent years Brock has had some outstanding matches with smaller men. He did it with AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, and Finn Balor recently, and Rey could be the next on that list.
Could the Mysterio vs. Lesnar match end up on a list like this next year? We'll have to wait and see. Until then, these are the top 5 World Title matches in Survivor Series history.
#5 Hulk Hogan (C) vs. The Undertaker (1991)
Owing to the original concept of Survivor Series being based on 4-on-4 and 5-on-5 elimination tag matches, the first four editions of the show did not feature a match for the WWE Championship. The fifth Survivor Series was a special event, however. It was the one-year anniversary of the debut of The Undertaker, who was brought in as the fifth man for an elimination match by Ted DiBiase.
One year later, The Undertaker had gained a lot of momentum as he was billed as undefeated, and therefore found himself challenging Hulk Hogan for the WWE Championship.
The match itself wasn't very good, but Undertaker defeating Hogan to win the title at that point did two things. One, it showed signs that the fans weren't as madly in love with Hogan as they had been before, as the live audience cheered for The Deadman's victory, and two, the chaos surrounding this match and the subsequent rematch a few days later led to the championship being vacated.
The title being held up with no champion led to WWE putting the championship on the line in the following month's Royal Rumble match. That, of course, was the famous 1992 Royal Rumble that saw Ric Flair win the belt and then cut the legendary "with a tear in my eye" promo.
'Taker vs. Hogan wasn't what you would call a "barnburner" or "slobberknocker" or "banger" (which I believe is the preferred term for the kids today), but the result started a chain reaction that would change the company massively.
#4 Randy Orton (C) vs. Shawn Michaels (2007)
Randy Orton attacked Shawn Michaels in early May, destroying him with the infamous "punt' that had grown a very dangerous legacy. It gave HBK a concussion (in real life, Shawn was about to take some time off for a knee injury -- a real one, not one that would cause a man to lose his smile), and caused him to collapse during their match at Judgment Day.
Michaels would return about five months later and was chosen as Orton's challenger for the WWE Championship at Cyber Sunday. Orton would retain his title by hitting a low blow and getting disqualified. This led to a stipulation for their match at Survivor Series. Michaels hit Orton with the Sweet Chin Music countless times in October and November, so that move was banned in the match. On the opposite end, because of his blatant cheating to get disqualified to keep the title, Orton would be able to lose the belt if he was disqualified.
This was a great match, with Michaels having to use several different tactics to try to win the WWE Championship. He stuck to mainly submission attempts, which helped him avoid using his usual offense, all of which would usually set up the Sweet Chin Music. It very nearly worked, but at the end, after being unable to force the younger, stronger champion to submit, Shawn made a grave mistake.
Out of frustration and a bit of instinct, he tuned the band and went for the Sweet Chin Music, only to hesitate when he realized it would lose him the match. That brief hesitation allowed Orton to recover and nail him with the RKO and hold onto the title. Just fantastic work from both men, with Shawn working a much different style than usual, which not only made it great, but also made the match feel more important.
#3 Bret Hart (C) vs. Shawn Michaels (1992)
Michaels shows up for the second time on this list, except this time he's 15 years younger and almost four years away from winning his first WWE Championship (against Hart, as it would turn out). This match was leagues better than their encounter five years later in Montreal and arguably better than their Iron Man match at WrestleMania XII, where HBK would win his first WWE Championship.
To give some perspective to this match, Shawn Michaels wasn't using the superkick as his finisher yet. He was using it, but it didn't win a match for him for quite a while. As for Bret, this is one of his first title defenses, as he is only about a month and a half into his first reign as WWE Champion.
Think about what you would expect from Bret Hart at his peak and Shawn Michaels as a young kid who soaks up everything with a sponge... and he's in the ring with The Hitman, one of the best in-ring sponge-fillers in wrestling history. Bret was 35 and Shawn was 27 when this match happened, and Bret had been in the business for more than twice as long as Shawn.
This wasn't the HBK we grew to know by the end of 1994 and for the rest of his career. This was the young kid trying to slip into a spot that in storyline (and probably in life) wasn't ready for. He showed the world that while he wasn't there just yet, the name Shawn Michaels was going to down in the history of the sport as one of the best and most important wrestlers of all time. Both men did, and this match is arguably the best-televised match they have ever had against each other.
#2 Bret Hart vs. Bob Backlund (1994)
The backlash for the end of this match was, especially for its time, pretty huge. It was doubled by what happened just three days later. Imagine if Twitter was around when the face of WWE, Bret Hart, was defending his title, on one of the biggest shows of the year, against a guy who, outside of a handful of matches in different promotions, had not been a truly active wrestler for 10 years.
The age gap wasn't huge. Hart had recently turned 37 and lost the WWE Title to Backlund had recently turned 45. Backlund, just three days later, lost it to Diesel, who was 35.
For perspective, when AJ Styles won the WWE Championship for the first time he was 39. He beat Dean Ambrose, who was 30, and lost the title to John Cena, who was 40. These two series of events are almost exactly 23 years apart, and nobody really batted an eye.
Getting past that little math/history lesson -- Hart versus Backlund. It's 1994. Backlund has been gone for a decade and was being considered as an old man in a young man's sport. Bret defended the WWE Title against Backlund in the summer in a match billed as "Old Generation vs. New Generation", and Backlund was unable to win the title.
At one point he thought he won and his celebration ended up costing him the match. That led to the crazy Mr. Bob Backlund character that most people who have been watching wrestling for the last 25 years or so (most of us kids) know.
After months of going crazy, then acting normal, crazy, normal, ad nauseum, his past got the best of him and he once again became the challenger for Bret's WWE Title. This time it was a special submission match in which the only way to win was to incapacitate your opponent to the point where their cornerman would have to throw in the towel. It was based off of the way he lost the WWE Title in 1983, when he didn't submit, but instead lost because his manager threw in the towel.
The two men put on an absolute classic match, with technical wrestling, intensity, submissions, and the kind of ring psychology that only two masters like Hart and Backlund could create.
#1 First-Ever Elimination Chamber Match (2002)
This may be a somewhat controversial choice for No.1, as both of the Bret Hart matches on the list may be technically better traditional professional wrestling matches, but the point of the Elimination Chamber was to be anything but traditional.
Just a little over two months into his reign as the new World Heavyweight Champion, Triple H was put into one heck of a predicament. He had to face five of the men who hated him the most in one match. It wasn't a handicap match, as it was every man for himself, but he did have to survive five others to keep his title. Spoiler: he didn't.
Shawn Michaels returned from a four-year absence and was almost immediately attacked by Triple H, who nearly crippled him. After Michaels beat him in a match, Triple H hit him with a sledgehammer and darn near killed him. Rob Van Dam had spent the past month being belittled by the champion and taking cheapshot after cheapshot from Ric Flair.
Kane was utterly humiliated by Triple H (in the heinous 2002 storyline, not to mention what DX did to him a few years prior). Chris Jericho had spent the majority of his WWE career under the thumb of Triple H, both in real life and on-screen.
He was treated like an afterthought by Triple H and a second-class citizen by the company. Booker T was still a few months away from his horrific interactions with The Game, but he was super hot at the time and thus got the final spot in the match.
As for the match itself, it was incredible. It may not be the best Elimination Chamber match, but one could certainly make the argument that it is. Nobody had ever seen anything like it before. The structure looked just as amazing and scary as Eric Bischoff promised. The Superstars took chances and nearly destroyed their bodies fighting for the title (RVD hit Triple H with a Frog Splash from one of the pods and crushed the man's larynx, and he finished the match!) and it was a spectacle unlike anything we had seen before.
The heavy favourites in the match were Triple H and Shawn Michaels. At the time it wasn't absolutely impossible for any of the other 4 men to win the title, and many actually thought Jericho or Booker T might end up with the gold. At the end of the night, the final two men left in the ring were Triple H and Shawn Michaels. They had a fantastic 10-minute match as the final two competitors to end the 40-minute long contest, and Shawn Michaels, against all odds, became World Heavyweight Champion.
He only held the title for a month, but it signalled the likely return of HBK, something nobody thought possible even a month earlier. He would go on to wrestle for another eight years, wowing a whole new generation of fans.
Have you checked out Sportskeeda's new feature here? Vote for your favourite match at this location, folks.
