WWE Survivor Series 2002: Retro 3 Things We Hated And 3 Things We Loved

With the Elimination Chamber match, and its eponymous PLE, returning this weekend, it's time to go back 24 years for the match that started it all.

WWE Survivor Series 2002 in New York City's famous Madison Square Garden, played host to the debut Elimination Chamber match. Far from the padded cube of lights and sounds that it is today, the original structure was all-black, and made of a punishing steel that clanged against the bodies of the first six-men to grace the chamber. 

While the Elimination Chamber debut is easily the most historic thing about the '02 Survivor Series, it was far from a one-match show. The so-called "SmackDown Six" wrestled in a triple-threat tag team match that is still talked about in hushed, reverent tones today, plus the show also featured a trainwreck elimination tables match that saw The Dudley Boyz reunite. It wasn't a perfect show. There was time-killing a plenty, a few too many Saliva performances, and no set to speak of, instead letting the Chamber take center stage.

Without further ado, let's travel back in time and take a look at the best and the worst from the 2002 edition of Survivor Series

There is no "worst match" on this show. It's a wildly economical, yet substantial show. There's a four-minute match that sees Brock Lesnar get betrayed by Paul Heyman, but it leads to a WWE title change and it's too short to get in its own way. They get in, they do what they gotta, they get out. The rest of the show is a thrilling marathon of action.

I'll speak more about the main event in a bit, but everyone showed up to Madison Square Garden, prepared to show out. Jamie Noble and Billy Kidman have an incredibly tight Cruiserweight Title match, one of the first of the burgeoning division. There is a Women's Title Street Fight that is the thing of legends. Victoria and Trish Stratus would not have the legacies they have without that match. The Triple-Threat Tag Team Elimination Match is as good as everyone says, and then some. Even the presence of Chris Benoit can't fully deflate the proceedings.

Every title match saw a title change. Every match met a certain standard. It's the kind of show that can't be run all the time, but when you get it right, it's good as gold. This is a shining example of what the Ruthless Aggression era would be able to accomplish.

Survivor Series 2002 has a unique set. There's LED boards on the usual New York Knicks entrance, and a barge of pyro out in the middle of the audience. It looks goofy as hell, no matter how good this show is. Wrestlers have to awkwardly rework their entrances, the directors have to rework camera angles, so they have a shot of the pyro barge, and the audience is kinda sitting around while pyro goes off in the middle of them. It makes the show kinda look like a warzone. Sometimes it works, but a lot of the time it looks low-rent.

I do love the mental image of Rey Mysterio just hanging out under the barge as pyro goes off, waiting for his entrance.

Madison Square Garden has always been a difficult venue for elaborate sets, but as previous and future outings in the arena would prove, there's a happy medium between WrestleMania X-7 and the pyro barge.

I admittedly like saying "pyro barge," so there's that.

The opening six-man tag team tables match is a pretty nifty inversion of Survivor Series's traditional elimination tag match. It's probably the best match that 3 Minute Warning had in their short time as a WWE tandem, and the novelty of seeing Bubba Ray and Jeff Hardy on the same team in a tables match, with D-Von coming in for a surprise save, is basically an Avengers Team-Up 10 years early.

This match is just electric. Tables explode into debris, Jeff Hardy jumps off a balcony, The Dudleyz reunite after being split up by the WWE Draft, to neither man's benefit. The Dudleyz should never have been split in the first place, but the MSG reaction to D-Von helping Bubba Ray win the match almost makes the months of Reverend D-Von worth it...Almost.

Like I said, not a single bad match. All the matches are good.

However...

The space between the triple-threat elimination tag team title match, and the main event, feels like it takes hours. Randy Orton injury updates, Scott Steiner debuting and beating up Matt Hardy and Chris Nowinski, Eric Bischoff smacking the chamber with a nightstick and yelling, "Reinforced steel! Chain! Bulletproof Glass! It feels like it's never going to end, and then the elimination chamber entrances take forever.

The thing about pacing is, if you let up on the gas just a little, everyone will feel it twice as hard. There's plenty of entertainment in those few minutes between the main event and the rest of the show, but it feels endless.

The Elimination Chamber never got better than this first match. There have been fun inversions, there have been memorable moments, but the sheer brutality of this first match has never, will never, and should never be replicated again.

The chamber itself is all solid steel, in a way that the crowd can hear. It is six of WWE's best at the time, handed a structure no one has used before, and shortening their careers in the name of getting the match itself over. I've seen the match a million times and it still makes me wince. Whether legend or fact, the idea that Triple H is wrestling the entire thing with a crushed windpipe is incredible. The match builds to Shawn Michaels cleaning house and overcoming the odds, and does so masterfully.

Even the second and third best Elimination Chamber matches borrow from this one. It is the ur-text of the match, and still as exciting as it ever was. Survivor Series might not be a one-match show, but the one match that closed the show did so with fire and fury.

The match is good, the winner is right, but the 2002 Elimination Chamber began one of the most frustrating periods in WWE: The lengthy two-year feud between Shawn Michaels and Triple H.

The two would go on to Armageddon, where they would try to have the greatest match of all time, three times in a row, in a laborious 3 Stages Of Hell Match. Triple H wins, beginning a reign of terror that still haunts him to this day. They'd then have their Last Man Standing Match at The Royal Rumble, a truly divisive bore that saw both men fight to a no contest. Then Michaels inserted himself in the Triple H vs. Chris Benoit World Heavyweight Title feud, which then led to the infamous Bad Blood 2004 Hell In A Cell match. 

There's just a lot of bad wrestling that follows the Elimination Chamber, and it's hard not to watch the show, and once again see all the promising pieces that are about to get knocked off the board in favor of very long Triple H promos, and endless aura farming from Evolution.