It’s all about brand supremacy at Survivor Series on Sunday evening, as Raw, SmackDown, and NXT go to war. Aside from the men’s and women’s five on five on five Survivor Series Elimination Matches, we’ll also see the secondary, tag team, and women’s champions all colliding in individual Triple Threat Matches. Considering two of those matches will be Becky Lynch vs Bayley vs Shayna Baszler, and AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura vs Roderick Strong, it’s resulted in the hype for the match between The Viking Raiders (Erik and Ivar), The New Day (Big E & Kofi Kingston), and The Undisputed ERA (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly) taking a bit of a backseat.
However, you can automatically tell that it’ll be one hell of a Triple Threat Match, especially if previous events from the six men involved have been anything to go by.
Fish and O’Reilly cemented their place in the match after they won the NXT Tag Team Championships from The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins & Montez Ford) on the August 28th episode of the namesake show, while Erik and Ivar lifted the Raw Tag Team Championships from Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode back on October 14th. Originally, The Revival (Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder) were set to be SmackDown‘s representation in the match, but they were replaced with Big E and Kofi Kingston after they regained the titles on November 8th.
Ever since Crown Jewel, where NXT‘s participation in this year’s Survivor Series was unveiled, The Undisputed ERA have remained at the forefront of the invading NXT stars. Even though they may not exactly see eye to eye with anyone else on the NXT roster (which is why they’ve been involved in every War Games Match since 2017), the Adam Cole-led faction will do whatever it takes to defend their home turf. They interrupted another classic bout between The New Day and The Revival on last week’s episode of SmackDown, ambushing both teams which meant E and Kingston retained their tag straps.
This past Wednesday evening on NXT, Fish and O’Reilly would clash with one of the most important tag tandems in NXT history as Dash and Dawson made their return to Full Sail. As predicted, that match went down a right treat, with both units proving exactly why tag team wrestling is incredibly brilliant. So, while those two teams have been at war with one another, what have the SmackDown representatives been up to during all this?
Up until this past Friday night, The New Day hadn’t been too involved in the rivalry, but that didn’t prevent them from calling on Heavy Machinery (Otis and Tucker) for some assistance as they took on not only Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly, but also Adam Cole and Roderick Strong. Unfortunately for them, it would be the UE who picked up the win, which followed on from dissension between The New Day and Heavy Machinery earlier on in the bout. Not exactly the result they were looking for heading Sunday’s matchup.
This one may not have had the tantalising story told between Becky Lynch, Bayley, and Shayna Baszler, and it may not be the sensational wrestling classic that AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura vs Roderick Strong is bound to be, but this is certainly a match to be looking forward to. Erik, Ivar, Big E, Kofi Kingston, Bobby Fish, and Kyle O’Reilly have all the possibility of crafting something special together. Between the sheer power of The Viking Raiders, the incredible athleticism of The New Day, and the tactical tag team offence of The Undisputed ERA, we could very well have a match of the year contender on our hands.
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can catch Survivor Series via the WWE Network.
