I’m a big fan of Survivor Series, especially the 5 on 5 elimination matches. I love seeing wrestlers come together and form teams to battle each other and see who stands on top. I also love the War Games matches where you can take teams of 4 or 5 and do battle inside two rings covered in a steel cage. So with the WWE putting on the Survivor Series and NXT putting on a War Games themed Takeover event the day before, I was in heaven!
But did they make it more confusing and harder to keep straight what was going on for either show?
Survivor Series had both men and women teams in those big three-way matches going on. It didn’t help matters much when the men’s NXT team wasn’t even announced beforehand. Meanwhile, NXT was preparing for both War Games matches on the Takeover show the night before and were focused more on those matches than any kind of team to send against Raw and Smackdown. War Games should be on the minds of most of the wrestlers but didn’t anybody want to be on the Survivor Series teams? Especially after the invasions and the battles and fights the rosters had in the weeks leading up to Survivor Series itself.
NXT didn’t really help matters any with Chiampa’s team not even being fully formed by the time the men’s War Games match took place. I’m guessing a number of those paying attention to that match were expecting Johhny Gargano but for some reason, it was Kevin Owens. Normally I would say that that was not a bad choice, except Kevin Owens wrestles on RAW and that goes against pretty much what this whole thing was about.
Similar to that was during all these run-ins and fights to see how many of these guys and girls came from NXT. I laughed when NXT, RAW, and Smackdown started fighting and guys like Riccocet and The Street Profits come out defending the Raw brand like they had been there for years.
It seems confusing when Trip[le H himself cuts a big speech (that harkens back to forming the new DX after Wrestlemania 14) and creating an army and going to war and then having the WWE expect fans to not notice that many of the guys on the Raw and Smackdown sides were from NXT too and having Kevin Owens show up on an NXT Event and climb into War Games doesn’t really show sides are that solid.
Of course, the WWE will say that we as fans shouldn’t think about stuff like that and just take what we are presented. An attitude like that will make me think of another Invasion. One that was in 2001. Maybe you have heard of that one.
