Today’s Episode: Sole Survivor

The Royal Rumble is likely my favorite “gimmick” pay-per-view that WWE puts out, although I’m always jazzed about Wrestlemania and Money in the Bank is always wacky fun, if nothing else.

But when I was a kid, I was absolutely addicted to the Survivor Series.

We never bought the pay-per-views at my house, but my local video store had every single one of them on VHS, and so I would just burn right through those things, starting at the first one and watching each at home with a huge smile on my face, even if I didn’t understand how people were booing Demolition and cheering the Powers of Pain.

There was something about the elimination matches, and all of the different combinations that there could be, leading to 3-on-1 drubbings, or going down to the wire with a final sole survivor beating the last man of the opposing team…it was pure joy. It made the Survivor Series special, where assemblies of good guys and bad guys faced each other down and fought to the last man, and young Ivan ate it up with proverbial spoon.

It’s saddened me, that, over the years, WWE has essentially given up on the elimination matches, a shame given how much fun the recent ones have been, such as Nexus vs. Team WWE at Summerslam 2010. There’s really nothing that makes the show special anymore, even though it’s considered one of the coveted “Big 4,” although I wonder if that distinction matters more to us than it does to the company.

That being said, while we’re getting one hastily thrown together elimination match featuring a makeshift feud between Randy Orton and Wade Barrett (Orton wins as the sole survivor, so history has shown) and adding in a random assortment of characters, WWE is counting on The Rock to sell the show, and sell it he likely will; I don’t see the sales being any worse than last year, and The Rock may well be a big enough draw to get a few more buys, even if the whole thing has been built up in a less than stellar manner.

I don’t want to complain, because the main event tag match should be fun, CM Punk should have a fine match with Del Rio, and the traditional SS match should be pleasant enough, but I can’t help but feel nostalgic for what Survivor Series should be. What a great way to begin new careers and feuds, showcasing Superstars that are usually held on the sidelines, and now it’s just another show that we’re being expected to treat similarly to Over the Limit, or Vengeance, or any number of theoretically “edgy” sounding names.

By sacrificing so much of what made the Survivor Series unique, WWE has made it feel less special, just as they’ve done with nearly all of their Pay-Per-Views, even as they try to make them more distinctive with various other gimmick matches and sloppily manufactured reasons for one guy to dislike another guy.

Of all of the matches at Survivor Series, which may well turn out to be a fine show, the sole survivor of this bygone edge is Team Orton vs. Team Barrett, and I suppose that I shouldn’t complain, and be happy that I’m getting anything at all, but I can’t help but feel a little disappointed that, after all of these years, Vince McMahon and the rest of the gang at Titan Towers have happily abandoned something that was so crucial a piece of my childhood.

Random Thoughts

This is neither here nor there, but I highly recommend that you listen to Colt Cabana’s podcast, The Art of Wrestling, and download last week’s podcast featuring Daniel Bryan/Bryan Danielson/Matches Malone. It’s a wonderfully interesting discussion, and really gives a large amount of insight as to why, perhaps, Daniel Bryan has been getting the crud kicked out of him for so long in WWE. Another article, perhaps.

Tags: Daniel Bryan, nostalgia, randy orton, survivor series, Wade Barrett