WWE Survivor Series 2013: PPV Is One of WWE's Worst Built Cards of All Time

If you watched Monday Night Raw last night, this may come as a surprise, but apparently Survivor Series is coming this Sunday.  Hell, if you didn't know better, you'd think it came in the middle of a long gap between pay-per-view events.

In spite of being the go-home show for what used to be one of the biggest events of the year, the focus was on just about everything other than Survivor Series.  It was a themed show, "Raw Country," full of clips of current country music acts, building to a performance by Georgia Florida Line.  They even threw out a "Broadway Brawl" between Dolph Ziggler and Damien Sandow, basically a wacky brawl using musical instruments.

The theoretically more important of the two world title matches, Randy Orton defending the WWE Championship against Big Show, did not have its issue advanced at all.  Orton opened the show squashing Brad Maddox as punishment for how he handled last week's Raw.

Big Show beat Ryback in a surprisingly good match, but they wasted a potential solid WrestleMania midcard match, especially since Ryback successfully hit the Shellshock during the match and that's a "WrestleMania moment" visual.  Show and Orton only crossed paths briefly after the match, with Orton running in to get speared by Show.  Show and Triple H never crossed paths all night.

The match has been built up for a few months now, but last night it was like a random undercard feud and not a PPV main event teased since right after SummerSlam.  Even though the other world title match, John Cena defending the World Heavyweight Championship against Alberto Del Rio, did get addressed, they didn't exactly do much to sell anyone on Survivor Series.  Cena addressed Del Rio re-injuring him, and they had a brief scuffle.  That's it.

It was an odd show all-around.  In addition to neglecting to hype the top matches on the PPV six days out:

• After turning heel on Twitter and working heel on house shows, The Miz showed up as a babyface tag team partner of Kofi Kingston...just so he could turn heel on TV to set up a PPV pre-show match between them.
• The Total Divas cast vs non-Total Divas feud was brought out of the mothballs to set up a seven-on-seven elimination tag match at Survivor Series.  It was hyped with a game of musical chairs that ended in a no contest.
• Big E. Langston beat Curtis Axel for the Intercontinental Championship in lieu of saving the title change for the PPV pre-show match as a hook to get people to buy the show last minute.
• Raw was saved by a match that should have been booked for Survivor Series, The Shield and the Wyatt Family vs CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, the Rhodes Brothers, and The Usos.  Still, it wasn't clear why anyone should care about Punk and Bryan vs Luke Harper and Erick Rowan after this, or why this match minus those four plus the Real Americans and a suddenly returning Rey Mysterio was even happening at the PPV.

I can't think of a "go-home" Raw that felt less like a hype show for a PPV.  It felt like WWE didn't even care if anyone buys the show.  There was no urgency at all.  It was almost like a Raw during the six week break before WrestleMania, and even those shows pushed WrestleMania more than this show pushed Survivor Series.

WWE is on the cusp of changing their business model with the impending introduction of the WWE Network as an outlet for all non-WrestleMania PPVs at one third or less of the current PPV price.  If they were to get full national distribution for the network and enough subscribers, I guess that lame duck shows like Survivor Series 2013 could become a little more commonplace.  If you have a sufficient number of subscribers who are automatically being billed monthly, they're not going to cancel over one iffy show.

It's theoretically possible for Survivor Series to be a good show, although I'm not banking on it.  While Hell in a Cell was an improvement over the previous two shows, WWE is still coming off a string of three middling to bad PPVs in six weeks after a string of excellent shows for the better part of a year.  The men's elimination match should be excellent as long as it gets enough time, while the title matches could both range anywhere from offensively bad to really good.

What does everyone else think?  Did you forget you were six days away from a PPV at any point last night?  Are you looking forward to Survivor Series?  Let us know in the comments.

David Bixenspan has been Bleacher Report's WWE Team Leader and a contracted columnist since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @davidbix and check out his wrestling podcasts at LLTPod.com.

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