Survivor Series 2005 took place at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, and for the first time in a few years, there was the right mix of new blood and experienced stars all working hard to put together a pretty good show. Michael Cole and Tazz were handling commentary for Smackdown, which was the last time Cole came off as a halfway decent announcer, while over on Raw you had Joey Styles, Jonathan Coachman, and Jerry Lawler, and even though Styles was ostensibly the lead announcer, Coach had no problem taking the lead and shutting down Styles every chance he got, and even Lawler seemed to enjoy taking a few shots at Styles. It was pretty obvious that Styles was not in his element in WWE even at this point, but much like Mike Adamle, they gave it the old college try before giving up the ghost, but I’m sure he’s much happier now running the website than he would be doing something low level like being the lead announcer on Raw and PPVs.
For the record, as I do these final columns, it will be the first time that I have ever watched the 2005, 2006, and 2007 Survivor Series shows, so this is all new to me and these columns will be pretty much written stream of consciousness as I watch them. Sound like fun? You betcha.
The Undercard
The show opened with the first match in a best of seven series for the United States Title between Booker T and Chris Benoit. As some of you longtime fans may recall, Benoit and Booker had a critically acclaimed best of seven series in WCW about seven years before this, and somebody decided that it’d be cool to have another series of matches just for the sake of great wrestling and put this together. The catalyst for this series was a disputed finish on an episode of Smackdown a couple of days before this when both men’s shoulders were down when the referee counted the fall, so to settle the dispute, Smackdown GM Teddy Long held up the US Title and ordered this best of seven series to fill it. Good match to start this second series, and Booker picked up the win to go up 1-0 when Benoit missed a headbutt off the top rope and Booker rolled him up and put his feet on the ropes.
After the first match, we get the infamous interview where Eric Bischoff was backstage telling Vince McMahon that he was going to screw John Cena tonight, then John Cena came over and made jokes about Bischoff screwing guys, and then Vince asked Cena “What’s up, my n-word?†Of course, he used the actual word and then sauntered away with a big smile on his face because he said the n-word on PPV and he strolled right past Booker T and Sharmell, and of course we got to then hear Booker T get off his “Tell me he did not just say that!†line.
After that little interlude, we go to Trish Stratus defending the Women’s Title against Melina, who had gotten MNM to kidnap Trish and not release her until Trish agreed to give Melina a title shot. MNM tried interfering, but the ref caught them and threw them out of the arena before they could do any damage, but the ref couldn’t stop the involvement of Mickie James. Mickie had just recently come to WWE and basically recycled the insane, obsessed gimmick Victoria had used a few years earlier, only she was obsessed with getting down lesbo style with Trish rather that destroy her. Melina had Trish out on the ring apron and went for a charge, but Mickie pulled Trish out of the way and allowed her to chick kick Melina and hit the Stratusfaction for the win.
Next up was the Last Man Standing match between Triple H and Intercontinental Champion Ric Flair, though as you might have surmised, the IC Title was not on the line. These two had of course been associated for several years and though they teased breaking up several times over the years, Triple H finally turned on Flair in vicious fashion earlier that fall. Flair defeated Triple H in a steel cage match at Taboo Tuesday, and this rematch was ordered by Eric Bischoff to settle the feud. Triple H jumped Flair in the aisle and from there the match spent as much time on the floor as it did in the ring. Weapons like a kendo stick and a chair found their way into the match, and Triple H pulled a screwdriver out of a toolbox at ringside and used it to gouge Flair’s forehead open, and Flair began bleeding a gusher. At one point, they did the gimmick from the Terry Funk I Quit match from 1989 where Triple H grabbed a mic and started insulting Flair and told him to quit and stay down. Without a doubt, this was a great match, but it was also sad to watch because Flair was obviously a shadow of what he used to be and you realize that at this point, the only way he could have a good match was if Triple H or Shawn Michaels carried him there. Triple H worked really hard to make Flair look likea million bucks, but Flair was still having trouble keeping up, and there was one spot where Triple H went for the Pedigree on the announce table and Flair was supposed to backdrop him onto the Spanish announce table, but it took him four or five tries to get Triple H over. Flair spent several minutes working over the legs and then put on the figure four and used the ropes for leverage, which was legal in this match, and had him locked in it for several more minutes, but still beat the count once Flair let him out. The match had an awesome finish where Triple H gave Flair three Pedigrees, but Flair ended up beating the count all three times, and finally Triple H had to go get his sledgehammer from underneath the ring and nail Flair with it to put him down for the 10 count. Even though Triple H picked up the win, this was a great match that got over the story that even though he was fighting a losing battle, Flair refused to give up no matter how much punishment he took. This was easily Flair’s best match in years and I would even put it up there with the Michaels match from Wrestlemania 24.
After that awesome match, we needed a little time to cool off the crowd, so Edge and Lita came out to announce their new interview segment, the Cutting Edge, and then started busting on some Detroit baseball player who was sitting at ringside, making cracks about baseball players using steroids (Hello, kettle? This is the pot) and then insulting the Detroit sports teams. Edge sent Lita down to get comments from th baseball guy, who started running down all the world championships the Detroit teams have won in various sports, then asked Edge where his world championships were. Edge got pissed off and walked out and that was that.
Up next was WWE Champion John Cena defending against Kurt Angle. This was still early in Cena’s run as a top guy, and in fact he hadn’t been put in many PPV headlining positions since winning the title, and even here he came out right in the middle of the show. Cena’s success as a top babyface was debatable at this point, as the crowd was initially split and doing “Let’s go Angle/Let’s go Cena†dueling chants, but then as the match wore on the crowd started chanting “Cena sucks†and even began booing any offensive moves he would do.
Anyway, the story here was that Angle was totally outclassing Cena every time out and was regularly beating him in non-title situations, but Cena was able to sneak out with the title every time Angle got a title shot. Eric Bischoff, as we covered earlier, was trying to screw Cena (ewww…), and to that end he allowed Angle to request his buddy Daivari to be the special guest referee for this match, and as you might imagine, Daivari’s officiating was totally biased, refusing to count Cena’s falls on Angle and kicking Cena’s hand off the bottom rope when Angle had him in the Angle Lock. Daivari ended up getting bumped to the floor, and a series of other referees came in to take his place, but Angle kept knocking all of them out. Finally, Smackdown official Charles Robinson came to the ring just as Cena caught Angle out of nowhere with the FU for the win.
Next, we moved on to a match between Raw GM Eric Bischoff and Smackdown GM Teddy Long. In order to make things fair, they had a referee from each show out there to officiate, and even had both shows’ ring announcers out there. This was a really bad match so I won’t break my butt recapping it, but the crowd was chanting “boring†almost from the beginning, and the match ended when everybody was distracted when the Boogeyman’s music hit and Boogeyman snuck in behind Bischoff, choked him out, and gave him the pump handle slam, then snuck back out as Teddy Long covered for the win.
The Main Event
The main event was the only traditional elimination match on this show as the Raw team of Shawn Michaels, Chris Masters, Carlito, and World Tag Team Champions Kane & Big Show took on the Smackdown contingent of World Champion Batista, Randy Orton, JBL, Bobby Lashley, and Rey Mysterio. This was the culmination of the Raw vs Smackdown angle that had been going on for most of the Fall of 2005 that saw Eric Bischoff running down Smackdown as a second-rate brand full of subpar talent, which was something most people thought anyway, but was not ever addressed on WWE TV for obvious reasons. It’s key to not e that Batista was severely injured coming into this match as he had torn a large muscle in his back, but as he was in the middle of the biggest push of his career, he didn’t want to risk his spot by taking time off to rehab and/or get surgery on the injury and insisted on continuing to wrestle and defend the title. I give the guy credit for caring and wanting to carry his load instead of running home like a prima donna, but wrestling hurt is a good way to get even more hurt, and that’s exactly what happened shortly after Survivor Series when he also tore his bicep. Once that happened, there was no more question about Batista’s ability to continue, he was put on the sidelines and had to give up the World Title. But as far as this show goes, he was determined to tough it out.
This was Bobby Lashley’s first major PPV in WWE, and even though I used to ride him a lot for how green he was and how many moves he blew, but he looked pretty good here in the two or three minutes he was in the ring. Then again, with such a short showing it could just be that nobody knew what they’d be in for when he got a real push later on. But in any event, Lashley was tossing Michaels around, but Kane grabbed him and chokeslammed him from the ring apron, allowing Michaels to eliminate him. Batista finally tagged in about a minute later, but his activity was understandably very limited here, he came in and cleaned house and eliminated Kane with a spinebuster, but Kane and Big Show gave him a double chokeslam before Kane left the ring and that was enough to put him out. The match came down to another 3-on-1 disadvantage for Shawn Michaels against Orton, Mysterio, and JBL, but he came back within a minute to eliminate both Mysterio and JBL with a pair of superkicks to narrow it down to a 1-on-1 encounter with Orton, but before he could put Orton away as well, JBL tried to sneak in and hit Michaels with a chair, and Michaels ducked and hit a superkick on JBL, but turned around right into an RKO from Orton, and that was enough for Orton to pick up the win to cap off a really fun match.
After the match, the entire Smackdown roster came down to the ring to celebrate with Orton, but then the Undertaker (who Orton had killed the month before) exploded out of a casket and laid out the entire Smackdown roster as Orton ran. Doesn’t anyone ever get to enjoy that big moment in wrestling?
Final Analysis As bad as the 2004 Survivor Series was, this show was every bit as good. There wasn’t too much in the way of stupid storylines beating us over the head the entire show, and we were left with just a really good wrestling show. Triple H vs Ric Flair was far and away the best match on the show, but other than Bischoff-Long, there really wasn’t anything below good on this show, and I was very pleasantly surprised by a show I didn’t expect much out of. Definitely recommended viewing.
Thanks again for reading, and as always feedback can be sent to stupwinsider@yahoo.com, and you can catch me on Myspace at www.myspace.com/stupwinsider. Take care, and I’ll see you all soon as we head into the home stretch!