Has the WWE Survivor Series PPV Lost Its Importance Over the Years?

WWE will present Survivor Series this Sunday night on pay-per-view, but as it does so, it faces a very legitimate question from its fanbase: Is the show even relevant at this point?

With interpromotional matchups and a celebration of The Undertaker's 30 years with WWE taking place this weekend, it would seem as though the power players in the company are working overtime to convince its fans that it is.

To really answer the question, though, one must first look to the past before examining the present.

Was It Ever Significant in the First Place?

For 33 years, Survivor Series has been a staple of the WWE PPV calendar as one of the promotion's Big Five events. It was the arena for the controversial Montreal Screwjob in 1997, featured the epic Deadly Game tournament to crown a new WWE champion a year later and was home to the debut of the Elimination Chamber in 2002.

Yet, the event began as another attempt by Vince McMahon and Co. to milk more PPV dollars out of an audience with a seemingly insatiable appetite for Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant. The 1987 event featured multi-man, elimination tag matches aimed at spotlighting ongoing feuds while giving fans another opportunity to see The Hulkster and The Eighth Wonder of the World clash.

Until the arrival of championship matches in 1991, it was merely a showcase for huge tag team contests that fans have been exposed to on Raw, SmackDown and house shows for the last 20 years.

Sensing the pattern was stale, the company began introducing higher-stakes title matches in the 1990s, with some resulting in new champions and jaw-dropping moments, including the aforementioned industry-changer in Montreal.

From Undertaker's first title victory in 1991 to The Rock's rise to the top seven years later, enough happened in that first decade of the event to make it a meaningful piece of the WWE puzzle.

Even into the millennium, WWE saw the show as one of its premier presentations and treated it as such, giving fans culminations of top rivalries, major gimmick matches and highly touted title clashes.

That all changed in the mid-2000s, though, when it inexplicably became just another show in a long, unnecessary line of productions from a money-hungry company unconcerned with burning its audience out. The roster split and WWE's lazy "battle for brand supremacy" booking did not help matters.

The Battle for Brand Supremacy

The downward spiral of Survivor Series' meaningfulness began in the mid-2000s when WWE threw together multi-man tag team matches that may have served to continue feuds fans had watched develop every week on Raw and SmackDown.

The WWE Universe had witnessed the same collection of Superstars battle so often in weekly tag team matches that by the time the company brought eight of them together for the PPV, there was no real reason to care about it.

The company then attempted to drum up stakes for Survivor Series, booking a Raw vs. SmackDown main event for 2005. The contest would pit the best of the blue brand against the elite of the red brand, but it faced one noticeable criticism: It was still a largely meaningless match.

Those stakes the company hoped to manufacture? Nonexistent, because the winning team received nothing. The triumphant brand wasn't guaranteed the WrestleMania main event and did not get to cherry-pick a Superstar from the other show for its trouble.

And bragging rights? That would involve the company following up the winning brand's victory in no real shape or form. 

What started 15 years ago resumed in 2016 and became a lazy go-to for the writing team. And it does not show any signs of improving, changing or evolving in 2020.

Sure, there are some intriguing champion vs. champion matches, but the fact that titles are not on the line softens the impact of the contests.

Then there is the big 10-man tag match between Team Raw and Team SmackDown.

The biggest problem with that match is the WWE draft, which took place just a month ago. This year, Team Raw features four Superstars who were on SmackDown only six weeks ago. Yet here we are, expected to believe they are fiercely loyal to Raw and care that much about winning the match for the red brand?

And again, nothing comes of such a win. It just sort of happens, WWE Creative sweeps it under the rug the following night and sets its sights on the TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs PPV in December—and everyone moves on.

But we shouldn't be surprised.

Bar a 10-year span beginning in 1995, when the unpredictable occurred, championship encounters had meaning and WWE fed off of controversy, the show has almost always been significant in hype alone.

Otherwise, it has been an exploitation of the consumer's desire to watch pro wrestling. Multi-men and women tag matches with little influence on ongoing stories, a bridge between SummerSlam and the Royal Rumble, Survivor Series elicits little more than a sense of nostalgia for fans today.

It really is no different to Extreme Rules or Hell in a Cell in that it relies on a specific gimmick but guarantees nothing more for the paying audience, rendering it the weakest of WWE's big annual events.

So, yes, Survivor Series has lost its importance over the years, thanks in large part to WWE's inability to build on the momentum it developed in the 1990s and instead offers a half-hearted show with no consequences that the fans forget just in time for the creative team to start selling them the next one.