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| Is this really the right story to cap Survivor Series? Photo Credit: WWE.com |
But were I to be a bit less capricious with my purchase habits, I might not be looking forward to this show at all. Granted, the card on paper looks like it could be fun, but are good wrestling matches enough to sell major pay-per-views going forward? I can't answer that question for everyone because I'm not psychic, but for me, WWE's shift in attitude in when and where they put on great matches for everyone to see has tempered my excitement for the paid shows. I'm not one to say they should put great matches only on pay-per-view - to be quite honest, they should have long, competitive contests on every show they produce - but to me, the incentive for buying the premium content no longer the promise of seeing fantastic matches, but seeing major story progression. If they're not selling resolutions or climaxes, I feel like they're selling the major links in the chain, or at least the points of inflection.
One could make the argument that the main event, Randy Orton vs. The Big Show, is a culmination of sorts. I would agree with that assessment in a vacuum, and with a few fundamental changes to the narrative in the three pay-per-views between SummerSlam and Survivor Series, Orton/Show would be a valid main event. Show has had a dynamic arc between the two pillar events, where he showed amazing character growth and gave performances with depth of emotion that befit the kind of downtrodden yeoman struggling between ideals and his paycheck. So I think their match as a blow-off or at least a climax in the Big Show vs. Authority story would be welcome here if not for a pesky bit of context.
Obviously, Daniel Bryan's rise from folk hero to bona fide WWE megastar between WrestleMania XXVIII and SummerSlam '13 has been one of the most pleasing developments on a personal level since I've come back to wrestling fandom, but I think one can state objectively that in that time period, he's become a big fuckin' deal within the company to more fans than just myself. For that reason, the way his story has been handled creates this massive disconnect between what is the Survivor Series main event and what should be its top attraction.
I don't have insider information, and I can't speak to the thoughts and processes of a seemingly stark-raving megalomaniac. Even going on nothing but Bryan getting three main events against Orton and then being shuffled down to a tag match against a team that needs to be built up in and of itself and some snarky comments by said megalomaniac in a conference call that may or may not have been a snide interpretation of his feelings on Bryan as a "draw," I can get a clear picture that Vince McMahon saw a low buyrate for SummerSlam, didn't analyze reasons for it being low other than Bryan as a "swing and a miss" as a main eventer, and turning the corner immediately. Going on those leads alone, I can tell that even if McMahon or others in WWE had a long term story, a clear vision for the three months between the two pillar events in mind, they scrapped it in panic or overreaction.
Good art comes from an unpredictable formula with a billion different variables, and sometimes, the artist, or at least the creative vision behind the art, has a circumlocutory path of getting to the cathartic result. But the medium of storytelling allows for very little in the way of superfluous exposition. WWE can set up pins to be knocked down in the dawning stages of a story, but Bryan, Show, and the Rhodes family weren't the only pins that were set up to be knocked down. Dolph Ziggler and The Miz were also being put in place as well. Now in addition to Bryan being off the Authority's radar (barring an unforeseen swerve tying the Wyatt Family to either the McMahon-Helmsleys or Vince McMahon himself), Ziggler's a non-entity and The Miz is an unaffiliated heel.
The tells were indicating that Survivor Series' main event was going to have a resistance against the now-named Authority, and right now, WWE's narrative couldn't be further from that initial, apparent "truth." To me, that kind of misdirection is bad storytelling. As a business, yes, WWE should try to maximize revenue, but if their business is projecting narrative through cooperative staged combat and the threads and character development that come with it, they should probably realize telling a coherent, cohesive story is the biggest way to draw an audience.
Sure, they're going to come across a few clunkers of individual buyrates, but as David Shoemaker and Peter Rosenberg pointed out on their podcast last week, throwing a "Champion hand-picks a challenger" story a month before the third biggest pay-per-view of the year right after running the fourth biggest one (for the record, I feel the Rumble is WWE's #2 right now) and tying it tangentially to their reality show might not have been the most lucrative formula, no matter who the two combatants were. Ramming their figurative, creative head against the wall by going with Bryan/Orton for three straight months while not advancing the overall narrative in any three of those matches and coming back to square one after each one of them might not have been the best way to capitalize on Bryan's zeitgeist. Dropping Bryan's earnestness and trying to turn him into a literal Steve Austin instead of letting him be the figurative version of Stone Cold in his own milieu was the biggest mistake of them all.
Patience is needed. Time has to be given to stories in order to develop, but most importantly, the visionaries have to have just that, a vision. That vision can't be impeded by a single speed bump. That reason is why WWE's pay-per-view structure, as configured now with the three semi-major signposts leading towards the big endgame of WrestleMania works in its favor. In a perfect world, they would have had a plan between SummerSlam and Survivor Series, stuck with it, and reaped rewards or saw something they didn't liked and changed directions between the Series and the Rumble. Instead, they have a WWE Championship match that kinda works if you ignore the disconnect it created around it and a bunch of random stuff that probably needs a bit of explaining to make sense.
Survivor Series is WWE's oldest recurring pay-per-view event that isn't WrestleMania. For a guy like McMahon who purports to love history, he sure let this year's version of the show get run down the wayside. If he could read my mind, I would think he'd hope a lot of fans like me, the ones who automatically purchase The Big Four every year, end up getting Survivor Series, because I'm not sure he's cast a wide enough net with this mish-mash of stories that may or may not have had builds befitting a signpost pay-per-view.
As a postscript, check out Shoemaker's Survivor Series mailbag today at Grantland, and not just because he gave me a shoutout either.