5 biggest surprises from 2016 WWE Survivor Series

3. Dean Ambrose was the first man eliminated in the men’s match

There was so much star power in the men’s 5-on-5 traditional Survivor Series match that it really was a tossup on who would be eliminated first but I was truly surprised when that man was Dean Ambrose. But I’ve got to say that it was the right thing to do, and to let Braun Strowman to be the one to do it was even better.

There was only a couple of ways that the Ambrose/Styles partnership could go down at Survivor Series. One was to have them get along for the entire match and win it together, and then tear each other apart afterwards to help sell the upcoming TLC pay-per-view. But that’s what we got in the women’s match with Charlotte and Bayley. The other option was for them to further their program by essentially eliminating one another and that’s exactly what happened.

Now, I knew Strowman wouldn’t go out first as they wanted to showcase him and did it quite well. The one thing I thought might happen would be for Chris Jericho to somehow be responsible for Kevin Owens being eliminated by AJ Styles, making Owens the first one out and feeling as if he was the inferior champion. He would blame Jericho and further the inevitable split storyline that we all know is coming. But Dean Ambrose? Again, I was shocked, but it made perfect sense in the end, and as it’s been with most things in this fantastic Styles/Ambrose feud, the timing was perfect as well. Ambrose was eliminated exactly 16 minutes into the match and obviously had to leave the ring area. In that time, a lot of things transpired that almost made you forget about him. It wasn’t until more than 20 minutes later that he returned to help his Shield brethren powerbomb Styles through a table, thus eliminating the WWE World Champion after Seth Rollins got the 1-2-3 after throwing him back in the ring.

So while it was a shock to see the extremely popular Dean Ambrose out first, it worked out beautifully in the end. And without Styles to represent Smackdown Live, the brand you knew wouldn’t get shut out, that opened the door for my favorite surprise of the night.