It’s time again for another of my WWE Pay-per-view rundowns! This time I am reviewing another one of the WWE’s “big four” pay-per-views, Survivor Series!

Survivor Series is the WWE’s second oldest pay-per-view (second only to Wrestlemania itself) and has seen some of the most famous (and infamous) moments in the history of the WWE, from the debuts of wrestlers like The Undertaker and The Rock (and the hated Gobbledygooker) to the much controversial Montreal Incident. And with its unique five vs. five elimination tag team matches, Survivor Series has become one of the WWE’s most noteworthy pay-per-views. How does the 2009 edition stand up?

• The first match continued the rivalry between former tag team partners John Morrison and The Miz in the form of a traditional Survivor Series elimination match. John Morrison’s team consisted of Matt Hardy, Shelton Benjamin, Finlay and Evan Bourne against The Miz’s team of Dolph Ziggler, Jack Swagger, Drew McIntyre and Shaemus (no last name given…ever). This was a good and fun opener which both continued a good rivalry (that should still go on longer) and helped established some of the newer wrestlers a bit more and showed some of their potential. The match itself wasn’t anything too special (as fun as it was) and followed in the annoying tradition that once one guy gets eliminated, most of the others get eliminated too soon afterwords. However the match did still deliver some good wrestling and achieved the two aforementioned objectives. Team Miz won the match when Shaemus last eliminated John Morrison himself. Shaemus, McIntyre and The Miz were the “sole survivors.” I should point out that four of the five members of team Morrison were eliminated by Shaemus and McIntyre (with Benjamin being eliminated by The Miz), which probably means those two are going to be getting a push to higher level matches.

• Next up was the grudge match between “former best friends” Batista and Rey Mysterio. I have to say, I like Batista’s heel turn. It has freshened things up a bit. The match itself was so-so, it could have gone one of two ways: Have Rey Mysterio win and make Batista go crazier because he just can’t seem to get the best of Rey, or have Batista win the match, beating Mysterio to a pulp in the process, and have him be more of a “dominant heel.” Unfortunately they went with the latter. I say unfortunately because I would have liked to have seen Batista as a crazed heel bent on “destroying” Rey Mysterio instead of one chasing the world title right away (seriously, hasn’t Batista had enough world title matches in recent times? we need more freshness!). At least they had Rey put on a good showing. The match ended when the referee declared that “Mysterio couldn’t continue with the match” after three Batista Bombs. An okay match.

• Next up was another Survivor Series elimination match between teams Kingston and Orton (captained, of course, by Kofi Kingston and Randy Orton, respectively). I must say I like Kingston’s main event push, and his rivalry with Randy Orton has worked so far. It is only a shame that Kofi dropped the Jamaican accent.

Kingston’s team included the tag team of MVP and “the world’s strongest man” Mark Henry as well as R-Truth and ECW champion Christian, whilst Orton’s team consisted of Orton’s usual lackeys, Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase (Jr.) joined this time by William Regal and the why-is-he-a-bad-guy?-But-at-least-he’s-good-at-being-a-bad-guy CM Punk. This was a very good match. The Kingston/Orton rivalry had a lot of presence and their was a lot of good wrestling. The bad point is there were a few eliminations too short into the match (three within the first five minutes I might point out, to be more specific, Mark Henry was eliminated less than a minute into it. Way to sell the “world’s strongest man” gimmick.). But aside from that the match was great. I especially enjoyed the final moments when Kofi Kingston fought CM Punk it what would have been a great match on its own, all while Randy Orton looked on from the outside, which sold Kingston as a powerful face, Orton as a cowardice heel and Punk as a fighting heel. Kofi Kingston won the match as the sole survivor after he pinned Punk (which was a hard fought and very enjoyable bout) then eliminated Orton mere seconds later.

• Up next was the World Heavyweight Championship triple threat match (that’s a mouthful) between defending champion Undertaker against both members of the Unified WWE Tag Team Champions Chris Jericho and The Big Show. The story here was that both Big Show and Jericho worked together as a team to take out The Undertaker, but it was only a matter of time before they tried to take out each other (seeing as it is a triple threat match and all). Big Show and Jericho teamed up against Undertaker early on, then, as any heel should, not only turned against each other, but tried to better each other at any chance they got. This was a very good match that highlighted all three wrestlers.  Big Show seemingly had the match won when he knocked Jericho out, but chose instead to try to pin the champion Undertaker instead of his partner, which I thought was a good moment. Undertaker retained the title after he made Big Show submit. This was a good and surprising ending (I thought for sure Undertaker was going to pin Jericho). Very good match.

• Then we had the WWE “Divas” elimination tag team match. Seriously, who booked this match at this point in the show?! I suppose maybe they did it for a bathroom break between the main events. I can’t imagine why they would put the match that was destined to be the worst on the card after the last two matches. Anyway, the face team (captained by Mickie James, which also consisted of Eve Torres, Melina, Gail Kim and the awfully named Kelly Kelly) defeated the heel team (Michelle McCool, Beth Pheonix, Jillian Hall, Layla and Alicia Fox) with Mickie James and Melina being the sole survivors. I suppose it was a mostly harmless match as far as WWE divas matches go, but still not really good.

• And finally the main event was WWE champion John Cena defending his title in a triple threat match against both members of D-generation X, Triple H and Shawn Michaels. This was a similar scenario to the Undertaker/Big Show/Jericho match, with a tag team having to fight one another as well as the champion. The difference here is that everyone in the match is a certified face, which brings up the question of whether or not the tandem of Triple H and Shawn Michaels would hold up given the circumstances. In the world of professional wrestling it seems the bad guys are more understanding that they need to fight each other if they want to win a world title, whereas it seems the good guys turn to the dark side if their tag team partner tries to win a title for himself in a match. Thankfully it doesn’t look like they are taking that route this time. But the match certainly liked to tease at the idea. As soon as the match began, Shawn Michaels kicked Triple H out of the ring, leaving it one-on-one between Cena and Michaels for the first few minutes (until Triple H regained consciousness and broke Michaels through a table, returning the favor). The match itself was very good, though it was a lot more of one of those “taking turns” kind of triple threat matches than the Undertaker match, which focused more on the triple aspect of “triple threat.” This isn’t really a bad thing, just an observation. I do wish there were some more in-ring action between the DX cohorts though. But the match succeeded in good wrestling and the whole “what’s going to happen with DX?!” aspect. Cena retained the title after he pinned Triple H. Very good match.

All in all, I really enjoyed this edition of Survivor Series. It was definitely better than last year’s Survivor Series that’s to be sure. The divas match was the only one to really complain about, and maybe a few grumbles go to the Mysterio/Batista bout. But as a whole this pay-per-view delivered. The other two elimination matches were fun and we had two strong title defenses. And the wrestling was for the most part good.

On a slightly side note, let’s bring up the world titles for a second. Let’s hope the title defenses here are a sign of things to come. Quite frankly, I hope both Undertaker and John Cena’s title reigns last a good while longer. The WWE has been playing hot potato with the world titles as of late and they need some long title reigns with strong title defenses to help build more prestige. With their victories here (as well as Undertaker’s at Bragging Rights), both Undertaker and John Cena are off to a good start. If they continue with these kinds of title defenses we’ll have two great title reigns. Hopefully WWE doesn’t decide to end them too soon.

So with two strong world title matches and two exciting elimination matches, WWE Survivor Series 2009 is a thumbs up. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to buy WWE’s next pay-per-view, TLC (Tables, Ladders and Chairs, where, appropriately enough, all of the main events are either tables matches, ladder matches or TLC matches) or wait for it to come out on DVD. But if TLC turns out as entertaining as this years Survivor Series, it is sure to be good. Again, thumbs up to Survivor Series.