WWE Survivor Series 2017: Full Results, Star Rating for Each Match

On paper, the WWE Survivor Series card was one of the best of the year. Star-studded and featuring intriguing new matchups, the show had the potential to eclipse even WrestleMania as the best pay-per-view offering from Vince McMahon's company in 2017.

It may not have reached those heights, but it did provide an entertaining six hours of sports entertainment with mixed in-ring results.

WWE champion AJ Styles vs. universal champion Brock Lesnar lived up to the hype. Raw women's champion Alexa Bliss vs. SmackDown Live women's champion Charlotte exceeded expectations. Raw tag team champions Sheamus and Cesaro vs. SmackDown Live tag team champions The Usos fell shy of the standard their talent had set.

In a wrestling landscape dominated by star ratings, though, which matches earned the highest praise and which ones disappointed?

Find out with this rating-infused recap of Sunday's pay-per-view spectacular.

Star Ratings Explanation

Credit: WWE.com

Star ratings in pro wrestling are subjective.

Fans and analysts alike assign ratings to a given match that reflect their opinions and personal preferences.

For the sake of this recap, the star ratings dished out to the 11 Survivor Series matches reflect the following:

• ZERO: A bad, irredeemable match.
• *: Just slightly above worthless.
• *½: Subpar.
• **: Merely OK.
• **½: An average wrestling match.
• ***: Above average.
• ***½: Very good.
• ****: Great.
• ****½: Match of the Year candidate.
• *****: Classic.

Agree or disagree? Sound off in the comments section and let your voice be heard.

Matt Hardy vs. Elias

Matt Hardy and Elias kicked off the evening's festivities with a Kickoff Show match wrestled in front of the few hundred fans lucky enough to have made it through the door, through security and to their seats in time.

With no established background, the two contested a solid match with some superb selling of a left-shoulder injury from Hardy.

A slowly paced match with little in the way of real heat, it ended cleverly as a surging Hardy attempted a Twist of Fate, but his shoulder would not hold up. Elias capitalized on an opening, sent his opponent into the steel post and scored a much-needed victory with Drift Away.

A solid, unspectacular opener in which the right Superstar went over.

Rating: **1/2

Cruiserweight Championship Match: Kalisto vs. Enzo Amore

Enzo Amore is not the guy to get a good match out of anyone right now.

Yes, he is a talker and a character, but from an in-ring perspective, his abilities cannot match his silver-tongued tirades.

His Cruiserweight Championship defense against Kalisto Sunday was a one-dimensional, heatless match that failed to live up to the effort from WWE Creative to make the feud relevant. As is the case with most of Amore's singles work, it was as basic as possible and a little disjointed at times.

Kalisto tried, but he did not have an opponent who could hang with him move for move, and the result was an underwhelming title bout.

It was also a shining example of Amore's deficiencies between the ropes.

The champion retained, and neither man looked particularly great. Hopefully this spells the end of the program.

Rating: *

Breezango vs. Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn

A late addition to the Survivor Series Kickoff Show, the tag team contest pitting Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn against Breezango was little more than a basic wrestling match aimed at furthering the idea that Owens and Zayn are disgruntled SmackDown Live employees.

Frustrated by the idea they would be booked against a comedy act like Breezango, they expressed their dismay prior to the match.

Everything that followed was a paint-by-numbers tag team match that fans have seen play out countless times before.

The heels isolated a babyface, worked him over with bland offense, sold for the big babyface comeback and managed to eke out a victory.

Neither team looked particularly great. Nor did they look bad.

The match just was what it was, and the result was never in doubt. Owens and Zayn went over, and we moved on to the main show.

Rating: **

The Shield vs. The New Day

The opening match of the night saw The Shield and The New Day mix it up in a Six-Man Tag Team match that was among the most anticipated on the Survivor Series card.

Perhaps that is why the result was a bit disappointing.

The match took a while to get going, with its pace just a little off and neither team committed to heeling it up when necessary.

The New Day controlled the match, isolating Dean Ambrose from his Shield teammates. There was brawling, some quality high spots and strong psychology that elevated the contest past mediocrity.

The sluggish first quarter, though, hurt the flow and kept fans from fully investing in it. Like many other matches on the card, it could have stood to lose a few minutes to make the finished product even better.

Still, a great opener with an exclamation point of a finish that saw The Shield deliver a super triple powerbomb to Kofi Kingston from the top rope to establish itself as the undisputed top faction in WWE.

Rating: ***½

Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown Women's Match

The women's version of Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown can be viewed in two halves.

There was the first half, which saw a strong confrontation between Nia Jax and Tamina, creating intrigue for a match between those two unstoppable forces, and the shocking eliminations of Bayley and Becky Lynch just minutes into the contest.

Then there was the second half, which saw rapid-fire eliminations, sloppy and botched pinfalls and disjointed action leading to Asuka unloading on both Carmella and Natalya to pick up the win for the red brand.

The good was fantastic.

The Jax-Tamina stuff was phenomenal and had fans genuinely intrigued by the idea of a match between the two. It was, like a show of this magnitude should be, a possible taste of things to come.

The bad, though, was a reminder of days gone by when women's matches would be cut short and everyone would sloppily throw their stuff into the match, diminishing its quality and hurting the finished product.

The exchange between Alicia Fox and Naomi was particularly rushed to the point that they botched the Raw captain's elimination.

Still, all of Asuka's stuff at the end, which saw her emerge as the sole survivor and earn Team Raw the victory, was superb and continued to put her over as a forceas it should have.

Rating: ***

Intercontinental Champion The Miz vs. United States Champion Baron Corbin

The match between The Miz and Baron Corbin was done a great disservice by WWE Creative in that it had nearly no build whatsoever. All of the hype surrounding the bout came from two promos cut by the Superstars on their cell phones, one of which seeing Miz drop an F-bomb on The Lone Wolf for talking about his wife and unborn child.

Luckily, fans in Houston did not need a convoluted backstory to invest in the match. Instead, they picked their favorite and rooted for him, either because they appreciated The Miz's hard work over the past two years or the general badassery of Corbin.

The match they worked was little more than a contest one would expect to see on Raw or SmackDown Live, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It played to the strengths of the Superstars involved, and in the end, Corbin looked like a world-beater by overcaming a knee injury and interference from The Miztourage to pick up the win.

There will be debate as to whether Miz should have gone over, but regardless of the outcome, the match was a solid, fun sprint in comparison to some of the night's other contests that overstayed their welcomes.

Rating: **½

Raw Tag Team Champions The Bar vs. SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Usos

Perhaps no match Sunday night was more disappointing than the interpromotional battle between tag team champions that saw Raw's Sheamus and Cesaro square off with SmackDown Live's The Usos.

A bout featuring two of the best teams in recent memory, it was expected to be a show-stealing affair that solidified the card as one of the best of the year. Instead, it was a slow and plodding match that did not utilize the Superstars to the best of their abilities throughout.

The one thing it did correctly was position Jimmy and Jey as the underdog babyfaces fighting from underneath. Yes, they have thrived as heels over the past year, but against the brute force of The Celtic Warrior and Swiss Cyborg, it made sense for their speed and agility to fuel their comeback.

What did not make sense was for the match to be ungodly slow throughout its first three-quarters.

This was not the case of a contest steadily building to a red-hot climax. This was the case of a match never getting out of neutral until the final minutes.

Slow, plodding but still featuring the solid in-ring content you would expect given the talent involved, it was a major disappointment that never lived up to its enormous potential.

Grade: **½

Raw Women's Champion Alexa Bliss vs. SmackDown Women's Champion Charlotte

The match between Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss was infinitely better than it initially looked on paper.

Bliss worked the ribs and core of her opponent, attempting to take the air out of The Queen and score the upset. Both Superstars' facial expressions were phenomenal, but the crowd heat was somewhat disappointing given the stature of the performers involved.

The structure was solid, but like so many other matches Sunday night, it suffered from a running time that was entirely too long. A few minutes less, and the match would have been able to pack in everything it hoped to achieve in a smaller, more dynamic bundle.

As it is, Flair's victory over Bliss came in a good, fun wrestling match that allowed the Raw champion to shine in defeat.

Rating: ***

WWE Champion AJ Styles vs. Universal Champion Brock Lesnar

The best match of the Survivor Series broadcast saw WWE champion AJ Styles give universal champion Brock Lesnar a fight few could have expected.

The match began with Lesnar tossing The Phenomenal One around the ring like a rag doll to the point it appeared Styles may suffer a familiar fate to John Cena, who was suplexed into jelly before being pinned by The Beast Incarnate at SummerSlam in 2014.

Then it happened.

Styles mounted a comeback and delivered a forearm to the arena floor. He sent Lesnar into the ring steps, apparently hurting the universal champion's knee in the process. A few more of those Phenomenal Forearms had Lesnar reeling and nearly led to Styles pulling off a massive upset.

In the end, though, he would be caught and felled with the F-5, as Lesnar scored another victory.

A drama-filled encounter that lived up to the hype and provided fans with a legitimate Match of the Year candidate, it put Styles over as being on par with the biggest box office attraction in the sport.

Rating: ****½

Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown Men's Match

The early moments of Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown featured a few extraordinarily fun interactions.

Finn Balor and Shinsuke Nakamura engaged in a few minutes of wrestling that electrified the crowd and led to chants of "NXT." Bobby Roode and Triple H went toe-to-toe in a battle of egos. Kurt Angle and John Cena renewed their epic rivalry, while Randy Orton and Samoa Joe worked together for the first time.

The freshness of the match wore off in short order, though, as the newer and more intriguing stars were sacrificed in order to put the emphasis on Kurt Angle, Triple H, Randy Orton and Shane McMahon as if WWE Creative forgot it is no longer 2006.

Yes, what started as a fun an energetic match descended into McMahon family melodrama late, complete with a nonsensical betrayal that only served to set up another Triple H victory.

The silver lining in the otherwise disappointing main event? Braun Strowman was once again protected.

The Monster Among Men was made to look like an unstoppable force to the point all Team SmackDown's members had to band together to put him through the announce table. After the match was over, a betrayed Strowman issued a warning to The Game and then flattened him with two running powerslams.

A match with endless potential was stunted by poor booking, with emphasis being put on the wrong participants.

Rating: **½