If WrestleMania 17 is the series finale to the “Attitude Era,” Survivor Series 2001 is the finale to the spin-off show every successful TV show eventually gets. It was the conclusion to the Invasion storyline that’s widely considered one in every of the largest missed opportunities in wresting history, and while some things were out of the hands of WWE like Time Warner contracts paying wrestlers to remain at home, the corporate could have at the very least done a greater job with the highly anticipated WCW/ECW invasion. It might need worked within the late Nineteen Nineties and the yr 2000, but not every major storyline needed a McMahon in every corner.
By the tail end of 2001, Vince McMahon had grown as drained because the fans were of The Alliance attempting to take down WWE and decided to place every part on the road in a conventional Survivor Series tag team match. Two teams of 5, elimination rules, winner take all, whoever gets the decisive victory would stay in business, and the losers would vanish into the night. Provided that WWE had already mapped out their schedule all the best way as much as WrestleMania 18 at this point, most individuals knew what was going to occur within the important event, but that did not stop it from being any less entertaining.
On one side, you had Team WWE made up of The Rock, Chris Jericho, The Undertaker, Kane, and The Big Show, while The Alliance were represented by Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Booker T, Rob Van Dam, and the WCW owner on the time Shane McMahon. Within the early going, Shane is definitely the early MVP through the use of common sense and consistently diving in to interrupt up pinfalls, but that makes his eventual elimination even sweeter. The eliminations do come thick and fast as RVD eliminates Kane with a kick off the highest, RVD gets eliminated by Jericho via his version of a Stroke, and it takes all of The Alliance’s finishers to do away with The Big Show.
When all is alleged and done, this match is actually just one other technique to get a Rock/Austin encore from WrestleMania 17, which nobody was arguing against since the two have amazing chemistry. Austin now firmly within the heel role versus the Mania match where the turn happened progressively, and he’s much more unhinged here as he was in April. Nevertheless, The Rock shows out within the closing stretch as he had the group within the palm of his hand, and despite the fact that Angle is the one to provide the assist for the finish, it’s The Rock who gets his hand-held high. It’s matches like this that make me miss the standard Survivor Series matches because when done right, they’re absolutely incredible. The Alliance died in Greensboro, North Carolina, which was often known as WCW territory, so Vince got to rub it within the competition’s face yet one more time for old times sake.