WWE went in a different direction for the 2022 edition of Survivor Series, but in recent years fans had grown used to seeing stars from Raw face off against stars from SmackDown. WWE would often book champion vs. champion matches, and in 2017 WWE Champion AJ Styles faced off against Universal Champion Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series.
Brock Lesnar vs. AJ Styles was a big match, but it didn’t close the show as Team Raw vs. Team SmackDown ended up landing in the main event slot.
Road Dogg recently talked about the 2017 Survivor Series premium live event on his Oh You Didn’t Know? podcast, and he noted that WWE didn’t know how Brock vs. AJ was going to go, so they put the traditional five on five match in the main event.
“We didn’t know what to close with [at Survivor Series 2017]. AJ [Styles] and Brock [Lesnar] or this [men’s traditional five-on-five match] and so we chose AJ and Brock to not close. We’re gonna close with the other one because we didn’t know what AJ and Brock was gonna do… I didn’t know it was gonna be good, and this has happened more than once. In retrospect, you go, man, I sure wish we had closed with that one, you know what I mean? Everybody would have gone home happy and so, again, they still went home happy I think anyway.”
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