Matthew Roberts takes a look at the latest WWE Home Video release, Survivor Series 2022.
Well it didn’t take Triple H long to get his beloved War Games on the main roster. The five-on-five matches for the men and women closely followed the original formula (not something the NXT versions always did) and that’s exactly what I like to see.
The Women’s match opened things up as Team Belair took on Team Damage Ctrl. The heels had the traditional advantage of the period of numerical advantage, though with Bianca Belair and Becky Lynch on the opposite side it seemed almost certain that they wouldn’t win. There was a lot of good stuff in this one; the violence was sufficient to make the most of the stipulation/scenario of the War Games cage and all the women got their chance to shine during portions of the match. It also had plenty of weapons. Which many would have enjoyed, although the “lets rush to the ring when it’s my turn but wait whilst I get a load of stuff from under the ring” routine did get a little stale. At almost 40 minutes you may have thought it might drag but it flew by. A very good effort.
AJ Styles and Finn Balor continued the OC/Judgement Day feud and to the surprise of no-one two of the most talented wrestlers on the roster had a very good match. It was another relatively long one (nearly twenty minutes) but no-one should be complaining about that.
Ronda Rousey and Shotzi couldn’t really follow either of what had gone before. Despite the fact that she was beaten twice by Liv Morgan there was no real danger to Rousey’s reign here; it seemed inconceivable that Shotzi could or would take the title here. The match was ok, but seemed more like a by-the-numbers TV defence than something that should have been on a PLE.
The three way for the US Title between Bobby Lashley, Austin Theory and incoming champion Seth Rollins seemed to be all about re-habilitating Theory after his failed cash in for the belt. And it did it’s job. Who knows where Theory might have been if Vince had stayed in creative control (even if the idea of him beating Reigns in 2022 seems ludicrous even by the E’s standards of booking). A good match that achieved what it set out to do.
We finished with the men’s War Games match. It was another superb effort and had the added bonus of the Sami Zayn storyline, i.e. would he prove to be Bloodline for life or would he come down on the side of his eternal friend/rival Kevin Owens. The only real downside was that we spent the entire match waiting for that moment/decision.
A “themed” show lives or dies by the gimmick matches it is named after. In this case, War Games delivered. The undercard was generally entertaining too, so all round this was a winner.
The Blu-Ray adds the Survivor Series 2022 War Games press conference as an exclusive extra.
8 out of 10.
Photographs courtesy of Fetch and WWE. Thank you to WWE Home Video for our review copy of Survivor Series War Games which is out Monday 9 January on DVD and Bluray. You can buy your copy from WWEDVD.co.uk by clicking here.