Roman Reigns and SmackDown Win Men's Elimination Match at WWE Survivor Series

Team SmackDown defeated Team NXT and Team Raw in the five-on-five-on-five men's elimination match at WWE Survivor Series on Sunday.

Roman Reigns and Keith Lee were the final two combatants.

Lee kicked out of two Superman punches before hitting a sit-down powerbomb, but Reigns narrowly got his shoulder up before the three-count.

In trying to put The Big Dog away, Lee attempted a moonsault. Reigns moved out of the way and immediately lined up for a Spear while the NXT man was still stunned. The move connected and SmackDown was victorious.

Reigns showed his respect to Lee after the match with a fist bump that was returned by the NXT man.

Team SmackDown comprised of Reigns, King Corbin, Braun Strowman, Ali and Shorty G struck a major blow at Survivor Series with a win over two teams featuring a ton of talent. NXT consisted of Lee, Damian Priest, Matt Riddle, Tommaso Ciampa and Walter, while Raw was represented by Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, Drew McIntyre, Randy Orton and Ricochet.

After the announcement NXT would be involved in Survivor Series for the first time, there was a great deal of anticipation among fans regarding how the black-and-gold brand Superstars would be integrated into the storylines.

That decision was made out of necessity on the first episode of SmackDown after Crown Jewel since travel issues prevented much of the WWE roster making it from Saudi Arabia to Buffalo, New York, in time for the show.

As a result, an NXT invasion took place with much of NXT's top talent showing up, including Adam Cole, Ciampa, Riddle, Lee, Shayna Baszler, Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley, among others.

With that, NXT founder Triple H drew a line in the sand, and the build toward both the men's and women's elimination matches began, as Raw and SmackDown went to work on putting its teams together over the next few weeks.

Raw had a unique mix with Rollins, Owens, McIntyre, Orton and Ricochet after Triple H tried to recruit The Architect back to NXT. The Game also tried to recruit KO, so there was some uncertainty regarding whether the red brand would be able to stick together.

On SmackDown, the quintet of Reigns, Corbin, Strowman, Ali and Shorty G was finalized when the latter two beat Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode to maintain their spots on the team.

Due to the issues between Reigns and Corbin, Team SmackDown looked like a combustible combination to say the least. That came to the fore when The Big Dog hit a Spear on The Lone Wolf to set up Ciampa to see off Corbin.

The general feeling entering Survivor Series was that NXT was looking to prove it was on par with or superior to Raw and SmackDown, while the main roster brands were just trying to prevent themselves from self-imploding.

Despite the perceived advantage that gave NXT, SmackDown managed to overcome its potential pitfalls and make the case for being WWE's premier brand, although NXT and Raw may still have something to say about that even in defeat.

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