WWE Survivor Series 2011: Did Last Night's Raw Build Up the Pay Per View?

The final Raw before Survivor Series took place last night. My question to all you out there is, "Did Raw effectively sell you on Survivor Series?"

My response is a little bit convoluted. Certain parts of the show were effective in building certain matches. Although the finish was poor, I thought that they started to build the five-on-five match well, and that will obviously continue with this week's SmackDown.

The best buildup of the night was between CM Punk and Alberto Del Rio. Del Rio was made to look vicious with the attack backstage and the application of the cross-arm breaker after the match, which is what he absolutely needs right now to get fans to make him look credible as a champion. Punk's entrance to the match and chasing of Del Rio around ringside was effective in my eyes, and he looks like he can't wait to get his hands on Del Rio.

Mark Henry and the Big Show had decent buildup between them, too. The major buildup between them has already been accomplished previously, so they just needed to add some fuel to the fire, which I believe they did here.

This leads me into the match that most people, until last night at least, would be ordering for the Survivor Series pay per view. While the interaction between the four individuals was quite entertaining, the hammer was never dropped on the buildup.

I get that the dynamic of the match focuses on whether or not The Rock and John Cena can get along, but their interaction was quite tame and focused solely on who could make the other look like a bigger joke. It took The Miz to come in and say he was sick and tired of their arguing and overlooking of Awesome Truth to bring focus back on the match.

It would have been more effective if it had started out slowly between Cena and Rocky and eventually led to almost coming to blows before getting jumped and beat down by Awesome Truth. Instead, we have no vested interest in whether or not Cena and Rocky can beat Awesome Truth, because we know they can. All we are left with is seeing The Rock wrestle for the first time in seven years, and maybe that's enough. It just could have been so much more.

In conclusion, I believe WWE did an okay job overall in building towards Survivor Series, but could have created a lot more interest if they really wanted to.

Thanks for reading, and as always, let me know your thoughts.