WWE Survivor Series 2005 Recap

Posted in In My Head by Jack at 23:15, Nov 28 2005

By Slartibardfast

With our bellies stuffed with turkey and dressing, and our blood pumped full of tryptophan, the WWE gives us Survivor Series for dessert. Will it be Baked Alaska, or grandma?s 10 pound fruit cake? Only time will tell.

Match 1 Benoit VS Booker T
They start the show off with a match I feel I?ve seen a thousand times before, (probably because I have). Booker and Benoit work a good solid match. Booker and Benoit always work a good solid match. In fact this seemed to be a continuation of the good solid match the started several years ago. Nothing new, nothing spectacular, no surprises, just a good solid match. Good solid matches belong on regular TV, on a PPV I expect something extra and I didn?t get it. Booker goes over in the end with an assist from his wife. If you want to know the particulars of the match, just watch any tape of Benoit and Booker going at it, (if you watch the tape backwards maybe you can trick yourself into thinking they did something new).

Next we have a little vignette with McMahon, Bischoff, Cena, and Booker. I won?t go into details, as I?m sure this one will be discussed to death everywhere. I will however say this: If you see Satan McMahon before I do, please give him a kick in the throat for me.

Match 2 Trish VS Melina
I was expecting this match to be pretty bad, but I was proven wrong. Though not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, Trish and Melina but on an adequate show. They basically punched and kicked their way through it, (hey it worked for Hogan didn?t it.). They kept the pace up, Trish pulled off her signature moves, Melina screamed like a banshee, and the crowd never seemed to get bored. A good job done all around, not a PPV worthy match, but then again Melina is not a fully trained wrestler. Trish gets the win with an assist from Mickie.

Match 3 HHH VS Flair
Ask not for whom the bell tolls? The second Flair got his hand raised a month ago we all knew this day would come. Unlike last months cage match, (which I found to be very good, and a pleasant trip back to old school wrestling), this match had none of that magic. They followed the formula properly: HHH jumps all over Flair, Flair bleeds like a stuck pig, Flair comes back from the brink of destruction several times, HHH finally overwhelms our hero and emerges victorious. On paper this may have looked like a killer contest, but in reality the match had a ho-hum feel to it. Was it the sort of match we should be given on a PPV? Well, it was far to bloody to be put on TV, everyone worked hard, and it may well be the end of a story line, so I guess it qualifies as a PPV worthy in that respect, but the match itself lost its luster very quickly.

Next was a vignette with team Smackdown. I don?t know if JBL is taking acting lessons, but he stole this segment with his Schwarzkopf line. Team Smackdown decides that Batista should be the leader, (despite the presence of Stormin? Normin? Layfield).

We are then treated by visit from Edge and Lita who inform us that Edge will be getting his own ?show? called The Cutting Edge. He infers that it will be a ?Highlight Reel?, ?Cabana? type of show, only far superior. He then made some time to exchange banter with a member of the Detroit Tigers baseball team before leaving in disgust.

Match 4 Cena VS Angle with Divari as referee
Now for that match that was surely designated to be match of the night. I had high hopes for this match, not to high, but high none the less. Sadly they were not met, not even close. I don?t know if Cena or Angle just had a bad night, or if they just don?t mix well, (some may say that no one mixes well with Cena), but this match just did not feel special. Outside of the night of a 1000 referees gimmick, the match wasn?t even booked to be anything special. Angle was solid, and carried most of the match, but I don?t think he knew where he was carrying it to, and even if he did, I don?t think Cena would have known what to do once they got there. Much like in HHH VS Flair these guys just went through the motions, and never gave one the impression that this was ?the most important mach of their careers?. I should note that that did not stop the crowd. They were very into this match and dueling chants for Angle and Cena erupting several times. However, when crowd response is the most notability part of a match something is wrong. This was a title match and those belong on a PPV, but this was strictly Monday night action.

Match 5 Bischoff VS Long
I?ve been watching wrestling for years and as such I though I would never say this, but here goes: ?Oh what the hell, I can do that!? I hoped this would be a nice SHORT bit of comic relief with the match lasting 10 seconds or so. Instead they gave the two a little time to ?work?. I?ve seen backyard wrestling tapes with better acting and action in them. They did send in the Boogieman to put us out of our misery, but too little too late. His clock is obviously 3 minutes slow.

Match 5 Team Raw VS Team Smackdown
Here we had the match of the night. No not Team Raw VS Team Smackdown, but Tazz VS Styles and Coachman. I don?t know if Tazz was just doing what he was told, or if he was actually ticked off, but he kept tearing into Styles and Coachman anytime they tried to speak. By the end of the night Styles and Coach weren?t saying a word leaving Lawler to chime in every now and then. If this was all just an act, Tazz should get an award as his outbursts made me feel very uncomfortable listing to these guys trying to work together. If this was legit, someone from the back should have told him that if he can?t be professional, the least he could do is fake it.

The match itself I though was very good. I like the Survivor Series format, and the participants took to it very well. They all worked a quick pace, everyone got to look good at some point, and they worked their way down to a one on one situation nicely. This was the best ?scheduled? match of the night, and makes me think that the WWE should do more of these types of matches. In the end Randy Orton gets the win for Team Smackdown. Unfortunately for Randy the Undertaker makes his return in the middle of Randy?s post victory celebration, forcing Randy to bail out of the ring and flee in terror.

So there you have it Survivor Series 05. So who likes fruit cake?