It’s completely understandable, and expected, that a pair of WarGames matches will necessarily outshine the remainder of the card — and that’s on nights that DON’T involve the returns of two extremely popular former WWE Champions. But in the case of Survivor Series 2023, it really feels like the midcard was set up to fail.

By far the hardest hit by this phenomenon was Rhea Ripley vs. Zoey Stark. Stark is an extremely competent wrestler who can pretty much do anything you ask her to do in the ring, but she hasn’t gotten a lot of time to develop a personality beyond “is a good wrestler.” She doesn’t have a ton of star power, and what little she does have was absolutely overwhelmed by the massive star power of Ripley in a match that every single member of the WINC staff knew Ripley was going to win. It’s the latest in a series of such matches for RIpley, who, since winning what is now the Women’s World Championship in April at WrestleMania, has defended it almost exclusively against the likes of Zelina Vega, Natalya, and Raquel Rodriguez. In the six months she’s held the title, Ripley has not gone up against a single member of the women’s division’s upper echelon (nobody who appeared in the women’s WarGames match, for example) and defeating Stark does nothing to change that. It didn’t help that this was Ripley’s shortest title defense since May, and the match ended just about the moment it appeared to be getting interesting.

Meanwhile, Santos Escobar vs. Dragon Lee was an excellent contest purely in terms of in-ring work, but something special was lost when Lee replaced Carlito, who hadn’t wrestled a singles match on a WWE PPV/PLE since 2007. Escobar vs. Carlito felt like it belonged on Survivor Series; Escobar vs. Lee felt like it belong on “WWE SmackDown.” And while GUNTHER and The Miz gave by far the strongest effort when it came to attempted show-stealing, again, The Miz (a 43-year-old former champion who turned babyface basically yesterday) just wasn’t the right opponent to make it feel like GUNTHER’s reign was ever really in jeopardy. The wrestlers themselves largely managed to overcome this and got the contest firmly into banger territory, but they weren’t set up to do so by the booking. They just did it, because they’re that good and they were given a decent amount of time. How many people went into Survivor Series thinking “I’m so excited, they might give Miz the title”?

It’s understandable that Survivor Series is now about WarGames, and that big returns are going to overshadow everything else. But the midcard deserved better than the lukewarm, predictable matches it was given.

Written by Miles Schneiderman