Continuing another series from If Destroyed, it’s time for another WWE pay-per-view preview.  Mercifully, the days of three-week gaps between shows appear to be behind us, as the 2010 schedule is generally more relaxed than this year’s.  So this time, the writers have had plenty of time to build to the show.  This isn’t to say they’ve done it very well.  But they’ve had the time.

Survivor Series is traditionally one of the big shows of the year – which is to say, it’s the Thanksgiving show, and they’ve been using the name for 23 years now, so it must be important.  As we’ve mentioned before, the WWE is currently on a kick of giving every show a gimmick, but Survivor Series always had one: 5-on-5 tag team elimination matches.  Fortunately, the company seems to have figured out that you can’t always shoehorn the main event storylines into the gimmick match du jour, so a pattern is emerging: two title matches to headline the card, three gimmicks below. 

And this month’s card looks like this…

1.  WWE Title: John Cena v. Triple H v. Shawn Michaels.
2.  World Heavyweight Title: The Undertaker v. Chris Jericho v. The Big Show.

These two matches go hand in hand, so I’ll take them together.  For those who need reminding, in an attempt to generate its own competition, the WWE has split itself into three sub-promotions: Raw, Smackdown and ECW.  ECW is now basically a transitional show for debuting wrestlers with a few veterans around to show them the ropes, and we need say no more about it.  Raw is the flagship and has just been renewed through to 2014.  Smackdown is notionally equal to Raw (or at least a close second), but it’s stranded on MyNetworkTV and its long term future is not entirely secure.  In fact, because it attracts less internal politicking, and because it features fewer excruciating “comedy” skits, Smackdown is usually the better show by a mile.

Each brand has its own version of the world title, which is silly, and the titles should be unified, but there we go.  John Cena is the Raw champion, with the WWE Title; the Undertaker is the Smackdown champion, with the generically-named World Heavyweight Title.  (It’s supposed to be a continuation of the defunct WCW Championship.) 

The big idea here is that both babyface champions will defend their titles in three-way matches against a major tag team.  Undertaker is defending against Chris Jericho and the Big Show, a heel team who hold the Unified Tag Team Titles.  Cena is defending against both members of D-Generation X, a babyface tag team currently doing the umpteenth revival of their mid-nineties gimmick.  And in both matches, the story is that if the tag team work together, the champion is screwed.  But if they fight one another, he’s got a chance.

Here’s where it gets complicated, and a bit weird, and not very well written.  Although Jericho and the Big Show are heels, they’re also an alliance of convenience.  So they both want to win.  That means that the Undertaker is probably going to get a fair fight from his heel opponents.  But D-Generation X claim that they don’t care which of them wins.  Which means Cena is effectively facing a handicap match, even though his opponents are meant to be babyfaces.  Irony!

The problem is that the promotion of this match on Raw has basically consisted of a bunch of comedy skits in which DX and Cena all affect not to take the match seriously, and then have wacky fun with Hornswoggle, who is a midget wrestler playing a leprechaun.  There is a mystifying subplot going on, where said leprechaun wants to join DX and they don’t want him to, and Cena is trying to protect the leprechaun from getting beaten up by an irritable DX.  And on last Monday’s show, DX did in fact beat up the midget.  Which is odd behaviour for babyface characters, to put it mildly.  Of course, if you promote the match this way, there’s an obvious problem.  If the characters don’t much care about the match, why should we?

In fact, both matches are likely to be good.  The talent level is pretty high.  The question is, what’s going through the minds of the writers?  One factor here is that the December show is meant to be themed on ladder matches.  If they’re really going to have two ladder matches for the world titles, then the aging and increasingly fragile Undertaker has to lose, because there’s no way he’s doing a match like that in his condition.  (Unless it’s going to be a very cosy and gentle one, which rather defeats the point.)  Then again, they could just do the gimmick matches on the undercard, and have regular matches in the main event.  I think that’s more likely.

Another factor is that, as the unified tag champions, Jericho and the Big Show can appear on any show they want.  So if one of them wins the title, you could have both champions wandering around on Raw.  This might make sense if you wanted to build to a unification match, but they probably don’t.  In fact, if Big Show wins, it gets even more complicated: he’s a Raw wrestler who can only appear on Smackdown because he holds the tag titles.  So if he lost the tag titles, the world title would be permanently lost to Raw…  

I can’t see them wanting to get into this murky territory.  So my guess would be that Undertaker retains, in order to establish the point that the challengers only have the advantage when they work as a team.  Then, the Raw match is probably going to be a de facto handicap match, and my guess would be that one of DX – most likely Triple H – turns on his partner at the end, becomes a full-fledged heel, and wins the title.  Hornswoggle probably has to get involved somewhere, because they’ve done so much with him.  An outside, and deeply unpalatable, possibility is that Triple H turns heel and is thwarted by the midget.  That would not be good.

So… Undertaker to retain, Triple H to win, both matches probably good.

3.  Batista v. Rey Mysterio.
Dave Batista turned heel at the last show, after failing to win the world title for the umpteenth time.  He promptly blamed his ad hoc partner Rey Mysterio for the loss, and beat him up.  This is the obligatory match.

Now, Batista hasn’t been a heel since he split from the Evolution stable in early 2005, so at least this opens up some fresh matches for him.  And as a big guy specialising in power moves, he’s fairly well suited to the heel role.  On the other hand, his matches on Smackdown over the last few weeks haven’t been all that great.

But there’s little doubt about what happens here.  This is the first major match for a newly-turned heel who’s coming off something of a losing streak and who therefore needs to cement his status with a convincing win.  He will demolish Mysterio, Mysterio will get a few hope spots, Batista will win.  It’ll probably be okay but thoroughly predictable.

4.  Survivor Series Match: Kofi Kingston, MVP, Mark Henry, R-Truth & Christian v. Randy Orton, Cody Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, CM Punk & William Regal.  The WWE are well aware that they need to elevate some new main eventers, but they also have a dreadful tendency to abort plans halfway through.  This has left the upper midcard littered with wrestlers who, at one point, seemed on the cusp of making it to the next level, only for the company to forget about them and the fans to lose faith.

This month’s pet project is Kofi Kingston, who was called up to the active roster three years ago, claiming to be Jamaican.  He never did really master the accent.  Luckily for him, the WWE has finally decided to jettison that idea, and (after a bit of awkward distancing) he’s now being announced as hailing from Ghana.  This is actually true, though his family moved to America when he was an infant.  Fortunately, he’s not being required to attempt a Ghanaian accent.

Kingston has been plugged into a feud with Raw’s top heel Randy Orton, and so far, they’ve booked him pretty strongly.  He’s now at the point where Kingston v. Orton in a singles match would draw, and if Kingston won, it would give him real momentum into the top tier.  Of course, history says the WWE will probably screw it up.

And besides, we’re not getting a singles match; we’re getting a ten-man tag featuring a bunch of randoms assembled from around the roster.  Rhodes & DiBiase are Orton’s regular henchmen; they’re matched up with midcard babyface tag team MVP and Mark Henry.  CM Punk and R-Truth are in a half-hearted feud on Smackdown.  Christian is the current ECW Champion, and William Regal is his main challenger; their appearance making up the numbers in this match says a lot about how seriously the company takes ECW these days.

Still, there’s a lot of talent in this match.  (Mark Henry’s the odd man out, but it’s easy to use him effectively and hide his weaknesses in a ten-man tag.)  There are basically two ways you can book it.  One possibility is for Kingston’s team to win decisively, to keep his momentum.  The other, and probably more likely, is that Kingston’s team get picked off, and he fights heroically against the odds, nearly pulling things back before finally getting beaten.  Cue rematch next month.  I can see this being good.

5.  Survivor Series Match: John Morrison, Matt Hardy, Evan Bourne, Shelton Benjamin & Finlay v. The Miz, Drew McIntyre, Sheamus, Dolph Ziggler & Jack Swagger.  Welcome to the midcard.  John Morrison is the Intercontinental Champion, which is the secondary title on Smackdown.  The Miz is the US Champion, the secondary title on Raw.  And for a while, they were the WWE’s dominant heel tag team.  (Morrison turned babyface when the team split.)  They had a singles match at the last show, as part of the Raw vs Smackdown theme, which Miz won.  This is effectively the rematch, and since there’s no obvious way of extending the feud further, chances are Morrison’s team are winning. 

That would still be one match apiece, and an outside possibility is that they want to do Morrison and Miz in a ladder match next month to unify the secondary titles.  This would not be a bad idea at all.  Given the way they’re using the separate rosters, and the shaky future of Smackdown and ECW, the company doesn’t need three world champions, it doesn’t need two secondary men’s titles, and it certainly doesn’t need two women’s titles.  There is much to be said for paring down to just four titles (world, regional, tag, women’s), and extending the rule that the champions get to appear on every show.  Not only does it make the belts special, it also provides extra possible match combinations in a company that really needs them.

Morrison’s babyface team consists of veteran midcarders Matt Hardy and Finlay, the high-flyer Evan Bourne, who’s very talented but rarely gets to show it on Raw because he hardly ever gets to win, and Shelton Benjamin, a long-time heel currently on the ECW roster who recently turned babyface.  Since very few people watch ECW, this is likely to confuse many viewers.  Miz’s heel team consists of two midcard heels who once appeared to have been chosen for big things before the company lost interest in them (Swagger and Ziggler), and two recently debuted heels who are currently getting the same big push (McIntyre and Sheamus). 

McIntyre actually had a brief run in the company in late 2007, but we’re supposed to have forgotten that.  Unusually, he’s a Scottish wrestler who’s actually Scottish, and who isn’t doing a national identity gimmick.  Sheamus is Irish, and is doing a national identity gimmick.  Incidentally, even though I’d expect it to be spelled “Seamus”, that’s apparently how he used to spell it when he worked on the indie circuit.  Then again, we are talking about a man who thought that “Sheamus O’Shaunessy” would be a good ring name.  Both are currently at the stage where they’ve yet to convince the audience that they have the ability (or at least the entertainment value) to merit their pushes, but the jury’s still out.

Again, this ought to be a decent match.  The level of talent is pretty high, and plenty of these guys have good reason to put on the best possible show, whether to defend their existing pushes or to remind the company why they’re on the payroll.

6.  Survivor Series Match: Mickie James, Eve Torres, Kelly Kelly, Melina & Gail Kim v. Michelle McCool, Jillian Hall, Beth Phoenix, Layla & Alicia Fox.  And finally, the obligatory women’s match.  The best thing to be said about this is that at least in a ten-woman match it’s easier to hide the weaknesses of the more limited performers.

WWE Kremlinologists will take note that there’s some odd booking here.  The heel team is captained by Michelle McCool, who is the women’s champion on Smackdown.  You might expect, then, that the babyface team would be captained by the women’s champion on Raw, Melina… but no, it’s led by Mickie James.  That’s not exactly a vote of confidence, so chances are Melina won’t be holding on to that title for much longer.  Another curiosity is the inclusion on the heel team of Layla El, who’s a decent valet but nothing to write home about as a wrestler.  Once again, the company seems to have forgotten that it employs Natalia Neidhart, currently working as the manager of a tag team, who’s a better wrestler than most of the people in this match.  In fact, even the underused Katie Lea Burchill (marooned on ECW with nobody to fight) is better in the ring than Layla.  To be sure, we’ve seen many worse wrestlers than Layla over the years… but there are better ones on the roster who aren’t being used, for no readily apparent reason.

They’re clearly building to Mickie versus Michelle for the Smackdown women’s title, so I’d say the likely booking here is for Mickie to pin and eliminate Michelle, but for the heel team to cheat their way to a victory at the end.  As for the match quality… well, if they plough through the first few eliminations and get rid of the dead wood, it could be okay.

Worth buying?  I’ve always liked these elimination matches, and there’s actually some good reason to be optimistic about these ones.  They’ve done a wonky and lopsided job of building up the main events, but the actual wrestling is likely to be good.  I can see this being a good show.