Survivor Series 2017 Spotlight: Men’s Raw vs SmackDown Elimination Match

Holy star power wrestling fan. After looking for a while like it was going to be a really bland Survivor Series card, the changes in the last couple of weeks have produced a stacked show. There are 12 former world champions on the show, 8 former women’s or divas champions, 6 former NXT champions, and the only man on the show (including Curtis Axel and Bo Dallas) who has never held a title is Braun Strowman. However, even with the depth on the card, what a lot of people seem to be talking about this week is the ages of the participants in the top matches – in particular the Raw vs SmackDown 5-on-5 Elimination match.

SmackDown’s team consists of Shane McMahon (47), Randy Orton (37), Bobby Roode (40), Shinsuke Nakamura (37) and John Cena (40) for an average age of 40.2 years old. Raw’s team consists of Kurt Angle (48), Braun Strowman (34), Finn Balor (36), Samoa Joe (38) and Triple H (48) for an average age of 40.8. The issue that people have with the ages of performers is undoubtedly exacerbated by the other real main event – Brock Lesnar vs AJ Styles – also featuring two forty year olds.

I don’t care these guys are both 40, I haven’t been this excited for a WWE match in a long time!

TakeOver: WarGames Spotlight – McIntyre vs Almas

It’s just about time for TakeOver: WarGames! And I have to be a little honest, with the announcement that the WarGames match itself won’t have a roof on the cage, my excitement has diminished a little. That, to me, is what makes this not a WarGames match, rather than the other rule changes. So because of that, in this Spotlight I’m going to write about a championship that has become slightly secondary over the last couple of months – the NXT Championship.

I’m essentially going back to Bobby Roode’s reign here. He had a really strong run as champion, beating Shinsuke Nakamura for the title, and Roode always made sure to use the championship as a means to exemplify his control of the brand as it’s top guy. The lineage of the title, the quality of matches that have followed it, and touches like Roode establishing it as a prize worthy of everyone’s desires, they have all made it a coveted prize. But after five years of growth, for the first time, the NXT Championship has become secondary.

It was arguably the most coveted title in WWE at one stage, but now? Not so much…

An Introduction To WarGames

WarGames. It is a concept that hasn’t been used in nearly 20 years, but next weekend a cage will contain nine men inside two rings one more time. As someone who was around 18 months old when the last official WarGames match took place, it was something I’d only ever heard of, but it was always something that was talked about as being legendary. The concept was designed by the late, great Dusty Rhodes, and became something of a signature match for the Four Horseman, especially in the early days. There have been thirty official WarGames under the WCW (and later by extension the WWE) banner, I have watched eight of them from throughout the years. I thought I’d put together this article to give people who, like me, had never experienced the concept before, an idea of what to expect.

How It Works

The best way I can describe it to people only familiar with the post-WarGames era of wrestling is as a cross between Hell In A Cell and the Royal Rumble. As previously mentioned, the match features one cage covering two rings, and usually two battling teams of four or five. Traditionally, two men start the match and slug it out for five minutes. After five minutes, there is a coin toss, and whichever wins the coin toss can send a member from their team into the cage, giving their side a 2-on-1 advantage. After two minutes, that advantage is nullified and it becomes 2-on-2. The teams alternate between sending a man in every two minutes, with the team who won the coin toss always retaining the advantage. When the last man has entered the cage, a period called “The Match Beyond” begins, which basically just means the match can now end. There are no disqualifications, and until the later versions there were no pinfalls either, meaning the match could only end when someone “submits or surrenders”.

WWE Live Reflections

This is going to be one of the most disjointed columns I’ve published in a long time. Usually I like to write to make a point, to address one or two ideas through exemplification and analysis. There will be aspects of that here, but there were so many things I wanted to talk about it is a bit of a mish-mash of ideas. That is because last week, I went to the Raw house show in Glasgow and the Aberdeen house show in Aberdeen – and when you see so much, it gets you thinking about a lot of different things too.