Written By: Mark Armstrong
Running Time: 208 Minutes
Certificate: 15
Number Of Discs: 1
Studio: Fremantle Home Entertainment
Released: January 21 2019
(Thanks to Fetch Publicity for arranging this review.)
For a show that saw the two brands go head-to-head, which generated tremendous buzz in the days beforehand and instigated a major title change and heel turn the prior Tuesday, right now it feels like Survivor Series 2018 never happened. But that doesn’t mean that the show was not entertaining to watch, which I’m reminded of when reliving it on DVD.
Kicking things off is the women’s five-on-five match, which is a fun opener occurring at a time when Nia Jax was the most hated WWE competitor for injuring Becky Lynch six nights earlier, meaning that the boos are enormous when WWE understandably capitalised by having Jax be the sole survivor here. Seth Rollins vs. Shinsuke Nakamura is a hidden gem of a PPV match, and is arguably Shinsuke’s best supershow clash against anyone not named AJ Styles in WWE.
AoP vs. The Bar is memorable for two things: Enzo Amore legitimately hijacking the show temporarily from the crowd, and Drake Maverick pissing his pants when Big Show grabbed Drake by the throat (one of these was planned; take a guess which one). Then we get a belting Cruiserweight Championship battle between Buddy Murphy and Mustafa Ali, in which the two men prove that they can grab the audience’s attention and put on an awesome match, regardless of whether 205 Live is a priority for the company or not.
After that, we had the five-on-five men’s Survivors match, which is only a slight improvement on the disappointing 2017 main event. The action is watchable, but it feels like very little is at stake, especially once Team Raw secures a win that condemns the SmackDown defeat to total defeat on the night, with two matches to go. Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair is a thrilling battle with an abrupt DQ finish that nicely inserted Charlotte into the Ronda/Becky Lynch scenario, which at presents looks like a strong contender to end up main eventing WrestleMania 35.
Brock Lesnar vs. Daniel Bryan closes the show in fine fashion. It’s a superbly-crafted match, with Lesnar destroying Bryan before the new WWE Champion uses shady tactics to turn things around and almost claim the submission victory, only for Brock to pick up the win by pinfall. That Bryan wrestled as a heel here still seems weird, but weirder still is WWE not acknowledging SmackDown’s 6-0 defeat on the PPV at all in its aftermath. That we don’t get the DVD extras included on the U.S. version is also frustrating.
Nevertheless, though it feels almost forgotten in hindsight, Survivor Series 2018 is an underrated show, one of the better overall PPVs that WWE put out last year, and it’s one of the supercards that I would recommend revisiting on DVD.
Overall Rating: 7.5/10 – Good
