WWE - Survivor Series 2004 (DVD)

...November marks the month where WWE will put on it's Survivor Series pay-per-view. The event gained its name for famously having 4 on 4 elimination matches, where the match continued until every member of a team would be eliminated leaving the 'sole survivor(s)'. Over the years that traditioned got pushed to the back a bit for things like the 'Deadly Game' tournament in 98 and the first ever Elimination Chamber match. 2004 was a year where there would ...
...the event be without a WWE Championship match? And in a year where JBL, formerly known as Bradshaw, was getting a huge push, he would have to defend his title against Booker T. JBL was a pretty big shock when he won the title off Eddie Guerrero earlier in the year, and didn't win any fans by this push, although by the end of it he had gained the respect of the crowd to be a worthy champ.

And the biggest prize in Womens wrestling would ... more

Year after year November marks the month where WWE will put on it's Survivor Series pay-per-view. The event gained its name for famously having 4 on 4 elimination matches, where the match continued until every member of a team would be eliminated leaving the 'sole survivor(s)'. Over the years that traditioned got pushed to the back a bit for things like the 'Deadly Game' tournament in 98 and the first ever Elimination Chamber match. 2004 was a year where there would be two big traditional Survivor Series matches however, and one of them was the main event.

Survivor Series 2004 comes after the brand-split, but as one of the big name PPV's it works as an inter-brand event where superstars from both RAW and SmackDown! have matches. The main event would be the RAW 4 on 4 elimination match with Randy Orton, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho and Maven teaming up to wrestle Triple H, Batista, Edge and Gene Snitsky. All of these are big wrestlers in my opinion.. except for Snitsky, I have no idea how he got in there. Maven was in the middle of a push at this stage of his career, being the first ever Tough Enough winner, however it wouldn't be long after this main event that he would be released from WWE.

There was a catch to this match though, and not just good guy versus bad guy. Eric Bischoff, who was at this point the General Manager (GM) of RAW was going to be taking a months holiday, and whoever won this match would be in control of RAW for a whole month - meaning they could pretty much do whatever they wanted. With that sort of power in their hands, it worked as a good gimmick and something different to get everyone interested in the match. Elimination matches at Survivor Series always go down well, and this one was no different.

But how does the SmackDown! elimination match stand up against the RAW one? Well on the other side of the card we saw Eddie Guerrero, Rob Van Dam, Big Show and John Cena teaming up against Kurt Angle, Carlito, Mark Jindrak and Luther Reigns. Doesn't take a genius to work out what team had the more star power. To be honest this isn't a very memorable match, it wasn't until revisiting the PPV I remembered it happened and neither Jindrak or Reigns are with the company anymore to my knowledge.

What would the event be without a WWE Championship match? And in a year where JBL, formerly known as Bradshaw, was getting a huge push, he would have to defend his title against Booker T. JBL was a pretty big shock when he won the title off Eddie Guerrero earlier in the year, and didn't win any fans by this push, although by the end of it he had gained the respect of the crowd to be a worthy champ.

And the biggest prize in Womens wrestling would be on the line as well as Trish Stratus defended her title against Lita. These two had perhaps one of the most memorable womens title feuds in the history of the WWE, and now that both of them has left the WWE their womens division is lesser for it. The Intercontinental title would also be on the line as Christian challenged Shelton Benjamin.

Two other matches complete the rather packed card. One was a fatal fourway between Spike Dudley, Rey Mysterio, Chavo Guerrero and Billy Kidman. Dudley was defending his Cruiserweight title, and whoever gets the first fall wins the title. Cruiserweight matches are always a good way to kick off an event as they usually have some high risk action, and it slowly brings you into the event. In a singles match Undertaker wrestles in probably one of his least memorable matches against Heidenreich, if you don't remember who he was you don't want to. He's been released now.

Another close to 3 hours event and a 15 certificate, typical WWE. A fair bit of action at this event although it's not the most memorable Survivor Series on record. The whole different GM for 4 weeks following the event did interest me and lead to a few interesting weeks of action, although I quickly lost interest again. Not a good PPV for non-wrestling fans to watch or wrestling fan veterans. I'll try find something better for my next review.  

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