It’s time for WWE to bring back traditional Survivor Series matches to replace WarGames
With WWE Survivor Series WarGames coming up in a month’s time, the event over the past few years has replaced some traditions from the past. Since 2022 – making this the fifth straight year – Survivor Series has hosted the men’s and women’s WarGames matches, pitting warring factions, or collections of individuals, against each other in five-on-five action inside a two rings and one big cage. Advertisement Prior to that, WarGames returned as a concept in NXT, with the TakeOver WarGames events taking place from 2017 to 2021. Clearly a big fan of the match type, Triple H then brought it up from NXT when he took over running the WWE main roster in 2022, and has kept it in place to this day. It’s a bit of a strange outlier, because HHH has typically done away with annual events built around certain match types, like Hell in a Cell and TLC, favoring those stipulations as rare one-off matches like CM Punk vs Drew McIntyre at Bad Blood 2024. For whatever reason, and despite fans starting to become a little tired of it, he’s persisted with the WarGames matches taking place every November – including this year where it’ll seemingly bee The 946 vs The Bloodline on the men’s side, and, as usual, a thrown-together nonsensical build with a few women randomly teaming together on the women’s side. Advertisement It’s clear that WWE should probably look to do away with WarGames next year – it isn’t the draw that other particular stipulation events like Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber and Money in the Bank are, and it always stands out as a weak point of the calendar. In its place though, WWE could resurrect some concepts from the past… The traditional Survivor Series elimination matches Up until the introduction of WarGames in 2022, Survivor Series anually featured five-on-five elimination tag team matches, which isn’t far away from the concept of WarGames, but it felt a lot less forced than bringing out two rings and a massive cage at the same time every year and there just COINCIDENTALLY happens to be faction warfare going on just in time for it. In a lot of ways, the matches themselves are a lot more entertaining too. Anyone can be eliminated at any time, which throws up so many possibilities of things boiling down to a big one-on-one match at the end, big comebacks from behind, or big landslide victories. Advertisement Meanwhile, WarGames plods along for about half an hour before the match even officially begins, so you know nothing of much consequence is going to happen during that time. In a vaccuum that’s not inherently bad, but in the context of having seen this matches for now five years in a row, it has become boring. Raw vs SmackDown For many years, the Survivor Series matches were based on brand warfare between WWE Raw and SmackDown, which always worked out better when there was a legitimate ongoing rivalry between the two shows instead of it just being one night of matches that was otherwise forgotten about. Advertisement That idea could easily be brought back with the way General Managers Adam Pearce and Nick Aldis interact these days – it feels like we’re eternally waiting for some kind of Raw vs SmackDown event that never comes. Making it even better would be some added stakes, like the winning brand getting to trade a star of their choice from the other show, or a guaranteed #30 spot in the Royal Rumble. The only problem here is that Raw and SmackDown air on separate platforms, and one platform isn’t going to want to seem weak compared to the other. Netflix (which airs Raw) wouldn’t be happy if USA Network (which airs SmackDown) came out looking like the superior of the two, and vice versa. However, there should be ways to negotiate that, like making sure the losing brand gets to air a major match a little while later to re-boost its credibility… Also, nobody would actually care and no fans would stop watching one show because it lost at Survivor Series, the whole thing would be a made up scenario by overly sensitive executives to begin with. Advertisement Could NXT be included again? In 2019, the Raw vs SmackDown concept added a third brand to the equation with the inclusion of NXT, which actually came out on top of the majority of the brand warfare matches. The main event, for example, saw NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler defeat Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch (the biggest star in the industry that year) and SmackDown Women’s Champion Bayley. Adding NXT once again would certainly make for some fun matches that we’d never see otherwise – imagine a world champions three-way match between Roman Reigns, Sami Zayn and GRAYSON WALLER for example. Or a genuinely exciting midcard champions match between Chad Gable, Trick Williams and Jackson Drake. And on the women’s side, Kelani Jordan and Zaria could easily go toe-to-toe with the main roster women’s division. Advertisement To make sure you stay up to date with all the biggest wrestling and WrestleTalk news, follow us on Threads by clicking this link!
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