WWE Survivor Series 2011: Was It Worth the Price?

This year's Survivor Series marked the 25th edition and was going to be a special edition as it was built solely around one person: The Rock.

The Rock made his return to the ring after seven years in Hollywood to team up with his WrestleMania opponent, John Cena, to take on Awesome Truth (The Miz and R-Truth).

Was it worth the price of admission? Here's my take on Survivor Series 2011.

I will review and give each match a score from 1 to 10, but for the overall show I will judge whether it was worth the price of a ticket or the pay-per-view cost, which is about $50 nowadays. 

MATCH 1: United States Championship Match: Dolph Ziggler (c) vs. John Morrison

This was a very good opener to a pay-per-view.

Ziggler and Morrison are both fast-paced and can keep the crowd into it with a lot of high spots. The match was sort of overshadowed a bit, however, by chants of "We want Ryder!" from the New York crowd, who wanted their native son Zack Ryder in the match.

Morrison bore the brunt of boos because of this and also took a loss after his attempt to hit Starship Pain was blocked by Ziggler, which turned into a Zig Zag for the finish.

After the match, Ziggler had a few words for the crowd when, you guessed it, Long Island Iced Z came out and gave Ziggler a quick beatdown. Ryder got one of the biggest ovations of the night, topped by only CM Punk and The Rock. 

Match Score: 7.5/10

MATCH 2: Traditional Survivor Series Match: Team Orton vs. Team Barrett

This match was fast and furious from the outset.

A little too quick for Dolph Ziggler of Team Barrett and Sin Cara of Team Orton. Ziggler was quickly eliminated by Randy Orton after an RKO.

Sin Cara on the other hand took himself out after he hurt his ankle following a jump over the top rope onto two members of Team Barrett. Sin Cara failed to clear the rope and hurt himself. Whether the injury is legit, time will tell, but Sin Cara's elimination made the teams even again.

They weren't even for long—next to go was Mason Ryan who was pinned by Cody Rhodes after hitting Cross Rhodes, giving Team Barrett a 4-3 advantage.

Kingston was next on the list of eliminations as he was taken out by Wade Barrett with Wasteland leaving just Orton and Sheamus to go up against the four remaining members of Team Barrett: Barrett, Rhodes, Jack Swagger and Hunico.

Team Orton shot themselves in the foot again when Sheamus was disqualified after failing to adhere to the referee's five count. Orton then RKO'd Swagger and Hunico to make it 2-1 in favor of Team Barrett.

Just when it looked like Orton was going to become Superman and make a miraculous comeback, the numbers game caught up to him as Barrett hit him with Wasteland and gained the victory for his team along with Cody Rhodes.

MATCH SCORE: 7/10

MATCH 3: Divas Championship: Beth Phoenix (c) vs. Eve Torres

The divas of the WWE surrounded the ring to make this a lumberjill match, which added nothing to the match at all.

Not much to speak of in this match except a sick spot where Beth Phoenix hit the Glam Slam on Eve from the top rope (which I think Phoenix got the worse of) for the win.

MATCH SCORE: 4/10 (Would have been 3/10 if it weren't for the cool finish)

MATCH 4: World Heavyweight Championship: Mark Henry (c) vs. Big Show

This was not a bad match, but it wasn't as good as the previous two between these two monsters in my opinion.

It was a solid effort, just wasn't the one they had at Money in the Bank or Vengeance.

The best part of the match, however, was when Big Show went to the top rope and hit an elbow drop. Not the middle rope, but the top rope. It took him a solid minute to get his footing up there, and it seemed like an eternity.

After that, Big Show seemed to be in position to win when Henry low-blowed Big Show and got himself disqualified. 

I don't think a guy the size of Henry should have to resort to disqualifications to retain his title. He's a monster and shouldn't have to do that. 

After the match, Big Show took out Henry and put a chair around his ankle and leg dropped it, payback for what Henry did at Money in the Bank.  

This feud needs to end soon.

As much as i thought it made sense during the summer and even last month, it needs to end. These two guys aren't necessarily the most technically sound, so it's harder for them to have a different match every month. They have only about six moves between them that they are capable of doing. 

The endings have been different, but tonight should have been the end of it. I like this feud, but I just don't think it should go any further.

Unfortunately it seems as though it will.

MATCH SCORE: 5.5/10

MATCH 5: WWE Championship: Alberto Del Rio (c) vs. CM Punk

There was competition before the match as CM Punk brought a special ring announcer of his own in the form of Howard Finkel, who got a great and well-deserved ovation that seemed to bring him to tears; he could barely get CM Punk's introduction out.

Eventually he did and the match got started.

The match itself was great. Good back-and-forth action with false finishes a plenty. Both of these guys are good workers and the crowd appreciated it, although it was firmly on the side of CM Punk.

The finish came after CM Punk knocked Ricardo Rodriguez off the ring apron and locked on the Anaconda Vice to Del Rio who surprisingly tapped to give Punk his fifth world championship and the third of this year.

Punk got a huge pop from the crowd for winning the belt that made it feel like the Attitude Era again, when people the fans actually cared for were winning matches. Punk celebrated the win by jumping into the crowd not once, but twice.

Rumors have been swirling that Punk is in for a run-through at WrestleMania, so it will be interesting to see who he will be feuding with until that point.

MATCH SCORE: 8/10

MAIN EVENT: The Rock & John Cena vs. Awesome Truth (The Miz & R-Truth)

Booker T said a couple of  times that this match had nothing to do with The Miz and R-Truth and was all about The Rock and Cena. 

The Rock started the match and the crowd was going absolutely nuts the entire time he was in the ring. The whole time he was in there, he took barely a bump.

At the request of The Miz, The Rock eventually tagged in Cena who got booed out of the building. The fans in Madison Square Garden let Cena have it—and have it all night.

He got booed so much that the crowd cheered when The Miz and R-Truth got offense on him, which happened the majority of the match.

Miz and Truth beat the crap out of Cena for about 10 minutes until Cena was finally able to make a tag. The Rock did take a few bumps, but they occurred sparingly. The Rock was eventually left alone in the ring with The Miz when he hit a spinebuster, then the People's Elbow to get the win. 

Now this is where I think WWE dropped the ball.

Instead of adding some more spice to the feud by having Cena do something dastardly to The Rock, Cena was made to look like a punk in front of the crowd and was told by The Rock to get back into the ring to have a pose-off with him.

Of course The Rock got the huge pops and Cena got torrential boos, but then The Rock hit him with a Rock Bottom and that was the end of the show. 

The match itself was good and The Rock looked as if he hadn't been gone from the ring for seven years.

I don't think anyone doubted whether The Rock was going to be in shape, but it was still kind of surprising, at least to me, that he was hitting on all cylinders just like he used to. He even oversold moves like he used to, which made me chuckle a bit.

But for the sake of this feud something else should have happened. It was great to see The Rock again, but it still left something to be desired.

Maybe that was WWE's intention. I don't know.

MATCH SCORE 7/10

Show Rating

As I said in the introduction, I don't give entire events a rating on a scale of 1 to 10. I rate events on whether it was worth the price tag because at the end of the day that's what really matters. 

This was a good show overall. The matches were entertaining and the crowd was obviously hot the entire night. But because the ending fell sort of flat, the rest of the show was not good enough to warrant shelling out almost $60 for.

I'm not saying it was a bad show, but it just wasn't worth the money.

There were several high moments: seeing The Rock back in action again, CM Punk winning the WWE title and Team Barrett beating Team Orton. But an average World Title match, an average Divas match and a flat ending to the show made it just another show on the calendar. 

The Rock was great and the crowd was great, but it wasn't worth the money.

So far this year only one show was worth the money: Money in the Bank. It had a hot main event angle with a lot of great matches on the undercard. I don't remember a dull match on that show. 

If you want to shell out a lot of money for one match, then this was the pay-per-view for you.

Not Survivor Series 2011.