It's the SURRRRVIVOR SERIES!!!

[The Reverend]

I know we've done this before, but ahead of the weekend's next installment it's time to have a look back at the 'Thanksgiving Tradition'. 

What with Netflix and the Vault, I've been going through lots of the past Survivor Series events the last couple of weeks. Things that have stood out 

*The ridiculous nature of it now that the team format has gone. I think one of the reasons I loved the Series so much was that the matches were quick and fast - it's effortless to watch, and you can't really become bored as it changes so much, so quickly., 

*The openings of the 89/90 versions - ol' sex-pest Vinnie roars into the team countdown adding real excitement to it all.  

*Those epic multi-man tag matches at '897 and '88 - this sadly will never get to be repeated, but these were just awesome. Watching them back now the teams involved just look massive in size. Even with the Young Stallions involved there is so much star-power involved

*87 - the nice storyline of the comeuppance of the Honky Tonk Man from his biggest rivals of the year - Steamboat, Savage and Jake.. Nice little bit of story-telling and a finish to the year's angles. 

*The teams themselves that ranged from the star-studded - Andre, Butch Reed, Rick Rude, King Kong Bundy and One Man Gang / Warrior, LOD, Texas Tornado / Hogan, Jake. Demolition - to the real pointless answers like Scott Casey, Ron Bass, Sam Houston and Danny Davis (twice!) having been involved

* The Undertaker - it's so hard to believe that after that debut at the 1990 instalment, he would go on to have on e of the most successful careers and become one of the biggest stars of all time - nothing prepares you for that. 

*The '91 opening match is a lot of fun - you've got the likes of Dibiase, Flair, Piper and Hart really giving it some (helped slightly by Smithers, Warlord, Virgil and the Mountie) - the crowd are going crazy for it, Flair does the biggest amount of flops I've ever seen. 

*The oft overlooked Michaels and Hart match from '92. Before the egos ran out of control, this is a solid little match that really works. 

 *The wildcard match in 95 is a lot of fun and one I wish they had repeated again. 

Over to everyone else on your thoughts, views, rates and hates.....

[Chili]

Let's just get this out the way early doors. The peak of Survivor Series.

I'm fond of Survivor Series, especially the 3rd annual, because getting into WWF in 1992, I had the tapes from that period, but one Christmas, there it was as a present, in it's fucking BEAUTIFUL yellow video cover. All the teams on the back, getting to see people I'd never seen and wondered why by 1992, they'd disappeared, hearing Jesse Ventura for the first time as I hadn't discovered WCW yet. I LOOOOOVE the 3rd Annual Survivor Series. I know the first two are well revered and I think those giant tag matches are fantastic, but the 4 on 4 format was always my favourite. I love all the teams on this show. The presentation of everything is exactly why the WWF was ahead of the game in that era. They put out such a brilliant product on the eyes.

"...AND THE EARTHQUAKE!!!" 

 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2025 by Chili

[BomberPat]

something that feels a bit too hokey now, but that I'd love to see more of, is teams being given proper names - The All-Americans vs. The Foreign Fanatics is a thousand times better than "Team RAW" and "Team Smackdown" ever was, and much better than just listing all of the names of the wrestlers. Team names and people meaninglessly bickering over who the captain is, that's all part of making it feel like a bigger gimmick match than it is, now that top stars team with each other all the time on TV. 

[Merzbow]

Knowing TKO era WWE we'd get team names but they'd be sponsored like Slim Jim Slammers vs Netflix Nobheads.

[Supremo]

I hear 1996 was quite good.

[BomberPat]

28 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Knowing TKO era WWE we'd get team names but they'd be sponsored like Slim Jim Slammers vs Netflix Nobheads.

Dude Wipes With Attitude

[wandshogun09]

17 minutes ago, Supremo said:

I hear 1996 was quite good.

The best.

[Chili]

1993 is the worst until 1999. What a fucking awful card 1993 is. A show with two Hart Brothers most UK fans had never seen against replacement Shawn Michaels and three one off masked goons and another team teased as four Doinks that ended up being Bushwhackers and Men on a Mission. The opener is the only saving grace. Utter bunkum and poppycock.

[westlondonmist]

I look back now the Final Finale was silly, the winners of the good guys vs winners of the badguys, not winners put into a pot to make two equal teams. But it's fucking brilliant, the best of the best face off. The good guys ultimately come out on top. Loved it as a kid. 

Also going to say the team names in the early ones are fantastic. Like a bunch of old men coming up with quiz team names. 

Edited November 26, 2025 by westlondonmist

[Callum1993]

In recent times the worst Survivor Series has to be 2021. Built up as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Rock’s debut yet he didn’t appear on the show. But we did get the Golden Egg 

[air_raid]

1990 was crucial to me becoming a wrestling fan and especially a Bret Hart fan.

On 4/25/2024 at 7:23 AM, air_raid said:

The Match That Made Me Care Who Won

So, to follow neatly on from the last entry, I went back to Simon’s house not long after and told him I enjoyed Mania VI and did he have any other tapes from Wendy he’d finished with and I could have next - he did, and that night I took home 4th Annual, 5th Annual and 6th Survivor Series, again in unmarked boxes with no clues as to the content. This time I immediately made scart to scart copies (6th/1992 I still have, and it still plays) and watched in the process. Having been dimly aware of the (stripped down version) of a Survivor Series match from Super WrestleMania on the SNES, the intro again made the show look gigantic and the format gave a totally different vibe to Mania - later, I’d be disappointed that the “Grand Finale Match Of Survival” was a one off. As an adult I realised it’s not ideal to beat nearly the whole roster on one night, but as a kid I thought it was cool. But then there was a lot I didn’t get yet - the intro made me think Hogan and Earthquake were co-captaining a team initially. The tape was a real favourite for many years thereafter and featured the first match I got really into from the point of caring who was going to win. It affected me so much I started a thread based off it in 2012 then reposted it into a Survivor Series Memories thread in 2018 - I lift much of what’s written below from that original post, apologies if you’ve read it before.

(2) The Dream Team VS The Million $ Team

(Dusty Rhodes, The Hart Foundation & Koko B Ware VS Ted DiBiase, Rhythm & Blues & a mystery partner)

Just to give you the background to this - it's about Bret Hart. As I've mentioned numerous times, I got into wrestling by watching WrestleMania VI. Now, the Harts had kind of grabbed me by looking the business both prior to and in the process of smashing the Bolsheviks in 40 seconds. In addition, Bret looked captain cool-as-fuck pinning poor Boris. He convinced me that he and the Anvil were the real deal.

The next chance I got to see the Harts was this tape. Having figured out that this was not longer after WrestleMania VI and we were still in 1990, it didn’t surprise me to see the Foundation come out with the belts as I knew they beat Demolition at SummerSlam 90 thanks to one of Simon’s trading cards. The Dream Team were obviously going to be my favourites up against the Million Dollar Man who was clearly a shit, even if I’d not been a fan of the cheating Dusty did at Mania (thank you, Jesse Ventura). The match seemed to take on extra meaning for Bret when Roddy Piper on commentary poignantly told us that his brother Dean had passed away the day before, and expressed his admiration for Hart's professionalism, and that he had dedicated the match to Dean. The Dream Team really had their backs to the wall from the outset with the debut of the then-terrifying and enigmatic Undertaker (who even then I knew was a big deal) and as the match wore on they ended up down to three-on-Bret after Undertaker pinned the American Dream himself. Obviously at that point, Bret's goose seemed cooked.

Suddenly the odds were reduced when Undertaker got himself counted out, deciding that it would be fun to beat Dusty's fat ass all the way up the aisle, and who could blame him for that. Hitman was still severely disadvantaged having taken a bit of a kicking, but he caught a quick one by reversing the Hammer's attempt at the Figure 4 into an excellently executed small package to further reduce the arrears.

That still left Bret, who had taken a fair amount of abuse from Valentine, Taker and Honky, against the wily veteran DiBiase who was relatively fresh. Remember, this isn't five time WWF Champion Bret Hart, the "best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be." This is Bret Hart of the Hart Foundation, one half of the tag team champions. He was never going to beat a top player like the Million Dollar Man, was he? Right from the off Bret was like a man possessed, rocking Ted with an atomic drop that sent him spilling to the floor and then a pescado - the first time I'd ever seen a wrestler dive over the top rope to the floor. It impressed the hell out of Piper too. Ted recovered however and lay a beating on Bret, but the rally soon came.

When he snatched this backslide out of the corner, I thought he had the bugger. He didn't seem to have that lethal killing blow like a DDT or a Rude Awakening, but he could do it with wrestling. He could catch his opponent with technique, like Mr Perfect did with the Perfect-Plex. I thought he had him here. After that, Bret played possum feigning an injury - a moment of ingenuity I had never seen - and wrapped up DiBiase with an O'Connor roll and again, I thought he had him. He'd outsmarted the evil bastard. I thought he had him, but he didn't.

Then suddenly, Virgil grabbed a hold of Bret, and I feared the worst. The bodyguard would be the undoing of Bret, as he had been of Neidhart earlier in the match, and Jake the Snake at WrestleMania. Bret evaded the knee strike from DiBiase and grabbed a snug schoolboy. THIS WAS IT! They had toyed with my emotions perfectly - I knew this was it. From the jaws of defeat Hitman had snatched victory....

... but it wasn't to be. DiBiase kicked out. We had a pendulum backbreaker and a second rope elbow, and my God, Bret had convinced me he could do it. And in the very next spot, an exhausted Hitman went for a crossbody, which Ted rolled through and hooked a leg, locking fingers tightly, from which Bret could not escape.

Bret's instant reaction at the time was to visibly exclaim "Fuck." Which as a child, I didn't notice, but as an adult, I really have come to appreciate. It's not audible, so nobody need get too offended, but the astute adult viewer will have spotted it, and it makes it seem a little more realistic because, well... you would feel like that, wouldn't you? I was crushed. Bret had won me over as a hero in showing spirit when the odds where against him and then pushing such an established technician and sometimes-main eventer to the brink, but in the end it was a bridge too far. It was obviously an important lesson that not all stories have a happy ending, but I felt awful. Not just because the guy I wanted to win didn't, and that the underdog didn't quite prevail, but I felt bad FOR BRET, despite him being "just a character in the wrestling."

Fuck.

In hindsight, Bret came out of the match looking a lot stronger in defeat. This was a match that proved, certainly to me, that he had the fire and (subtle) charisma to make people care and get behind him on his own two feet. He was the master at that, was Bret. He knew the real value in the match was that it doesn't matter if you win or lose, just how good you each look. It would happen to him again later on, when even in dropping the title to Smithers at SummerSlam 92, he sent out the clear message - put me on last, give me twenty minutes or more, and I'll give you a main event calibre match. I won't let you down. And to my mind, he never did.

Of course, wrestling Bret was when Steve Austin fully, completely transformed from foul-mouthed anarchic ass-kicker to the hardest bastard you'll ever see at WrestleMania 13 in defeat, and I genuinely believe that in the WWF title match at Survivors 92 (one of my favourites) Bret and Shawn Michaels had the kind of match that might have opened some eyes to Michaels' main event potential, even in defeat. It was Hulk Hogan (ironically enough) that put it best as I quoted in my last entry : "It doesn't matter whether you win or whether you lose ; the only thing that matters is what kind of winner you are, or what kind of loser you are."

Bret Hart : the courageous loser. Brought a lump to my throat. He was my guy from that moment on, and forever would wrestling be better when I had a dog in the fight.

 

[The Reverend]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

1990 was crucial to me becoming a wrestling fan and especially a Bret Hart fan.

 

Survivor Series 90 was a key to me becoming a fan. Although I had watched WWF by the  time it rolled round, it was back at that first push of the juggernaut the WWF would become in the UK. 

The sticker album hadn't long come out (which was a major reason - and saved the sticker company from going bust, great story, have a look for it - too lazy to post a link) and all through 1990 the WWF had started to make waves in UK pop-culture. By the time of the Survivor Series I had just started high school which opened me up to getting the tapes from all the new kids I was now mixing with (e.g. kids from the lower end of the town - who all had Sky!) and after borrowing the Survivor Series (which I could be wrong - but wasn't shown live?)  I spent the weekend watching and re-watching it - and from there there wasn't any turning back.

Going back to the point though - having watched the '91 event just this week, they try again for a Hart/Dibiase back and forth (which I'd forgotten), but it doesn't quite capture the magic of the year prior. 

Also f'ck them for editing out Hart's 'F*CK' at the end of the 90 match on Netflix. Takes away so much of that last part of the match. 

Edited November 27, 2025 by The Reverend

[The Reverend]

15 hours ago, Chili said:

1993 is the worst until 1999. What a fucking awful card 1993 is. A show with two Hart Brothers most UK fans had never seen against replacement Shawn Michaels and three one off masked goons and another team teased as four Doinks that ended up being Bushwhackers and Men on a Mission. The opener is the only saving grace. Utter bunkum and poppycock.

Looking back now you realise that compared to the other big events, the Survivor Series really was the lame duck for quite a few years. Rose-tinted glasses of the first 6 (of which even 91 and 92 are quite ropey really) do hide that fact. 

[The Reverend]

14 hours ago, westlondonmist said:

I look back now the Final Finale was silly, the winners of the good guys vs winners of the badguys, not winners put into a pot to make two equal teams. But it's fucking brilliant, the best of the best face off. The good guys ultimately come out on top. Loved it as a kid. 

 

What I really like about it, and I never really saw it at the time, is that it wraps up the Warrior/Hogan saga that started at the beginning of the year. Royal Rumble - first dissention, Wrestlemania 6 - the match between them, Survivor Series - sole survivors, and best buds again celebrating in the ring. The End! All ready to team up the next year in the Summerslam Main Event. It's like a feel-good end to a Christmas movie.   

[Supremo]

Whilst it’ll always remain an incredible moment, it’s actually a bit sad watching this back.

All that promise and potential, only for him to quietly fizzle out and become, frankly, boring. The Drew Hell in a Cell match, AJ Lee’s return, and all the memes of him and Roman in the shark cage at last year’s Survivor Series. That’s probably it for stuff I’d consider top tier. Beyond that it’s just been humiliation rituals and Seth Rollins’ Neverending Story.

The hair got bigger. The moments got smaller.

Edited November 28, 2025 by Supremo