By Nicholas Jason Lopez

Anniversaries provide moments of celebration and reflection, as we all know.

Survivor Series holds significance to the careers of The Undertaker, Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose and Seth Rollins, generally speaking.

The Deadman made his spooky debut 25 years at the 1990 Survivor Series to an audience whom had no idea how prevalent his name would be in WWE storylines in the weeks, months, years and decades to come.

Reigns, Ambrose and Rollins made their debuts at the 2012 Survivor Series as a faction known as The Shield – out to correct what they perceived as injustice. This group would dominate for the better part of 17 months before Rollins was first to turn on his brothers with a steel chair to join The Authority as the hand-selected “Future.”

Even though last year’s Survivor Series revolved around The Authority losing power, all of that was undone when Rollins single-handedly brought The Authority back to get himself on top of WWE, eventually claiming the WWE World Heavyweight Championship at WrestleMania, again stealing Reigns’ surefire Championship celebration moment.

Come this year’s Survivor Series, Undertaker, Reigns, Ambrose and Rollins all find themselves tied to the event one way or another – for better or worse.

Undertaker teams with his brother Kane to battle two Wyatt Family members for retribution. Rollins suffered a major knee injury that sidelines him for the next six-to-nine months and forces him to give up the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, prompting a 16-man Tournament to decide a new Champion, which Reigns and Ambrose have made it to the Semifinals in, respectively.

What will next year bring for these men? Time will tell, but for the moment, let’s celebrate and reflect on history thus far.

The Card 

– WWE World Heavyweight Championship Tournament – Semifinals – Alberto Del Rio Vs. Roman Reigns: In the most predictable match of the night, WWE has made it clear that Reigns will make it to the tourney finals. As we saw with the great buildup prior to Rollins’ unfortunate injury, Reigns had become #1 Contender by beating WWE United States Champion Alberto Del Rio, Kevin Owens and Dolph Ziggler in one match. Ironically enough, Del Rio, Owens and Reigns are all in a position again to fight for the Title. Given the tournament style, there’s no way on earth Del Rio will beat Reigns. We’ll likely hear some Mex-America crapola beforehand, which we still don’t quite grasp the concept of, but perhaps Jack Swagger costs Del Rio the match to advance their own little feud? Rest assured – Reigns wins.

Prediction: Roman Reigns

– WWE World Heavyweight Championship Tournament – Semifinals – Dean Ambrose Vs. Kevin Owens: In the match that’s trickier to predict, it’s safe to say both guys have benefited from being showcased in the tournament. Ambrose has struggled becoming WWE World Heavyweight Champion this year, but Owens has yet to be in that spotlight, but he’s the Intercontinental Champion, so he’s safe either outcome. For the tourney’s sake though, it’d be poetic justice if it came down to Owens and Reigns again. Expect an excellent match here, as these two have shown they’re capable of, main eventing a recent Smackdown and all, but Owens might have just enough edge to best Ambrose and come closer than ever to the big prize. Owens just fits the finals anyways. He’d likely be Triple H’s big pick, so if they’re going to go down that route, why not exploit it for all it’s worth? We think the reason why the Ambrose-Reigns potential match has been downplayed so much is because that wasn’t WWE’s goal. They want the belt on Reigns and look to do that the easiest way possible.

Prediction: Kevin Owens

– Tyler Breeze Vs. Dolph Ziggler: For the longest time, Breeze was synonymous with NXT, lasting five years down there, perhaps standing out the most this year, having feuds/matches with NXT Champion Finn Balor, Hideo Itami, Apollo Crews and most notably, Jushin “Thunder” Liger. We all wondered when his moment would come and then came an episode of Smackdown where the inevitable occurred. Prince Pretty was finally here, as Summer Rae’s new man and it was clear he despised Ziggler. Despite the confusion that Ziggler would be jealous that Summer Rae is with a new man when he was never with Summer to begin with back in that godawful storyline, we can look past that for the sake of an excellent wrestling match and that’s what we see here. It has been said that Ziggler wanted to work with Breeze even when the latter was stuck in NXT and it’s hard to ignore the similarities of their looks/gimmicks. Breeze is in a point where he needs to be established quickly since he lost a good amount of NXT matches and that’s what Ziggler is for. Especially with how Ziggler laid out Breeze on the Smackdown go-home show, that just points more to a Breeze win.

Prediction: Tyler Breeze

– WWE Divas Championship – Charlotte (Champion) Vs. Paige: When this feud started, it all showed promise. The silly faction warfare soon dissolved into a Paige heel turn when she voiced her frustrations about not being the Divas Champion, soon confirmed when she blatantly attacked her former Team PCB mates Becky Lynch and Charlotte. It was destined to be Paige and Charlotte fighting for the Title. Paige did her part by winning the best Divas main roster match to date, a Fatal Four-Way to decide the #1 Contender on the Nov. 2 Raw. Since that point, it had been a battle of mind games and wits, with Lynch thrown in the middle. Paige injured her, which added some necessary depth. Things “jumped the shark” on the go-home Raw when despite being the closing segment, it was remembered for all the wrong reasons when WWE had Paige get heat with a trashy comment towards Charlotte’s late younger brother, Reid Flair. It was all in bad taste and it has now soured this feud. Even worse, WWE didn’t bother to backtrack their steps and replayed the damn comments on the go-home Smackdown, still making Paige unsympathetic to her comments. That did them no favors and maybe even cost them some fans. Vince McMahon shows no shame when using real deaths for storylines and this was just the recent example of that. As for the match, we expect something good, but when it’s all said and done, Charlotte will retain and look forward to her next challenger, which could be Sasha Banks.

Prediction: Charlotte

– The Brothers Of Destruction Vs. Two Wyatt Family Members: This was already the marquee match coming out of Hell In A Cell, when The Wyatt Family attacked The Undertaker and carried him out of the arena. With Survivor Series being Undertaker’s 25th anniversary, it was apparent he’d be wrapped into plans with Bray Wyatt and his family, perhaps in a Survivor Series five-on-five. We knew for that to happen, Kane would need to be a part of this and sure enough, the next night on Raw, he met the same fate as his brother. After this, we saw Wyatt promos that bragged about him eating their souls or something like that, mainly making pyro and fake thunder/lightning go off. The Wyatt Family had been built strong over the process, which was understandable considering, but then WWE went and did the dumbest thing. They allowed Taker/Kane to not only return on a United Kingdom Raw, but also had them completely destroy Wyatt and his family. Why on earth would we want to see them get any kind of revenge now? Little has been done to get The Wyatt Family all that momentum back and the only highlight we saw after the UK revenge were druids in sheep masks and Kane holding a flaming sheep mask. That’s about it. Given the circumstances of the event and that it’s Undertaker’s anniversary, we’d be hard-pressed to see him lose the marquee match even though Wyatt could greatly benefit from the rub. When it comes to big matches, WWE always plays it safe and we see nothing different than the easy way out. We’ll imagine that Wyatt will be one of the two guys, perhaps accompanied by Luke Harper or Braun Strowman, but it’ll still be Taker’s night of redemption.

Prediction: The Brothers Of Destruction