Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
WWE Survivor Series 2024 is in the bag (results here) and you know the score by now, I want to hear your highs and lows! What were your biggest positives and negatives of the event? Which moments stood out to you as the best and the worst? What are your takeaways? So on and so forth!
My question for you today is “What are your pros and cons of WWE Survivor Series: WarGames 2024?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
As far as my answer…
Across the board, I thought this was a mostly do-nothing event in a lot of ways if you look at it from an on-paper point of view. The WarGames matches don’t mean anything yet, two titles stayed where they were, and one title did change hands, but in a way that I’m not entirely convinced is going to yield the best things going forward. Shinsuke Nakamura winning the United States Championship is not my low point, but it is something I’m questioning, for the record. This might be tomorrow’s EWN QOTD about where you think that title is going next.
My actual low point is that on an event where a lot of things didn’t happen (ie, no appearance from The Rock, no further advancements in some storylines, etc), the thing that’s the most egregious, actually annoying one (instead of the rest just being “meh, whatever, the matches were kind of fun”) is how Finn Balor interfered to cost Damian Priest the World Heavyweight Championship match.
THAT actually is annoying in how do-nothing it is, because it’s an exact copy of what we had at SummerSlam. You mean to tell me 3 months ago, Priest loses to Gunther because Balor interferes, and now, Priest loses to Gunther because Balor interferes? They’ve progressed ZERO since then? Zilch?! Nada?! Nothing?! This feud between Priest and Balor should’ve ended before Survivor Series, not that it needed to be reheated to continue even longer! Gunther should’ve won a definitive victory after losing to Cody Rhodes at Crown Jewel, not retain by someone else’s help!
I don’t want to see Priest vs. Balor anymore, and I don’t want to see some third match with Priest and Gunther talking about how yet another match was tainted. Ridiculous. Priest could have lost straight-up and it wouldn’t have hurt him. Or, maybe, here’s a thought…it didn’t need to be Gunther vs. Priest at this event at all. It could have been Gunther defending against someone else.
At this point, I’m hoping the best case scenario at this point is that they do a Triple Threat and that’s the end of this feud. I don’t know if I can put a lot of faith into that, though.
Now as far as my highlight of the night, I’d be tempted to say Rhea Ripley pinning Liv Morgan if we had any definitive forecast that says “that means Ripley is winning the title from Morgan very soon.” Since that isn’t necessarily the case, I’d say it’s the moment where CM Punk pulled Roman Reigns off the table and Bronson Reed crashed through it with his Tsunami finisher.
That worked for me on a few levels. First, watching Reed do that move was more fun to me than even seeing Iyo Sky do the trash can moonsault for the 4th or 5th or even 6th time (sorry; I know it’s impressive, but it’s become a trope of WarGames that they never change up in any way). Second, Punk pulling Reigns off was a sign of good faith that then led to Roman trusting him for the rest of the match. That made logical sense. It took a big gesture like that to win over The OTC and allowed them all to get on the same page and win the match together.
Whether that manifests in a way that I enjoy the storyline about “the favor” remains to be seen. At least for now, I’m intrigued, and it’s good to start planting some seeds for some things that may play out in 2025.
Essentially, for a “do-nothing” event that feels like nothing really did happen, I’m hopeful that at least the Punk storyline will turn out to be that this was the trigger of something in the future, rather than just some babyfaces beat some heels in two different cage matches for the sake of seeing those 10 men and women fighting.
I reiterate my perpetual statement that WWE clearly didn’t learn its lesson from TLC and Hell in a Cell and WarGames shouldn’t just be at Survivor Series by default every year, but be a gimmick that travels with whenever the feuds are necessitating it.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
