General Survivor Series 2015 Thoughts

It really does not feel like there are many things going on for Survivor Series this year. The WWE Championship tournament will lead to three matches on Sunday. I will talk about that more on Friday. Then you have the divas match. I already talked about that. The other big match is The Brothers of Destruction vs. The Wyatts. I talked about that. I was hoping something else noteworthy would be announced for me to talk about today. Nope.

There will obviously be more matches and segments for Survivor Series than just the five I just mentioned. But all of it will be filler. It has not gotten strong focus. It would be difficult to do with the tournament coming about. The WWE obviously has angles going for guys like Cesaro and Ryback, but whatever it leads to for this Sunday will just feel like filler.

There are a lot of fans unhappy at no traditional Survivor Series match being booked. There might still be one. Problem is, as I was just talking about, it will come off as filler. Nothing exciting. You had a Survivor Series match last year that led to The Authority losing power, for a short while. There was at least some intrigue there. Whatever Survivor Series match they have this Sunday will be a bunch of midcarders and lower-midcarders thrown together.

There was also the issue that this tournament going on would ruin the original plans the WWE had. One of the victims of that is Jack Swagger. He had been irrelevant for a while. Prior to Seth Rollins getting injured, it looked like a feud was brewing between Swagger and Alberto Del Rio. It is a feud that just had to happen, given Zeb being involved. Del Rio is now caught up in the tournament. Swagger was never even in the tournament. Swagger will likely still get the push again after Survivor Series, but it does look sloppy how the whole thing was handled.

The WWE thinks they can sell the PPV on just the tournament and The Undertaker. And they might be right. The attention they have given the divas on Raw was not even that necessary. Survivor Series will feature the legendary Undertaker. And the crowning of a new WWE Champion. Everything else is just filler. They might be able to get away with that.

In terms of ratings, however, I would say not handling things better has hurt the WWE. Numbers were up this week, but keep in mind that last week's episode was taped. If this week's episode did even worse than that, you would have a real problem on your hands. There was still the third hour drop. In comparison to Raws in November 2014, moreover, this month has been pretty horrible. If the WWE did a better job developing more storylines, that might have helped. If the first round of the tournament was not filled with so many jobbers, that might have helped the tournament seem more important. As I have said before, an eight-man tournament might have been better. And feature each of those first-round matches like a big deal. A horrible November will only lead into a December to forget for the WWE.