WWE fans spent an insane amount of time not watching wrestling at Survivor Series and they can’t quite work out how they feel about it.
Survivor Series aired from Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada on Sunday as one of the company’s ‘big four’ events of the year.
While WWE trumpets all of its Premium Live Events (pay per views) as galactic events, a popular quartet have stood the test of time as the most high-profile of the calendar.
WrestleMania is undoubtedly the biggest and boldest of them all, staged over two nights and usually acting as the ‘reset’ for the major storylines and rivalries of the time.
Before that each year comes the Royal Rumble while, in the summer, there’s SummerSlam, arguably the second biggest of the lot in terms of clout.
Each November, however, there’s WWE’s traditional fall classic, the Survivor Series which is actually only behind WrestleMania in its age, having first been broadcast back in 1987.
It was as huge a show as ever in 2024, as Roman Reigns and his OG Bloodline teamed with CM Punk to defeat the upstart Solo Sikoa to claim victory in the men’s War Games Match.
Despite the thrills and spills of another exceptional night of wrestling action, however, there were a few that were less than happy with just how much in-ring activity there was in the show.
Under the stewardship of Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque as Head of Creative and Chief Content Officer, WWE has adopted a ‘less is more’ policy to its programming when it comes to matches.
Rather than cramming cards with a high number of bouts, the company seemingly focuses on the finer detail – affording a great deal of time to backstage segments, entrances and build-up packages.
Survivor Series, for instance, featured just five matches – a fairly standard number for WWE as of late. That’s quite the contrast to rival organisation All Elite Wrestling for example, who generally load events with a real emphasis on in-ring content, featuring around a dozen matches that flow at a fairly fast pace.
Quite whether one style triumphs over another is a matter of opinion but, to emphasize the point of WWE’s style, one X account takes the unusual step of calculating how much time the company’s shows spend without wrestling on screen.
The digits from Survivor Series were both interesting and polarising.
According to the account, there was an average ‘wait time’ of 16 minutes and 29 seconds between the matches on Saturday.
In total, it said, the broadcast featured one hour, 22 minutes and 29 seconds of ‘packages, ads, vignettes and entrances.’
Given the undoubtedly quality of WWE’s storylines, production and general output just now, there were plenty who were far from fussed about it.
One fan said in reply that the ‘breathing time’ was a plus point, while another added: “WWE have sponsors and built-in ads, Things that business-wise make sense. They’re a company that needs to make money.”
A third said: “I don’t feel like I can’t do other things without missing any of the action.”
Some, however, were irritated by the downtime, one saying the wait times were ‘atrocious and ridiculous’, while another echoed: “I agree with having little time between matches, but almost [half] of the event is crazy excessive.”
While that debate will no doubt rage on, few can argue with WWE’s current hot streak as its steamrolls towards January’s Netflix debut following a $5billion rights deal.
