The big thing that will be taken away from tonight’s Survivor Series will undoubtedly be the “return” or I guess you could say the debut of Sting. Sting has been away from the big leagues for an awfully long time (no, we don’t count TNA, sorry) and tonight, for the first time ever, Sting set foot in a WWE live event and made his presence felt.
In a way, the leak of Sting showing up kind of ruined the end of the main event for a lot of people, because the original rumor was that Sting would come onto television in a possible authority figure role. Then when we heard that Sting was going to show up tonight, well, it seemed very clear that he was going to get involved and that Team Cena would win the match no matter what.
That is exactly what happened, which, had its ups and downs. The event as a whole felt kind of like an episode of Raw, which shows what their priorities were with this “free” PPV that some schmucks still had to pay for. Even so, the main event was an exciting match and the Ambrose/Wyatt match set up what should be a really cool rematch between the two.
Let’s break down the show.
Miz and Mizdow are New Tag Team Champions
It was a clusterf*ck of a 4-way Tag Team match and the fans got what they wanted in Damian Mizdow being recognized for his excellence by both him and the Miz winning over Gold/Stardust, The Usos and Los Matadors. This was pretty much exactly the match that you’d expect, with Goldust taking a tower of doom spot, laying him out for an Uso splash, only for Miz to tag himself in, then dispose of said Uso. Mizdow stole the tag from Miz and pinned Goldust to win the titles.
The fans were way into Mizdow and were chanting for him well into the next match.
Team Fox Beats Team Paige and My God Was This Bad
My wife was watching with me, she watches Total Divas but does not like wrestling. She will often say that it’s too bad the women don’t get more of a shot to shine on television, then she watched this match with me and understood why most of them aren’t featured that heavily in anything involving wrestling because of how sloppy and awful a lot of this match was.
This match was bad. The entirety of Team Fox was intact and Paige was the last woman on her team.
Bray Wyatt and Dean Ambrose Set Up for a TLC Match
I didn’t have high expectations for this match at all. The lead up to it was just kind of flat and uninteresting, but when the match started heating up it all of a sudden became a whole lot more exciting. They were just beating the crap out of each other, leading to Bray doing an uranage slam on the steps outside on Dean and Dean still kicking out.
The story was that Dean was never going to give up or be pinned and Wyatt grabbed the mic and told Dean that he doesn’t have to do this, that they could have ruled the world together, but Dean chose the wrong path. He then brought a few chairs into the ring and did the same mind games that he did with John Cena, only to forget that Dean Ambrose isn’t John Cena and just doesn’t care. Ambrose nailed Wyatt with a chair, put him through a table and then littered the ring with chairs and tables before pulling out a ladder and standing atop of it to taunt the down and out Wyatt.
The Bunny is Evil, Okay?
Adam Rose and “The Bunny” pinned Heath Slater and Titus O’Neil in a nothing match, the big takeaway being that the Bunny took the fall and refused to tag in Adam. Then the Bunny did Adam’s post-match celebration of falling off the ropes into the “Rosebuds” loving arms all while focusing on how pissed off Adam Rose looked.
If this leads to anything resembling Leo Kruger on WWE TV then his career will hopefully take off a bit more.
Nikki Bella is YOUR Diva’s Champion
This wasn’t even a match, really. This was just weird and fans the flames of the rumor that AJ Lee will be leaving the WWE shortly. Brie Bella hopped up on the ring apron holding the Diva’s title in her hand, which distracted AJ. Brie then planted a kiss on AJ, which distracted her and led to Nikki hitting the Rack Attack to win the title.
Brie also looked happy throughout, which was some of the weirdest stuff out there. I don’t know.
Team Cena Triumphs Over Team Authority Thanks to Sting
I’m not gonna lie, this was a great Survivor Series tag match. The match started off with a bang with Big Show facing down Mark Henry. Henry turned to his teammates to get pumped up, turned around and ran into a knockout punch from the Big Show. From there the pace was set that Cena’s team had the lead and the Authority were willing to pull out the stops to make things turn in their favor.
THE BIG GUY was the next to fall, working over Ryback only for trickery to come into play and for Rollins to hit the Curb Stomp on him and Rusev picked up the fall. Rusev had to get eliminated eventually if Team Authority was to lose, so WWE opted to give him his first loss via countout, which happened after he went for a monster splash on Dolp Ziggler sprawled out on the spanish announce table. Dolph moved and Rusev went through the table and was unable to get to the ring in time.
Harper and Rowan went at it for a while before Harper was able to get the better of his former teammate with a huge lariat. Big Show and Dolph were all that was left, with Ziggler laid out on the ground still hurt. This meant we had a three-on-three situation, but only two of Team Cena were in the ring. There was a staredown that ended with Big Show laying out John Cena with the knockout punch, letting Seth Rollins pick up the pinfall while Big Show walked over to Triple H, shook his hand and walked off to accept the countout.
This left Dolph. There were two clear finishes here, the first being that Dolph eliminates Kane and maybe Harper, then loses to Rollins. The Second was that Dolph rallies and wins the whole damned thing. That one was very, very unlikely, though, right?
Dolph was down but not out, able to fend off the assault from Kane and pin him clean after the Zig Zag. This led to Harper just beating the crap out of Dolph until Dolph pulled off a hail mary rollup for the three count. Now it was down to just Rollins and Dolph and when the Authority thought things weren’t going well for them they truly did pull out all the stops. Mercury and Noble got involved, Dolph hit the Zig Zag and should have won, but Triple H pulled the ref out.
They went back and forth some more, only for Dolph to once again have Rollins beat, only for there to be no ref. A new ref ran down to the ring only for Triple H to jump into the ring and break up the count by hitting the ref. From there Triple H started working over Dolph, hitting the Pedigree and positioning Rollins on top of Ziggler.
This brought out ref Scott Armstrong, whom if you’ll remember, was on the Authority’s payroll (isn’t everyone supposed to be, though, technically?) from a while back with Daniel Bryan’s whole saga who went to make the count only for the lights to go out. A crow’s caw echoed through the arena and yes, there he was, all 55 years of Steve Borden coming to the ring as Sting. He quickly dispatched Armstrong with a punch, then got into the ring where he and Triple H had a long staredown. Sting broke the silence with a kick to the gut, which Triple H sold like death, then into a Scorpion Death Drop. People give Triple H a lot of shit, but he was clearly in a million times better shape than Sting and sold like crazy for him, which was admirable. Sting then positioned Ziggler on top of Rollins, a new ref ran down and counted the three count for Ziggler.
I would have liked to have seen Ziggler get a clean win here, but seeing Sting in a WWE ring finally was a bit of a surreal experience.
