5 biggest surprises from 2016 WWE Survivor Series

4. The New Day is eliminated early in the tag team match

With so many guys involved in a 10-on-10 tag team elimination match, you had to figure that there would be a couple of quick eliminations in this one and I don’t think the first one shocked anybody as Smackdown Live‘s Breezango (by the way, how good is this fashion police gimmick) was taken out just 45 seconds into the match. You had to figure a team from RAW would be taken out next and I’m betting most were thinking that it would be The Shining Stars. But just 25 seconds after Fandango was taken out, Kofi Kingston was rocked by a superkick from Jimmy Uso, and just like that, the two-time champs were gone.

I honestly can’t believe that anybody saw that coming. The New Day have been champs for 455 days and are currently only 23 days away from breaking the all-time record set by Demolition in the late 1980s. Yes, they have lost a few matches cleanly but haven’t dropped those belts yet, likely due to the powers that be wanting them to break that record, given that the former Ax and Smash are currently part of a class-action lawsuit against WWE. And they’re still insanely over with the majority of the audience, which makes what happened on Sunday so shocking.

However, Survivor Series did have a bit of a theme to it in my opinion, that being getting people to take notice of superstars and/or teams that maybe haven’t gotten their chance to shine. And as it was with eliminating Sasha Banks early to give the other women a chance in the spotlight, I think that was the case here as well. With New Day out of the match, the remaining eight teams were given almost the entire match to not have to deal with that distraction. This gave guys like The Hype Bros, American Alpha, The Shining Stars and the rest to show what they can do and they delivered. I thought the finish involving The Usos and Cesaro & Sheamus was done beautifully and furthered a few storylines in the process.