Does Survivor Series Matter Anymore?

It’s been a WWE Thanksgiving tradition for decades. Teams of 5 take each other on in an elimination style match to determine who the best superstars in the WWE are. The concept picked up more steam since the era where Raw and Smackdown are treated as separate brands, and competed for brand supremacy. The tradition will continue this Sunday.

But lately, the concept seems to have fizzled out. There really doesn’t seem to be any hype for it anymore. At first, I thought that the recent surge in the popularity of AEW could be to blame. But that’s not it. There are still plenty of other facets of WWE that fans are definitely into. There are certainly other matches in the upcoming PPV that fans are looking forward to seeing. It’s just that the traditional Survivor Series matches aren’t it.

The problem is that the “brand supremacy” angle is no longer relevant and working. Even though we still recognize that each show has a different roster with different titles, they no longer feel different. Both shows are run by Adam Pearce and Sonya Devill. While Adam and Sonya seem to have chosen their own sides, no one really cares. There isn’t a measurable difference between the shows, and there’s no real rivalry between it’s leadership. This is miles different than how it felt just a couple years ago at Survivor Series 2019, the year they let the NXT roster join in the fun.

But with NXT no longer a part of Survivor Series, and no big time rivalry between leadership, there’s not much to care about as far as brand supremacy has to offer. It’s just “Left Twix vs Right Twix”. The least they could have done was bring back Vince, Stephanie, or Shane, or all of the above to step in and heat things up. None of them have made an appearance on WWE television in quite some time. This could have been a good moment to stir things up.

But now that moment has passed, and so has people’s interest in this event. They certainly better try harder next year, or one of the WWE’s “Big 4” PPV’s could be dead.