Here’s Why The Survivor Series Elimination Team Builds Felt Rushed

They made it work. Survivor Series has come and gone and that means things are going to get back to normal in a hurry. Above all else, the biggest story over the last few weeks has been setting up the Survivor Series elimination teams for both Monday Night Raw and SmackDown. The ten person elimination tags have been a staple of Survivor Series for over thirty years now and that is not changing anytime soon. This year’s selection process was a little different though.

Neither the men’s or women’s SmackDown team was set with just forty eight hours to go before the pay per view and that was quite the last minute setup. As this week’s SmackDown started, there were three spots left to be filled in on the show. That might sound like a last second situation, and it turns out that WWE did things as they did for a specific reason.

According to Wrestling Observer Radio, both Bayley and Otis were added to the Survivor Series teams without having to win qualifying matches because there was no time to hold such matches. Instead, the two were named to their respective teams, with Bayley even being named the captain. Natalya had to win a qualifying match on the same show, and earlier in the month, Braun Strowman had been told he could not be put on the Raw team without winning a match.

It was an eventful night. Check out the match the wrestlers were trying to reach:

Opinion: There is something rather sad about the fact that a wrestling company with this much time can’t even find the time to run a two minute qualifying match in all the weeks they spend building up the pay per view. I know there are some things that they need to do before they get to the show, but you would think they could force something like this in. It really shouldn’t be this difficult.

Is this a problem for WWE? How did the matches wind up going? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!