WWE Survivor Series 2014: Power Ranking Every Match at PPV

Survivor Series 2014 is in the books, and The Authority is no more thanks in large part to the never-say-die attitude of Dolph Ziggler and the debut of Sting in World Wrestling Entertainment.

The main event of the show was one of the year's best, while WWE Creative used undercard matches such as Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt and AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella to set up future angles and matches.

Damien Mizdow captured his first championship since arriving in WWE, The Bunny scored his first pay-per-view victory and former Divas champion Paige saw her team suffer a clean sweep at the hands of Team Natalya.

With the demise of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon's reign of terror, WWE is in a state of upheaval. The future is unclear, but sometimes uncertainty is a good thing; it makes for interesting television and exciting storyline prospects.

What is not uncertain at this point is the fact that Survivor Series featured a mix of both outstanding and mediocre wrestling. Whose ring work was the best, and who disappointed on one of the biggest nights of the year?

Take a look for yourself.

6. Adam Rose and The Bunny vs. Slater Gator

Credit: WWE.com

The product of a backstage vignette that doubled as a toy commercial, Adam Rose and The Bunny's fractured relationship would be put to the test as they teamed up to meet the loudmouthed duo of Heath Slater and Titus O'Neil.

As the match was only minutes long, there was never any real opportunity for the Superstars to have anything close to a quality contest. The focus was on the costumed freak and his deteriorating status as one of Rose's Rosebuds, which made for a largely useless match and segment.

How WWE Creative can possibly justify an angle revolving around a guy in a bunny costume, in the year 2014, is beyond belief.

5. Divas Championship Match: AJ Lee vs. Nikki Bella

Credit: WWE.com

The Divas Championship match at Survivor Series lasted only 30 seconds, but in that very short period of time, all three of the women involved told a tremendous story that played up the history between them, not to mention the current angle between Brie and Nikki Bella.

Brie's shocking Diva-on-Diva kiss of AJ Lee echoed the kiss from AJ to Brie's husband Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania XXVIII that cost the leader of the Yes Movement his first World Heavyweight Championship in a mere 18 seconds.

More importantly was the reaction of Brie to her sister's title win. The smile on her face, to some, may imply that there was collusion or that she has turned heel. What that smile indicates is that Brie repaid AJ for two years worth of torment. Now, with only two days left of service to her sister, she'll have the opportunity to beat up on Nikki and take the Divas title in the process.

The match may have amounted to nothing, but for the brief period between bells, the Divas did more to tell a story than anything Rose, The Bunny or Slater Gator could have with three minutes more.

4. Divas Elimination Tag Match: Team Natalya vs. Team Paige

Credit: WWE.com

Sunday night, the Divas were given 14 minutes to work with, to varying results.

Cameron and Summer Rae looked every bit as inexperienced as they are in big-match situations and really hampered the overall quality of the match. That is not all their fault, however, as whoever was in charge of putting the match together should have recognized their weaknesses and never put them in the position to be exposed the way they were.

Ideally, Layla would have stood side-by-side with Paige as the two remaining Divas. Instead, she was the second heel eliminated.

Naomi was the star of the match on the babyface side, exploding into the ring with the dynamic energy that makes her one of the more underutilized performers on the roster. Does that energy sometimes lead to scary situations and botches? Absolutely. But when she is "on" and at her best, there are few Divas who have the ability to elicit a reaction solely based on their ring work the way she does.

Paige was phenomenal throughout and was easily the best performer in the match. The fans in St. Louis let her know it, chanting her name as she stepped into the squared circle to battle her four remaining opponents.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, WWE Creative opted to book their breakthrough Diva to suffer defeat, seemingly only to justify putting Tyson Kidd on screen and continuing the angle involving him and Natalya.

Either way, the Divas worked hard, and though some of the action was disjointed and less than stellar, it was still the better of the two women's matches and a brief glimpse at the work performers such as Emma, Paige, Natalya, Naomi and Layla are capable of when given time.

3. Fatal 4-Way Match for the WWE Tag Team Championships

Credit: WWE.com

The opening match of the evening pitted The Usos, Damien Mizdow and The Miz and Los Matadores against Gold and Stardust for the WWE Tag Team Championships. All four teams had spent the previous month battling it out across WWE programming, and given the talents of those involved, there were modest expectations surrounding the bout.

Those expectations were met, as all four teams delivered a contest that would have felt right at home on an episode of Raw. It was good but not great, entertaining but not spectacular.

The Usos brought the energy, while Los Matadores, for two guys typically treated as enhancement talent, were surprisingly effective in their roles. The champions were fine, but in the end the entire match really centered on The Miz and Damien Mizdow, both of whom did a fantastic job of manipulating the audience for the desired reaction.

Miz would assault Diego or Fernando of Los Matadores, basking in the jeers of the audience. When Mizdow finally was tagged into the bout, much to the delight of the audience, he was quickly tagged out by Goldust before he could execute as much as a single maneuver. It was brilliant heel work by both the veteran in-ring performer and Mizdow's own tag team partner. 

The finish was action-packed and clever, as Miz tagged one of The Usos, who splashed Goldust. The former WWE champion sent the twin competitor into the steel post while Mizdow tagged himself in, covered Goldust and won the title for him and the Hollywood star.

It was an energetic start to the show, but one that could have been much better had it featured just two or three teams instead of four.

2. Dean Ambrose vs. Bray Wyatt

Credit: WWE.com

For the second month in a row, a match involving Dean Ambrose had its quality adversely affected by WWE Creative's insistence on overbooking the Bray Wyatt character.

Ambrose and Wyatt were wrestling a stellar match, complete with dramatic near-falls and subtle theatrics that the fans in St. Louis were buying into. The crowd was hot as The Lunatic Fringe mounted a comeback, his spine wracked with pain following a brutal uranage suplex onto the steel steps.

Wyatt cut the comeback off and appeared to have victory in hand, but the resilience of Ambrose seemingly broke The Reaper of Souls. He rolled out of the ring, tears in his eyes, and cut a promo.

In the middle of the match.

It killed the entire flow of the bout, bringing the action to a screeching halt.

Did the chair shot by Ambrose, followed by the elbow drop through a table and the introduction of a ladder, adequately set up a high-profile TLC match at December's pay-per-view?

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, it robbed fans of a quality ending to a match that was progressing nicely.

At some point, WWE Creative has to take a laissez faire approach to Wyatt's matches and allow the performer and his opponent to have a wrestling match uninterrupted by storyline nonsense. Wyatt proved more than capable of doing so at the 2014 Royal Rumble against Daniel Bryan and again at the following month's Elimination Chamber as he, Erick Rowan and Luke Harper battled The Shield.

Sunday night's match was good enough to rank as the second-best of the show, but at the same time, everyone from the performers to the fans in the stands deserved a more suitable finish.

1. Survivor Series Elimination Tag Match: Team Cena vs. Team Authority

Credit: WWE.com

The 2014 Survivor Series was an event that was either going to succeed or fail on the back of its main event. Thankfully for the quality of the show and WWE's network strategy, the match not only delivered from an in-ring and storytelling perspective but also featured the debut of a star who had never previously stepped foot inside a Vince McMahon-owned ring.

From the Big Show's knockout punch of Mark Henry seconds after the bell to Rusev's clever elimination, the battle of former Wyatt Family members Erick Rowan and Luke Harper and Big Show's shocking betrayal, the contest was layered with different stories and angles that captivated the audience and led to the best elimination tag match since 2003's Team Austin vs. Team Bischoff.

The heart of the match, however, lay in the performance of Dolph Ziggler.

With the future of WWE on his shoulders, Ziggler withstood tremendous punishment by Kane, Harper and Seth Rollins, refusing to let his teammates and the fans down in his war with The Authority.

Demonstrating the resilience that has allowed him to continue delivering the best performances imaginable despite heartbreaking inconsistencies in his booking, Ziggler fought back, eliminating both The Devil's Favorite Demon and the new intercontinental champion in succession.

Just as he was about to dispatch Rollins and leave the contest as the sole survivor, Triple H attacked, planting him with a Pedigree.

Then it happened. After years of speculation, Sting arrived in WWE and stood face-to-face with The King of Kings before dropping him with the Scorpion Death Drop. He put Ziggler on top of an unconscious Rollins, and Team Cena were announced as the victors.

The main event of this year's Survivor Series was a stellar representation of what is possible when professional wrestling is done correctly. Contrary to what many will say, it is not about who can throw the prettiest Tiger Suplex or who knows the most submissions or adopts Japanese strong style. It is about meshing ring work with storytelling.

Sunday night, everyone involved with the main event did that to perfection, leading to one of the most rewarding main events since Daniel Bryan captured the WWE World Heavyweight Championship back at WrestleMania 30.