30 years of WWE Survivor Series: Ranking each event

Here are the rankings for every WWE Survivor Series pay-per-view event in history.

Since its inception in 1987, Survivor Series has long been one of the great events in WWE. Starting as a follow-up to WrestleMania III, it’s grown from a collection of multi-man matches into a place where anything can happen.

From big debuts to championship matches to brand extension battles to surprises that nobody would ever see coming, Survivor Series has become must-see television over the years. With the event now entering its fourth decade, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at every single Survivor Series event and see how they stack up against one another.

So, let’s not waste any time. Here are the rankings for every single Survivor Series in history.

30. Survivor Series 1993

1993 was a bit of a tough year for WWE and Survivor Series showed exactly how far the company had fallen. The only really great feud that year was between Bret Hart and Jerry Lawler after “The Hitman” won the 1993 King of the Ring. Lawler claimed that he was the only king in WWE and for months ran down Bret and members of his family.

This set up a traditional Survivor Series match that would see Bret and his brothers take on Lawler and a random group of knights. Yes, you read that right. However, Lawler had been accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl and missed the event. Shawn Michaels randomly replaced Lawler with no explanation given to anyone and the match just went on. Greg Valentine and Barry Horowitz were two of the knights in the match and while the action between Shawn and Bret was good as usual, the match just didn’t have the sizzle it would have with Lawler there. They at least started the Owen turn as he was the only member of the Hart team eliminated.

The best match of the night was probably the opener that saw Team Razor Ramon defeat Team IRS but the rest of the card was pretty bad. When you have to include a match for the Smoky Mountain Wrestling tag titles, things aren’t going well. I suppose it was cool to see The Rock N’ Roll Express on a WWE pay-per-view but the match wasn’t good. But at least it wasn’t as bad as Team Bigelow vs. The Four Doinks. What a train wreck that was.

The main event revolved around the ongoing feud between Lex Luger and Yokozuna. Luger led The All-Americans, which included The Steiner Brothers (back when Scott Steiner looked normal) and The Undertaker while Yokozuna countered with Jacques from The Quebecers, Ludvig Borga and Crush as The Foreign Fanatics. Guess who won that one. Luger was the sole survivor and was joined by Santa Claus in the ring after he won. Gotta love the early ’90s in WWE.