5 most shocking Survivor Series eliminations

With the 31st annual Survivor Series less than one week away, excitement is building for a night that could be full of surprises up and down the card. There have been plenty of surprising and shocking moments over the past three decades of WWE’s November tradition.

Sometimes it’s a return or a victory you don’t expect. Sometimes it’s a little more nuanced, like a specific wrestler getting eliminated from a match that you would never have thought would have happened. That’s what we’re going to talk about here. These are the five more shocking eliminations in Survivor Series history.

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#2 The Undertaker (Survivor Series 1990)

The Undertaker prepares to eliminate Dusty Rhodes in his debut match

The 1990 edition of the Survivor Series saw the debut of one of WWE’s most iconic characters of all time, The Undertaker. He debuted as Ted DiBiase’s secret weapon and dominated the match anytime he was in the ring, earning two pinfall eliminations for his team over Koko B. Ware and Dusty Rhodes, but was eliminated soon after by being counted out. Dusty went after Undertaker’s then-manager Brother Love. ‘Taker chased after him and thus was eliminated from the match. Of course, there was no way that they were going to have Undertaker get eliminated in any other manner in his first ever match with the company, but his team ended up winning, so why not have him just win the match?

The show’s gimmick that year was that the surviving members of the winning teams earlier on in the night would face off in the main event in one final elimination tag match. The bad guys vs. the good guys, of course. It makes sense that since the good guys were going to win (Hogan and Warrior were two members of that team) so they were protecting The Undertaker on his first night, but why not have him win his first match to establish complete dominance, and then get counted out in the main event? He could have dominated Hogan and Warrior for a little while, which would have been a huge deal, before being counted out to save Brother Love.

Obviously, it all worked out in the end and it was a great debut for The Dead Man, but I would have done things just a bit differently.

#4 The Hardy Boyz and Edge & Christian (Survivor Series 1999)

Edge & Christian and The Hardyz teamed up in 1999

The dust had just settled from the historic first-ever tag team ladder match at No Mercy one month prior, in which The Hardy Boyz successfully won their $100,000 prize and the services of Terri Runnels as their manager. Their opponents, Edge and Christian, were valiant in their loss. This match is remembered less than the TLC matches that would happen in the future, but this was the original blueprint.

The teams had feuded for months and had become two of the most popular acts in the entire company. They formed a bond of mutual respect shortly after their rivalry ended and soon faced the challenge of two other up-and-coming teams, The Holly Cousins and Too Cool. Both of these teams were much lower on the totem pole than E&C and The Hardyz, yet somehow when they battled in a four-on-four elimination tag match at the 1999 edition of the Survivor Series event, it was the Hollys and Too Cool who came out victorious.

Neither team earned a high profile tag team championship match after this, and two months later the historic 3-team feud between the Hardyz, Dudleyz and Edge and Christian was born, with the other two teams being left in the dust. Interestingly enough The Dudleyz lost their elimination tag match at Survivor Series that year as well.

#3 Team Rated-RKO (Survivor Series 2006)

Team DX with the clean sweep over Team Rated-RKO

In October 2006, Edge and Randy Orton (the Rated-R Superstar and the master of the RKO) formed a tag team that was aptly named Rated-RKO. They immediately went to war with Triple H and Shawn Michaels, who had reformed DX earlier in the same year. Rated RKO had success against DX and even won the Tag Team Championship about a month into their time as a duo. Their feud with DX led to an obvious elimination match at Survivor Series, which came a few weeks after Edge and Orton became tag champions.

The deck was stacked pretty high against the champs, though, as the 5-on-5 match saw their team consist of them, Gregory Helms, Mike Knox and Johnny Nitro. It was not quite a whos-who of talent in WWE, and it put them in a serious hole. You would think, at least, that even with a weak team, the strong link between Edge and Orton would allow them to put up a fight, but that did not happen. Their opponents for the evening far outclassed them. DX put together the team of Triple H, Shawn Michaels, The Hardy Boyz and CM Punk.

Yeah, Team Rated-RKO didn’t stand a chance. It took Team DX less than 12 minutes to dispose of all five members of their opposing team in one of the few clean sweeps in Survivor Series history, where one complete team survived. Not exactly a shining moment for Edge and Orton, but the two would go on to main event WrestleMania in 2008 and 2009 respectively, so I think they did okay for themselves.

#5 John Cena (Survivor Series 2014)

Team Cena vs. Team Authority

The 2014 Survivor Series pay-per-view is remembered for the official WWE debut of The Icon Sting, a shocking experience in its own right. But it’s also remembered for the gutsy performance by Dolph Ziggler, who ended up overcoming the odds and helping his team defeat The Authority, winning the match as the sole survivor. Most people thought this would be the star-making performance for Ziggler, who would finally be getting his push to the top, but that fizzled out very quickly and he soon found himself back in the same mid-card spot that he has continued to hold to this day.

The shocking elimination was John Cena. It was Cena’s team going up against The Authority. He was the main star, the top guy on the roster, leading a team of soldiers against the evil corporation… and he lost. His team won, sure, thanks to Ziggler, but Cena, the defender of WWE and the guy who always wins in the end, actually got pinned.

It took The Big Show turning his back on his own teammate to do it, but it was shocking that Cena wouldn’t be the guy defending WWE from the tyranny. It also left Dolph Ziggler alone in a 3-on-1 match for a full 20 minutes before he was able to pull out the miraculous victory. The elimination is even more shocking because if there was no plan to push Ziggler, why not just have him get eliminated and have Cena overcome the odds like always?

#1 Triple H (Survivor Series 2002)

Shawn Michaels miraculously wins the World Title inside the Elimination Chamber

Shawn Michaels injured his back at the 1998 Royal Rumble in his casket match with The Undertaker, which led to what everybody thought was his retirement two months later after losing the WWF Championship to Stone Cold Steve Austin at WrestleMania XIV. It was a career sadly cut short, as he retired only a few months before his 33rd birthday. After four-and-a-half years out of in-ring competition, which saw sporadic appearances by Michaels on TV in various roles, he returned to WWE full-time in June 2002 as a surprise member of the nWo, just one short month before it was disbanded for good. It was extremely odd, and people just assumed he would be there in a non-wrestling role as Kevin Nash’s old pal, who at the time was the leader of the final iteration of the nWo.

When the nWo came to an end in July 2002, Triple H and Shawn Michaels decided to don the old green and black DX gear for what appeared to be a reunion, but on the very night that they made their first official appearance as a reformed unit, Triple H attacked Michaels with the Pedigree before they even finished their entrance. It begged the question, why was this happening? Why did Shawn return if his back was too injured to wrestle? The Pedigree from Triple H seemed to kill all of the speculation that HBK was going to return to the ring as a wrestler, as the bump he took was one of the worst Pedigree sells of all time, but we were all so very, very wrong.

It turned out that Michaels was, in fact, gearing up for a return, and in August at SummerSlam, he defeated Triple H in his first WWE match in over four years. He later earned a spot in the first ever Elimination Chamber match, which took place at Survivor Series that November. This was going to be a short-term return for HBK, so it was assumed that he would be eliminated and one of Triple H’s other recent rivals, most likely Chris Jericho or Rob Van Dam (Kane and Booker T were also in the match) would win the World Heavyweight Championship. Or, of course, Triple H would retain it himself, which was the most likely outcome.

Instead, Shawn Michaels put on the performance of a lifetime, and just when it looked like Triple H was going to get his win back over his old friend turned bitter enemy, Michaels pinned him and won the World Title! It might not seem like a big deal now since he spent another seven years wrestling after this, but at the time it was unthinkable that HBK could become a champion again. But it happened, which is why Triple H being eliminated from the Elimination Chamber match at the 2002 Survivor Series is the most shocking Survivor Series elimination of all time.