Shield vs. New Day Is Only Hope to Save Bizzarely Booked WWE Survivor Series

WWE loves brand warfare. It is a story the company has frequently relied upon yet also consistently struggled to tell. Last year, WWE made the decision to turn Survivor Series into a yearly event where Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live would fight for supremacy. This year's show was quickly put together, but little has been done to build up the matches on the card.

With just one week before Survivor Series, the main event has changed dramatically after AJ Styles won the WWE Championship. The other champion vs. champion matches are heel vs. heel encounters with little heat beyond The Miz and Baron Corbin throwing insults at each other on social media.

WWE has tried to make Survivor Series a relevant show given it has long been considered one of the Big Four pay-per-views. The traditional elimination match is a great concept, but it struggles to be relevant in modern WWE. This new twist on the PPV could work, but it will not be this year that WWE masters the concept of a brand warfare supershow.

There is one match with the potential to save the show that has been heavily teased but not officially confirmed. While it is a match fans have considered before, the build just began on last week's Raw.

During the main event, The New Day invaded, interrupting a Raw Tag Team Championship bout between two members of The Shield and former champs Sheamus and Cesaro. The distraction was a ploy to get Raw riled up, but it inadvertently allowed Sheamus to steal a win off Seth Rollins during the commotion.

Dean Ambrose and Rollins are now left off the Survivor Series card, as is Roman Reigns, who will be returning to Raw this week. The Shield cannot miss the event, and they also have a beef with the perfect trio of Superstars to set up a fascinating match: The Shield vs. The New Day.

When The Shield dominated WWE, few genuine trios stepped up to face them. Most of the time, WWE Superstars banded together out of frustration at the young team's dominance. Since their breakup, The New Day are the only trio to emerge that could claim to be even more dominant than The Shield.

Kofi Kingston, Big E and Xavier Woods may not have gone on a lengthy undefeated streak or won singles championships during their three years together, but they have lasted longer than The Shield ever did and were tag team champions for an all-time-record 483 days. 

These trios together would be instant money as both have put on matches together that rival the best performances of any team in WWE history. There is opportunity for this six-man tag team match to be the best bout of the entire year, and that is enough to make this a selling point for any WWE PPV.

With the exception of Brock Lesnar vs. Styles, there is not a match on the Survivor Series card with a  higher profile than this potential bout. For Survivor Series to come off as a Big Four event, it needs multiple headlining encounters, and this is just about the best WWE could muster.

On one side, Raw is bringing out its lethal trio, a team so dominant that the mere idea of them reforming was the basis for building all of WWE TLC 2017. On the other, SmackDown will present their fun-loving trio who have become the heart and soul of the brand.

If The Shield did not reform to have this match, what did they reform for? Especially after their first match together was delayed by Reigns' illness. WWE must come up big with the stable to prove the reunion was more than a publicity stunt. This match would justify the entire run The Shield are likely to have through the end of the year and into 2018.

It would have been nice for WWE to move faster with Survivor Series, setting up this bout weeks prior and letting it develop naturally. However, it has been clear throughout these last few weeks that WWE has been wavering on how to book the show.

Luckily, in the constant shakeups, the possibility for a special match has emerged, one that can define the entire show. Even if every champion vs. champion match fails or both elimination matches devolve into silly finishes, this six-man tag will deliver, and that just might be enough to make sure fans tune in to Survivor Series and leave satisfied.