Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Survivor Series Analysis, Owens & Zayn’s Backstage Heat, Kurt Angle Looking ‘Stiff’, More!

On today’s show former ECW, WCW and WWE Superstar, Big Vito and Jeff Lane will discuss Survivor Series.

Vito points out that WWE brought Kalisto into 205 Live to get good, entertaining matches out of Enzo Amore. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened and the experiment has failed big time. He says that Kalisto has definitely taken himself out the Title picture for an extended period of time.

He says that Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn definitely did something to piss people off because they went from the main event picture to being placed into the ‘Ha Ha spot’ with Breezango at Survivor Series. He thought this was a terrible match, and these two kickoff show matches really started the show on a poor note.

Lane points out that NXT: War Games didn’t sell out, and the crowd arrived late for Survivor Series. He wonders if four nights of wrestling in a row is becoming too much for fans. Vito says that NXT lost a lot of big stars recently before they had the proper people ready to replace them. He suggests that maybe WWE should consider rotating a few talents back and forth from NXT and the main roster.

Vito thought Survivor Series’ 5-man booth had way too many voices. He also thought that Shawn Michaels had a poor showing on the kickoff panel. He says that he has no heat with Michaels but he made no sense whatsoever on that panel, and the other panel members had to bail him out on several occasions. He points out that when you’re not cutting promos on a consistent basis there’s going to be some rust.

He thought The Shield and The New Day had a ‘decent’ match, but a lot of the match felt like a cluster. The guys spent too much time trying to execute too many big moves, and this made the mach feel rushed and jumbled. He thinks sometimes less is more.

Lane points out that sometimes WWE just ignores their own rules. When Reigns picked up the pinfall victory, Ambrose and Rollins were standing in the ring and Lane points out that the referee shouldn’t have counted the pinfall until those guys left the ring.

Vito thinks Becky Lynch is a good, believable performer and he has no idea why she was the first woman eliminated from the 5 on 5 Women’s match. WWE consistently buries her and he has no idea why, but he thinks she clearly has some enemies backstage somewhere. There was an obvious botch in Alicia Fox’s elimination which was too bad, but he liked that Asuka was the sole survivor. He thinks something’s got to change with Sasha Banks because she’s lost her fizzle.

Lane wonders why we didn’t get a backstage interaction between Shane and Stephanie McMahon on this show because he thought that was a no brainer. Vito thinks that WWE might be waiting to play up that family storyline at a later date, when Stephanie and Shane can fight for full control of the company.

Vito says Baron Corbin defeating The Miz was the shock of the night in his opinion. He thinks Corbin has had one of the worst Title runs in recent memory thus far, but this victory over The Miz adds some credibility to his Title reign. The loss also doesn’t hurt The Miz because he didn’t really need a win here.

Vito thinks The Usos are the best tag team in WWE right now, so he’s glad that WWE protected them by giving them a victory over Sheamus and Cesaro last night. He also didn’t think there were any losers in the Charlotte/Alexa Bliss match. He thought Charlotte winning was the right decision last night, but he’s excited to see more from these two women in the future.

Vito was not surprised to see Brock Lesnar assert his will out of the gate to start the Universal Title match. He points out that Lesnar and A.J. Styles worked tight and snug and although they both had a great showing, nobody in the building should have been surprised by Lesnar winning in the end.

Getting into the main event of the evening, Lane says that although he didn’t like Triple H manhandling Kurt Angle prior to picking up the pinfall victory, he did like Triple H selling great for Strowman to end the show. Vito said it hurt him to watch Angle wrestle last night because Angle can’t move like he used to and he looked stiff in the ring.

That sums up today’s episode of Vince Russo’s The Brand. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!