WWE Survivor Series 2020
November 22, 2020
Amway Center (ThunderDome)
Orlando, Florida

Watch: WWE Network

Meet our reviewers: 

Steve Case: It’s been a minute, but only THE SURVIVOR SERIES CLASH FOR BRAND SUPREMACY CHAMPIONS VS CHAMPIONS ELECTRIC BOOGALOO can bring Steve back in the review game from trying to be a homeowner. Bonus points if the red team beats the blue team on this night for….reasons. Follow Steve on Twitter @Coachcase44.

Sean Sedor: Now that the NASCAR season is over, Sean doesn’t have much else happening on Sundays, so he decided to hop on this review. Truthfully, WWE PPV’s are the only way Sean keeps up with the main roster WWE product these days (besides reading on Twitter about the sheer stupidity of RAW and SmackDown every week). You can follow Sean on Twitter @SASedor2994, and you can check out his YouTube channel (just search his name) for some F1 video game content.

Cross-Brand Battle Royal – Winner: The Miz (RAW)

Steve: The Gobbledy Gooker has still got it. I tune in to the show to catch the pre show match and review it for you fine (?) people and get a 24/7 angle that leads to the Gooker winning the title. STRONG start. 

Oh Ricochet. Glad you’re living your dream not even getting an entrance on a pre show battle royal. Carillo’s gear is dangerously close to El Matador era Tito Santana. Dolph is wearing his hat backwards like every dude in their early 40’s trying to cling to coolness. Nakamura looks like he just got inspired by Blades of Glory. Shelton just KILLED Ricochet with a V Trigger like knee while he was on the apron. Cool spot. The Miz still has his ‘09 Team RAW shirt. Elias is Randy Savage + 80’s workout model + Memphis street singer – wrestling talent. There’s five men left and I’ve now realized Chad Gable still exists. They haven’t called him Shorty 70 times so they’ve thankfully dropped that crap. Dominik looks like he should be working the late 90’s indies tagging with Dirtbike Kid. Gable/Dominik is a cool final two at least. This would matter if it were ten years ago. Just as I say that, Dominik and Gable were apparently not the final two. After Dominik eliminates Gable, Miz comes back in and throws him over for the win. Maybe he was onto something with his ‘09 Team Raw shirt. This was your standard battle royal that would have been cooler had Miz not won. **1/4

Sean: I had this one on mute because I was listening to today’s Wrestling Observer Radio. Rey Mysterio was one of the guys who got an actual entrance, and it was at this moment that I was amazed that he was in the pre-show battle royal. Morrison got tossed out almost immediately. I hope that guy is enjoying his paychecks, because he’s done jack shit since he came back. Then Mysterio got eliminated a minute or two later, and again….I hope he’s enjoying those fat WWE paychecks!! This is followed up by an AWESOME elimination sequence with Cedric Alexander getting eliminated after Ricochet nailed him with a half-nelson suplex on the apron, followed by Shelton Benjamin KILLING Ricochet with a flying knee for another elimination. That was pretty sick. The final four were Jeff Hardy (who didn’t even get an entrance), The Miz, Chad Gable, and Dominik Mysterio. After Hardy got eliminated, The Miz rolled underneath the bottom rope after a kick from Dominik. Once Dominik eliminated Gable, The Miz ran in and tossed out Dominik for the win. A lame WWE battle royal finish that you saw coming a mile away as soon as they showed The Miz getting sent under the bottom rope. As a battle royal, it was ever WWE battle royal you’ve ever seen. **1/4 

Team Raw (AJ Styles, Keith Lee, Sheamus, Braun Strowman, & Riddle) def. Team SmackDown (Kevin Owens, Jey Uso, King Corbin, Seth Rollins, & Otis)

Steve: This match last year should have made Keith Lee a star, coupled with his Royal Rumble performance opposite Lesnar. Now here he is in the shadow of BRAUN and whatever an Omos is. Is Otis working a mechanic gimmick now or something? This match is full of WWE booking failures if you really look at it. Owens, Braun, Seth, Lee, and Riddle (allegations not withstanding) should all have been big stars. Otis for whatever reason won MITB. Sheamus is a solid guy who should have never been on top. King Corbin exists. 

Seth Rollins sacrificed himself to a Brogue Kick for maternity leave for the first big moment of the match. After a long beatdown of Otis, Owens goes on a stunner spree to breathe some life into this match….and is then immediately eliminated by AJ. Corbin then goes on a run for team Smackdown, which does the opposite of bringing life to the match, but is quickly eliminated by Riddle. If they let Otis be a hoss, he could probably rule in some capacity. But he’s a goof and in WWE so kiss that goodbye. After running wild a bit, Braun eventually gets the best of Otis and after Jey is caught by Lee in a fireman’s carry into a Spirit Bomb, we have a red wave on this show for reasons unrelated to anything happening in the world. I have no way of knowing that’s why this was done, but none of you would be surprised, would you? This was a fine match that no one will remember in 15 minutes. **1/2

Sean: So Jordan Omogbehin, the bodyguard for AJ Styles (the former giant ninja and the former bouncer for RAW Underground) was finally given a name…..Omos. Anyway, it’s Survivor Series, which means the T-Shirts are out! T-Shirt Wars 2k20 baby! The first few minutes saw some fine back and forth, but then Seth Rollins got tagged in. He gets on his knees, tells Sheamus to do his worst, he eats a Brogue Kick, and gets pinned. Best of luck with your first child, Seth! See you in a few months. We then got a quick series of eliminations. Owens ran wild with stunners before getting eliminated by Styles, and then Riddle eliminated Corbin a minute or so later.

Otis had his chance to run wild on Team RAW before eventually getting eliminated by Braun Strowman. They left Jey Uso all alone in a five-on-one situation. He ran wild for a bit before he, like all of his other teammates, was eliminated, as he ate a Spirit Bomb from Keith Lee for the pin. I guess this match paid off the story surrounding Team RAW with all of their bickering over the last few weeks, as they ultimately got the clean sweep of Team SmackDown. The wrestling throughout was perfectly fine, but it’s the type of match you’ll immediately forget about tomorrow morning. ***1/4 

SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford) def. RAW Tag Team Champions The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods)

Steve: I don’t care about Gears of War. I don’t care about how The Street Profits feel about The Undertaker. These two teams can have a great match. That is what I want. At least there were no pancakes. 

Montez is sporting a tremendous Soul Glow look and a Michael Jackson glove for some reason. Really good seeing Woods healthy. He brings so much energy and puts everything he has into everything he does. This was a paint by numbers tag match until Dawkins got a hot tag and came in like a house of fire! That was a great hot tag! The Profits would then take control and work over Woods with some good tandem offense, including a sweet assisted sliced bread from Ford off Dawkins’ chest. Things continued to build from there with a ton of back and forth and nearfalls. In a cool moment, Ford ducked a Trouble in Paradise and hit one of his own on Kofi, making me think tht Ford could be a way better version of Kofi. The match ended with a super blockbuster to Woods from Ford off of Dawkins’ shoulders. This started slow, but built into a real good match by the end. Easily best of the show so far. ***1/2

Sean: New Day came out in their Gears Of War 5 attire (since they’ve recently been added as playable characters in that game), which was actually pretty cool. We then had The Street Profits cutting a big promo backstage before their entrance. Hey…remember last month during the WWE Draft when these two teams literally swapped Tag Team Titles after they both got drafted. Total WCW 2000 hours right there. This bout had a ton of potential on paper, and when the dust settled, it ended up being pretty good. It wasn’t great by any means, but there was good action throughout, and with two babyface teams in there, we got a clean finish as The Street Profits beat Xavier Woods with Powerbomb/Blockbuster combo. I honestly don’t have much to say beyond that. Enjoyable match! ***1/2 

WWE United States Champion Bobby Lashley (with The Hurt Business) def. WWE Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn

Steve: The Hurt Business has a cool entrance and look, all dressed in suits. At least there’s that. Last I saw Sami, he was in my WWE MOTY by a mile so I have some hope for this. Lashley is at his best when he’s kicking ass and Sami is at his best bumping and getting his ass kicked, so this is going well so far. We get a tease of the old, great Sami vertigo storyline, but thankfully that lasted one rollup kickout. This was essentially an extended squash for Lashley. It was fine, and I thought it was going somewhere cool, but alas. A trip over MVP’s foot and a flat finish later, we are moving on. **1/4

Sean: Dave Meltzer has brought this point up about Bobby Lashley a lot over the last several weeks, and I think it’s an interesting one. WWE has seemingly been hell bent on protecting Bobby Lashley for the last few months, but we have no idea why he’s being protected, and no indication that he’s actually being built for anything. I guess it doesn’t matter that much. This is WWE, a company where their weekly main roster TV shows (more often than not) get re-written as the shows are happening, because the 75 Year Old crazy person running the show keeps tearing up the format hours beforehand.

Anyway, the dynamics of this match are very weird. You have two heel mid-card champions facing off, and the one that has his entire stable in his corner is being presented as the babyface (at least on commentary), while the guy who is outnumbered is clearly the chickenshit heel. It’s all a complete mess, and I couldn’t give two shits about this match. If this was happening in front of an actual crowd, it would’ve either been met with complete silence, or it would’ve gotten the crowd chanting everything under the sun (“Boring”, “AEW”, etc.). A complete nothing match that we had no reason to care about. *1/2 

SmackDown Women’s Champion Sasha Banks def. RAW Women’s Champion Asuka

Steve: I don’t have a whole lot to say about this match other than it was a damn good pro wrestling match. These are two of the best female wrestlers in the world who were given plenty of time to go out and have a match with no shenanigans. Think of the best Asuka/Sasha match you can imagine, and this was a couple notches below that. You could tell they were holding back, but what we got was still pretty damn good. The finish saw both go through some great nearfall pin counters, until Sasha finally caught Asuka. Great match that protects both while not sacrificing the quality of the match. ****

Sean: These two had a feud over the RAW Women’s Title earlier this year that was marred by absolutely horrible booking. Fortunately, there was no BS this time around, as they had a very clean match that saw Sasha Banks pick up the win over Asuka during a series of back-and-forth pin exchanges. I found this to be very similar to the New Day/Street Profits match. Really good action throughout (though not necessarily great), and we got a clean finish in the end. Could it have been better? Sure. These two have had at least one match (maybe two) that were better than this. Still, this was easily the best match on the show, up to this point. ***3/4  

Team Raw (Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Lana, Lacey Evans, & Peyton Royce) def. Team SmackDown (Bayley, Bianca Belair, Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, & Natalya)

Steve: This RAW team has to be up there as one of the absolute worst Survivor Series teams ever assembled. WOOF. The action in this match has been pretty solid in this so far even if none of it really matters much. The Lana story is the shits, but you take what you can get in this company. Of all the women in this match, BAYLEY is the one that goes out first. I mean good for her, this match includes Nia Jax so everyone is on borrowed time. We get blink-and-you-miss-them eliminations of Nattie and Peyton, leading to Bianca going on a little run. That is until she takes a Spanish Fly off the top rope from Lacey Evans. Ruby and Shayna have a good back and forth battle, until she’s choked out after trying the old Bret Hart/Roddy Piper finish. Morgan would hit Lacey with a nice crucifix bomb to eliminate her, only to eat a nasty Samoan Drop from Nia to leave Bianca left for her team. Bianca is able to show off her incredible athleticism and strength throughout this last run in the match. Shayna gets DQ’d due to choking Bianca out through the rope break five count. Nia and Bianca get counted out, leading to Lana being the sole survivor to progress this story. Decent match. A little better than the men’s match. **3/4

Sean: It still amazes me that this whole storyline with Lana is meant to make her some sort of super babyface. Like…..what kind of messed up logic is that? They wrestled for a bit with no eliminations, with the only real story being Lana getting bullied by the rest of Team RAW. There was a superplex onto the pile spot on the floor, and that eventually led to Peyton Royce getting a clean pinfall over Bayley for the first elimination (yes, you read that correctly). Her glory was short-lived, however, as Natalya tapped her out about a minute or so later. Then Natalya herself was eliminated by Lacey Evans.

Ruby Riott got eliminated in a unique manner, as even though Ruby had countered Shayna’s choke with a pin (the Bret Hart/Steve Austin spot), Nia Jax had the referee distracted, so Ruby still passed out, and Shayna pinned her. Liv Morgan eliminated Lacey Evans, but then was quickly eliminated by Nia Jax. This left Bianca Belair in a three-on-one situation, and it led to a DQ elimination (Shayna refusing to let go of a choke after Bianca got to the ropes) and a double countout elimination (for Bianca and Nia). This meant that Lana was the sole survivor for Team RAW after standing on the steps for the bulk of the match. I guess it was a clever finish in some respect, as you did kinda protect Bianca, Nia, and Shayna by not having them actually get pinned or submitted, while also continuing this Lana story. The problem is that I have zero reason to care about this Lana story. It’s all a bunch of nonsense. As for the match itself, I guess it was fine. **3/4 

WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns (with Paul Heyman) def. WWE Champion Drew McIntyre

Steve: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE! What is with the dumbass sword? They just can’t help themselves can they? This match should have been a big Mania main event two or three years ago. Cocky heel Roman vs badass babyface Drew. This company could mess up a wet dream. WWE main events are so plodding. These two are capable of a hossy athletic war. Instead we got about ten minutes of plodding lifeless work. Drew finally took control using his actual speed and agility, making a swinging neck breaker look like a high spot. From there these two started throwing bombs and it was exactly what I wanted. Roman looked to have control but Drew secured a kimura arm submission out of a spear counter in a great sequence. Roman got to the ropes and rolled outside. Drew attacked but was caught and Samoan Dropped through the announce table outside. He would then spear Drew through the barricade and rolled Drew in the ring for a great nearfall. Drew would try for a Claymore, only to be speared again by Roman. This nearfall got me. This rules now. Roman would set up for a final spear, but would get Claymored into the referee, taking him out. Jey Uso would run in, and Reigns would get a low blow before locking in a guillotine choke hold. McIntyre would pass out to give Roman the win. If we can get something like that or better in another one on one on a big show without the slow start, run in or ref bump, sign me up. The slower than molasses start and run in finish brought this down a bit for me, but still a damn good main event on a decent little wrestling show. ***3/4

Sean: So is the giant sword a permanent fixture of McIntyre’s entrance now? In other news, if you’re including the kickoff match (which I know is a dangerous thing to do, considering what happened two years ago when WWE told us the kickoff show doesn’t count), RAW has already won the battle for brand supremacy (they had a 4-2 lead coming into the main event). So this match effectively became meaningless before they even hit the ring.

After Reigns took control following the opening exchanges, the match did slow down a bit, but MAN did it pick up when McIntyre started his comeback. The second half of this match was legitimately awesome. Tons of back-and-forth action during this portion of the bout, with both men trading big moves, finisher counters, and so on. The story was that Reigns basically had to empty his entire arsenal to put McIntyre away, and even then, it wasn’t enough. McIntyre was able to survive A TON of punishment from Reigns, but in the end, interference from Jey Uso following a ref bump made the difference. Jey didn’t actually strike McIntyre, but it gave Reigns the opening to hit a low blow. He then locked on the guillotine choke, and a second referee came down to call the match official, as McIntyre passed out. The referee bump and the Jey Uso run-in definitely took things down a bit, but still, this was a pretty great match. They totally redeemed themselves from their subpar WrestleMania match from last year. ****

The Undertaker’s Final Farewell

Steve: I love the Undertaker. I’ve loved his career. I even loved a few of his comebacks. I watched the Last Ride and enjoyed it. But this nonsense has to stop. It’s done. It’s sad. It’s meaningless and a waste of time. Shane McMahon, The Big Show, JBL, Mankind, Jeff Hardy,The Godfather, The Godwins, Savio Vega, Rikishi, Kevin Nash,JBL, Booker T, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, HHH, and Kane round out the group to celebrate. Really wish it was naked Mideon and now Phineas O, but I digress. We then get the same video package you’ve seen for three years now. We now cut to Vinny Mac himself talking about Taker in the ring, getting a little choked up. He introduces the Undertaker, and we get his Tecmo-Bowl theme? What was that? FINALLY we get The Undertaker entrance. He even gets a platform that lifts him above the ring post! The crowd noise and fake chanting makes this so painful. He goes on to say it’s time The Undertaker Rest……In…….Peaceeeeeeeee. We even get a Paul Bearer hologram, which was creepy. He kneeled in a spotlight for a long time and left the ring. He raised his arm at the top of the ramp and that was that. Not sure what that accomplished, but hopefully that is truly it. 

Sean: I signed up to review wrestling matches…..not a retirement ceremony, but I guess I’ll join in here with Steve. The luminaries for this ceremony included Shane McMahon, Big Show, JBL, Mick Foley, Jeff Hardy, The Godfather, The Godwinns, Savio Vego, Rikishi, Kevin Nash, Booker T, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, Triple H, and Kane (who was dressed in his wrestling gear, God Bless him….). This transitioned into a video highlighting The Undertaker’s career, set to “Now That We’re Dead” by Metallica. We return with Vince McMahon (who looks SO OLD) by himself in the ring, and he gives a little speech before introducing The Undertaker. This included a weird 8-Bit remix of his theme before transitioning into his actual theme for his entrance. The piped in crowd noise and chanting is turned up to eleven here, which isn’t much of a shock. He cuts a brief promo before we get him doing his kneeling pose with Paul Bearer on the screen. Taker then makes his exit, does his raised arm taunt, and leaves the stage as the show goes off the air. I was a little worried that The Fiend was going to show up at some point during this, but nope. This was a straight-up retirement ceremony. I really hope this is it for him. The Undertaker was one of my favorite wrestlers through the first nine or ten years of my fandom (I started watching in 2004), but it was time for him to finally hang it up (realistically, he should’ve retired several years ago). Go home and be with your family. Enjoy your life post-wrestling career. A nice little ceremony, all things considered.