You’ve heard of a MYSTERY PARTNER, Rhea Ripley has an entire MYSTERY TEAM

Charlotte Flair’s Team Raw vs. Rhea Ripley’s Team NXT vs. Sasha Banks’ Team SmackDown

Traditional Survivor Series elimination tag match

The red and blue brands are led by two of the biggest stars in wrestling. The black-and-gold just announced their captain, who is someone poised to become one of the biggest stars in wrestling over the next few years. After that it gets interesting.

The Road to Survivor Series

While what I wrote about the men’s match being generally heat-free from an inter-brand sense is still true here, there’s a bit more animosity between the Raw and SmackDown sides. Mostly, that stems from the fact respective captains Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks had THE (post-NXT, pre-The Man) defining feud of the Women’s Evolution.

And they just revisited it a bit when Flair was feuding with Sasha’s bestie Bayley before the latest Draft, so we’ve had a bit of a reminder of how great they can be opposite one another.

Beneath them, it’s difficult to argue that Charlotte doesn’t have a stronger group with her. Mostly, that’s because she has both the current Women’s Tag champs, Asuka & Kairi Sane. Banks only has one of the wrestlers Kabuki Warriors took the belts from, and The Boss didn’t even want Nikki Cross on her team.

Raw also has Natalya, Jim Neidhart’s daughter and future Hall of Famer. SmackDown’s other former champ is Carmella. The Princess of Staten Island is a fun performer and much improved in the ring over her time on the blue brand. But she’s not a Hart Dungeon alum. I also give Team Red the win on the rest of the team... no disrespect to Lacey Evans & Dana Brooke, but give me Sarah Logan based on the pain threshold required for her new tattoo alone.

Then we get to NXT. Triple H’s Wednesday show just announced their captain on Friday night’s ‘go home’ edition of SmackDown. They teased a team, but then revealed Tegan Nox, Mia Yim, Toni Storm & Candice LeRae wouldn’t necessarily be Rhea Ripley’s squad come Sunday night in Chicagoland.

But no matter who the Aussie that was NXT UK’s first Women’s champion gets to join her, she very well could have the strongest quintet on the apron. Especially since they’re pulling from their sister show across the pond, Ripley & her D-X bosses have a wide array of great talent to choose from. Could be the four who stood with The Mosh Pit Kid last night. Could be Piper Niven, Dakota Kai, Xia Li & Deonna Purrazzo. The black-and-gold wouldn’t be a bad bet.

UPDATE: Ripley has picked her side. Find out which combination she went with here.

What’s at stake

Again, WWE’s decided these matches don’t need anything other than “bragging rights” attached. So in kayfabe, not much.

In terms of overall impact on the business/artform, though, there could be a lot. Given how great NXT’s women have been this year, the wave of talent currently working that show probably includes wrestlers who will be main eventing on USA, Fox and WWE PPVs over the next decade. You know what they say about first impressions.

It’s not like The Queen, The Boss, The Empress, The Pirate Princess and others are ready to ride of into the sunset, either.

There may not be anything on the line, and we may not know much of anything about one whole team. But this should be a very interesting, and entertaining, traditional Survivor Series match.

Watch the PPV on WWE Network, and join us here at Cageside Seats for our coverage, to see if it is.