30 years of WWE Survivor Series: Ranking each event

8. Survivor Series 2005

Let’s pretend that Survivor Series 2005 didn’t have Teddy Long vs. Eric Bischoff on the card, shall we? Every other match on this card had something to offer. Booker T and Chris Benoit got their best-of-seven series for the United States Championship going and while it was a bit slow at points, it was solid overall and got the night off to a good start.

Although not very long, Trish Stratus vs. Melina for the Women’s Championship was good enough and that was followed by a great match between Ric Flair and Triple H. The two had a great program that year and this Last Man Standing Match was one of their best. It was never going to be a wrestling match more than a fight and they worked together so beautifully. It’s sometimes hard to remember that Flair was the Intercontinental Champion at this point but his title wasn’t on the line.

Next up was the WWE Championship Match between Kurt Angle and John Cena. It was crazy to see how far Cena had come since debuting against Angle in 2002, and while I think they could have had better matches had Angle not left WWE, this was still very good with Cena coming out on top.

The main event of the night was Team RAW (Shawn Michaels, Kane, Carlito, Chris Master and Big Show) vs. Team SmackDown (Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, Batista, Bobby Lashley, JBL) and this was a very entertaining match to watch. Everyone pretty much got their chance to shine here. It was a little surprising to see Lashley out so early but the rest of the match made up for it. Shawn Michaels was the last man standing for the red squad but after having to go 1-on-3, for a while, he was just spent and Randy Orton capitalized and won yet another Survivor Series elimination match on his own.