This was a Survivor Series elimination match, with The Authority’s jobs being on the line against the jobs of everyone on Team Cena, with the exception of Cena because he’s too big of a cash cow to get rid of. To make it worse, they’ve built the match around what team The Ryback would join and a last second Erick Rowan babyface turn, neither of which has much bearing on the match at all.
It’s some bullshit everyone knows will be undone in six weeks or less, but when the bell rings, it doesn’t matter so much. It doesn’t matter because there’s a particularly good Michael Cole performance to sell the absolute shit out of the thing, but also because of how well this is put together. It’s one of the best assembled pieces of classical WWE bullshit in recent memory, definitely since the 2013-2014 peak period ended. It has to be. Look at that roster. All respect to what good big men guys like Show and Henry were once, but in 2014, there’s three wrestlers in this match who can really be trusted and I’m pretty sure you can figure that one out. Necessity is the mother of inventions, and while this doesn’t exactly invent or reinvent the format, necessity forces them to dip into the old magic to make this work. It’s genuinely one of the best booked Survivor Series elimination matches ever, really only topped by other big dramatic matches like Winner Take All in 2001 and the Austin vs. Bischoff one in 2003, which had the benefits of better line ups and more shortcuts (blood, a hot crowd) that the WWE either isn’t allowed or has burned away by this point.
If not for the ending, it still might be the best one period.
A big part of that is that for once, they all seem to get exactly what each guy in this match can do and how to use that to achieve maximum drama. Mark Henry running right into the big right from Big Show for an immediate elimination at the start is a little wasteful, but having the worst booking recently (unlike the far more useless Kane), he’s the most expendable. It’s a great opening otherwise, this big thing immediately going wrong for the bad guys. Beyond that, there’s a great grasp on who can do what. You can really only trust Cena, Harper, and Ziggler to stick around for any length of time, so they move people in and out real quickly. The booking itself also works with that super well. Rollins can’t be counted on in large segments outside of big moves, so he’s utilized in a way that genuinely does help his growth as a near top guy, by always being the one to cut off a big offensive by one of the good guys. He cuts off Ryback to let Rusev finish him off, he cuts off Cena, he cuts off Rowan to let Harper pick him off, he’s the one who transitions to Ziggler being isolated, all of it. The point guard of the team, every major success by Team Authority flows through Rollins. You can only fix so much with booking, but it’s the best that his skillset has been employed post-Shield.
The control work on Ziggler itself is all real great. Harper carries the load as the best wrestler on the team, but Rusev and Rollins do pretty well sticking and moving. Ziggler doesn’t adhere to the Steamboat Rule perfectly, but there’s some element of that in his performance. The MVP of the segment might not even be in the ring though, because in some of the big moments, I was drawn to John Cena on the apron. He’s always shouting encouragement at Dolph, signaling to the crowd that it’s only two when Dolph kicks out, encouraging them too, and just living and dying with every hope spot and cut off that the guy suffers through. It’s not all John, because the booking and performance work in unison, but the crowd really genuinely does wake up and get into Ziggler as it goes on. One particularly great sequence sees the match break down without him getting to the tag. The result is that it can spill outside more organically than just jumping to the next bit, and Ziggler is able to dodge Rusev’s multi-announce table running splash and get in, eliminating the big guy by count out. Not only is it this great little hope spot in and of itself, it’s also the closest that Rusev’s come to being beaten since getting to the main roster.
The tag eventually comes, but when that Rowan elimination happens and when Cena is cut off real quickly, The Big Show comes in. He spent that last segment checking on a spent Ziggler outside, trusting in John to handle it, but John didn’t handle it. Show comes in and punches him out for Seth to cover and eliminate. Show shakes hands with Triple H and walks out for a count out self-elimination. It’s another thing that in a larger sense means nothing. It’s the 37th Big Show turn ever or something, they haven’t had much of an impact ever since like 1999-2000 where he turned five times in a twelve month span. It’s also 2014 and almost 2015, nobody’s really about Big Show back in a position of prominence as a top level heel. In fact, it’s going to be partially responsible for one of the worst booked matches in the history of wrestling in a little over two months. In the context of THIS MATCH though, it’s great. It’s perfect. The match presents him with a totally valid reason to become a coward, threatened with the same thing that briefly made him an Authority stooge a year ago, but now committing entirely. It’s a character move that makes sense, but one that also provides a great contrast for Cena and especially for Dolph Ziggler.
The Authority then has a 3-1 lead, and like another famous evil team two years later (I obviously mean the 2016 Cleveland Indians), they blow it and it’s wonderful.
This part in particularly is perfectly done. The initial beating, the failed bursts, the big comeback on Kane actually happening. Ziggler does it clean on Kane with a superkick and the Zig Zag, before Harper cuts him down. The process repeats, only with a boon to Harper now (as these two are currently feuding — a fact not mentioned once on commentary, naturally), as Ziggler has to go to another of his tight cradles to steal that one. The Ziggler vs. Rollins bit is then genuinely really great, and some of the best Rollins heel run stuff ever. They had like five or six TV matches full of Ziggler trying to get Rollins over as a new heel, and it’s both practice for this big moment and establishes this foundation of Rollins having Ziggler’s number that makes this payoff just so so so good. To complete the great performance, Ziggler avoids all the stuff that beat him before. He’s not the captain like Rollins is, but to continue the metaphor, it’s one of the greatest clutch performances in WWE history. 2013 Ray Allen, but if he was on the other team. 2019 Dame against OKC, right down to getting obliterated in everything that comes after taking Not A Good Shot.
Ziggler has it won with the Zig Zag, only for the bullshit to come. It’s another great call in this match, to have him get more than one visual win, because he’s then also overcoming Authority bullshit after already getting the best of Rollins. Climbing one mountain is satisfying, climbing an unexpected second one is even more powerful. J&J get taken out, Steph is sent off the apron into her lesser half, but after a second Zig Zag, Triple H gets rid of a second referee. Ziggler is hit with the Pedigree, stooge referee Scott Armstrong gets waved down, and then that’s it.
Had the match not done it like this, had the second Zig Zag done it, it’s an all time great match One of the great smoke and mirrors jobs ever is completed in the most triumphant and interesting way possible, as this beloved utility player gets the biggest win of his career right when he’s starting to peak again. The WWE does something unexpected and good and does it in the way that gets the most out of it and does the most good for the greatest amount of people.
Of course, that’s not what happens, and this is never about any of the ten men in the match
It’s Sting.
He and Triple H circle around for a while, mostly to no reaction once the Sting pop dies down, before a probably fake “THIS IS AWESOME” chant spontaneously breaks out. Sting hits his move on Hunter and then puts Ziggler on top of Rollins for the three count.
There are three people in the world who might genuinely want a Sting vs. Triple H feud and one of them is in it himself and going over at the end. Shit sucks. There’s a fair point of view regarding not doing Undertaker vs. Sting because at this point, it can never live up to anything, but given how much of a pile of shit Triple H vs. Sting was, I’m not sure that has any bearing either. Even still, there’s a way to do this without doing something like this, that overshadowed the match entirely. Ziggler overcomes a 3-1 deficit, ties Roman Reigns’ 2013 record of four eliminations, and sends The Authority packing. It’s also not just his moment, it’s also the first time since the heel turn that Seth Rollins really eats shit, and it barely feels like it happened because the end was about Sting and Triple H. Sting didn’t win the match for Ziggler, it’s one thing they get right, but it’s still this gigantic shadow over what should be a career moment. You can’t rightly say this did nothing for anyone, but it did far less than it could have.
Ultimately though, it’s not something really worth staying mad at. Another disappointment of many, one more fart sound at the end of an otherwise perfect symphony.
It’s cool that Sting got to do it. It’s also definitely not worth being upset that they robbed Ziggler of something big again when he was just getting over as a top guy again, because they were going to do that until crowds stopped falling for it and no longer went after the football when Lucy was holding it. It is what it is. While it’s not the perfect summation of the WWE at this point that the Ambrose/Rollins HIAC match was, this is right up there, and might be a better summary of the rest of the decade. Someone gets hot, things accidentally fall into perfect position, and while they technically do something good, it’s also just fodder to go into a trash dick old man feud that virtually nobody but the sort of grey brained husks who would eat any slop shoveled in front of them anyways would ever be interested in. Even in a match as great as this was — and that’s REALLY great — nothing is ultimately worth anything.
The match is exceptional though. I don’t want to get lost in the bad ending. It holds the match back from being a slam dunk pantheon match, as far as these sorts of matches go, but the work done before it both by the talent in the ring and the people putting it all together is still just a lot too great to be torn asunder by the company remembering what it was, is, and always will be by the end of it. Even the ending isn’t TOTALLY useless, even if that bright spot is unintentional. That sole highlight from the last minutes of this are that, inadvertently, because Rollins stayed down the entire time and Ziggler got up first despite taking far more punishment than Rollins, the match winds up booking Ziggler’s finish to be more powerful than the Pedigree.
It’s meaningless and unintentional and this minute stupid little detail, a total accident because Triple H isn’t actually as smart as he thinks he is, but that’s sort of the match. It’s all a fluke. A dumb happy accident that wound up way better than it should have veen. A fluke injury to an ascendant Roman Reigns giving the spotlight to Ziggler as the only one left is the sort of thing that makes this so great to begin with, because Roman could never be either as sympathetic or as good a babyface wrestler in 2014 as Dolph was here. The miracle run would never feel like a miracle, just another Hail Mary that felt like someone shouting at you to like this guy. It’s still good, but if Roman was in the spot, that’s probably all it gets to be. It’s only fitting that the only solace at the end, once they’ve built something beautiful and then suddenly tried to ruin it, is this other lovely little hollow fluke.
***1/2
HANDWERK 