Originally published at Road Dogg explains why Brock Lesnar vs. AJ Styles did not close WWE Survivor Series 2017
The main event of the show was the traditional five-on-five men’s match.
WWE is coming off the heels of their 2022 Survivor Series: WarGames event. The company’s current Vice President of Live Events, Brian ‘Road Dogg’ James, recapped the 2017 Survivor Series for his ‘Oh…You Didn’t Know’ podcast.
At the time of the 2017 Survivor Series, James was leading the SmackDown creative team. He explained why Universal Champion Brock Lesnar versus WWE Champion AJ Styles did not close the show.
James stated that in retrospect, he wishes they had picked that as the main event but did not know how Styles and Lesnar was going to turn out so they went with the traditional men’s five-on-five elimination match.
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.
Kurt Angle shared his thoughts about the main event of that year’s Survivor Series and felt like it came off as if no one mattered but Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit the ‘Oh…You Didn’t Know’ podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.