Three Things WWE Got Right and Wrong At Survivor Series 2020

Right: The Street Profits defeating The New Day

This was a battle between an all-time great tag team and a team that has reigned as tag team champions for nearly all of 2020. The match itself was among the best of the night and as long as The Street Profits don’t get added to the long list of nonsensical, premature WWE tag team breakups, we could be in for more treats akin to this performance in the near future.

Backstage segments with Big E planted the seeds of doubt as to whether Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins could defeat a team consisting of a former WWE Champion and a highly underrated veteran. Realistically, WWE could’ve went either way as The New Day beating The Street Profits could’ve told the story that the latter needed more seasoning to overcome a ten-time title winning tandem, but the SmackDown Tag Champs winning was the right call.

The Street Profits have been on an incredible run and has added some much needed consistency to the tag team division in the wake of hotshot title reigns. Triple crown and all, they needed this victory to cement themselves as the right-now, rather than the future of the tag team division.

Right: Sasha Banks defeating Asuka

In what was another quality champion vs. champion match at Survivor Series, SmackDown Women’s Champion, Sasha Banks defeated Raw Women’s Champion, Asuka via roll-up.

Asuka and Banks feuded with each other over the summer for the Raw Women’s Championship, with Banks’ sole victory coming via countout before Asuka bested her to regain the title and again in a Lumberjack match.

Asuka has also been either Raw Women’s Champion or in the title picture for the majority of the year. Given Banks’ incredibly short title runs and having only one successful defense to this point, she needed a win to further establish herself as a champion. Banks is still fresh off a feud-of-the-year candidate against Bayley at Hell in a Cell while Asuka wasn’t even featured on the show and hasn’t done much of note on Raw lately.

The nature of the victory protects Asuka’s status as the alpha woman of the Raw roster, but the hope going forward is that Asuka will be back in the foreground as Raw’s champion

Wrong: The handling of the Women’s Survivor Series match

The intent of this match was to build sympathy for Lana as after a couple of minutes of in-ring action, she was forced by Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler to stand idly by for the remainder of the match. The execution, though, was confusing to say the least.

Lana playing victim to Jax and Baszler has been a common theme on Raw for the last few months, along with the table breaking. Nonetheless, for Team Raw to have willingly operated at a 4-on-5 disadvantage against a more cohesive unit and emerged victorious only adds to the parity issues between Raw and SmackDown, especially given the clean sweep earlier in the night.

The last three eliminations in the match were all in-definitive as Baszler was disqualified for ignoring the rope break on a Karifuda Clutch to Bianca Belair while Belair and Jax were simultaneously counted out. By default, Lana was the sole survivor.

There are some positives to take away from the match however. Peyton Royce pulled a surprise elimination over Bayley that creates intrigue over how this could positively impact her trajectory going forward. The Riott Squad entertained with their frequent tag exchanges to bring down Jax, and Belair emerged as the star of the match, taking on the Women’s Tag Team Champions without fear or allies.

It’ll be interesting to see how Baszler and Jax react to Lana being the one to secure the victory for Team Raw.