Last time at Elimination Chamber…
Shayna Baszler got booed out of the building for running through all her opponents, Sami Zayn won his first WWE Championship on the main roster after FIVE YEARS, & Otis fell through a chamber pod. Classic fat guy foibles.
A lot going on at this year’s Chamber with several titles on the line as well as heavy implications with WrestleMania just around the corner. Let’s see how well WWE was able to make surrounding wrestlers in plexiglass six-feet apart work. Nobody wearing luchador masks, though. Tsk, tsk.
A Smacked Down Six
Match of the evening by a considerable margin goes to The Chamber Match to determine Roman Reigns’ blood sacrifice number one contender for The Universal Championship. We’ll get to the aftermath, which I’m pretty salty over, but I want to focus on the positive to start us off.
I’m not as down on King Corbin as much as most people, but once he was eliminated first, this match really kicked into high gear. There’s a lot to like when viewing this match. Sami Zayn never learning his lesson that Kevin Owens will always hate his guts, Jey Uso smartly & methodically picking his spots for eliminations, as well as Daniel Bryan & Cesaro going toe to toe with each other while I have a perma-grin on my face.
Granted, you don’t always need a ton of story in a multi-person match to determine a number one contender, but the best part of this whole outing was just how much every guy being there made sense. Cesaro, Bryan & Owens all have recently had issues with Reigns, Corbin did all of last year & Jey Uso has had them too, but also works as Reigns enforcer, so you can play it either way. Zayn works too in that he thinks everything & everyone is out to get him. He’s like if The Truman Show was based around a homeless looking guy who loves ska.
A lot of that works too in how the match played out. Jey knows Owens is public enemy number one in The Reigns Camp, so he doesn’t care how underhanded his tactics are to get him out of the match, just as long as he does. Bryan & Cesaro are so focused on the other after facing off the past few weeks, that leaves them open for Jey to take advantage. The whole thing told an easy to follow story & combined it with fantastic wrestling. I feel like I’m being annoying when I point out how much this works when they pull it off correctly, but given the rest of the show, this was the only part I feel like they nailed completely.
Nation Of DoMization
Given that Miz actively pulled out of The RAW Chamber Match, it going on last & the constant shots of him mulling around backstage, you kind of had to predict he was going to cash-in on whoever was left standing at the end of the show. I will say I did not see it shaking out the way it did with Lashley being the catalyst that propelled Miz to his end goal, but that leaves some intriguing avenues they can go down in the next few weeks. Also, real quick, raise your hand if you thought once Drew kicked out right away to start Miz’s cash-in that he was totally going to lose. Get your hand up, you big, fat liar.
That gives us WWE Champion for the second time, Michael Mizanin. I feel like Miz is one of the most polarizing guys in all of wrestling. I personally think he’s great. He’s inarguably one of the best promos in the game, but people will knock him because he’s too far into the comedy bits or isn’t some sort of “super worker”. At the end of the day, Miz is entertaining. He’s like cheese pizza. Are there sexier pizzas out there with lots of toppings that you’d prefer? Absolutely. But cheese pizza is old reliable & serves its purpose when it has to. Miz has been in WWE going on twenty years now & he’s served his purpose no matter what that entails, always giving his best effort even when they hand him objectively bad material. He puts the professional in professional wrestler & I’m happy he’s on top of the mountain again.
Fun fact: Did you know that Miz is grand slam champion in WWE? Did you know he’s done it TWICE?? Altogether, Miz has twenty different title reigns at different levels in WWE, plus two stints with MitB. That’s absolutely crazy. You think about Miz when he debuted & if anyone told you then the type of accolades he’d have almost two decades later, I think they’d laugh in your face. He’s come a long way since being a pretend wrestler on MTV’s Real World.
The real question now becomes where are we heading as WrestleMania is on the horizon. I did cheat a little bit & am writing this on Tuesday, so I know that Lashley wants what’s owed to him after helping Miz obtain the title. However, Drew was nowhere to be found on Monday, which leaves a lot of unanswered questions (so much for Sheamus vs. Drew, btw). I would love to see Miz head into Mania as WWE Champion, but that doesn’t feel like it’ll be in the cards, especially considering how much he looked like a scared baby on RAW this past Monday. Lashley is a fine choice, but it feels like another domino needs to fall as far what direction they’re heading in. That could’ve been Strowman, but he failed, so we’ll see. Bonus points if another Fiendette Doll shows up at Chateau Mar-Miz.
All You Have To Do Is Bro-Lieve
The triple threat between Riddle, Lashley & Morrison was sneaky really good. Lashley’s been this unstoppable juggernaut lately, which was on full display again during this match. It was nice to see him dominate both competitors & the two coming to grips with the fact they need to work together or it’ll be a quick night for both of them. Also nice to see was John Morrison used as something other than jobber fodder like he’s been for over a year now. He still took the pin here, but hey, he looked really good before it happened.
I really dug the finish with Riddle realizing that taking down Lashley isn’t the path to victory, so he just bashes him out of the ring with MVP’s crutch. That left going for the easier to pin opponent in Morrison, who was already prone to take down after being in The Hurt Lock. The guy comes off as a stoner bozo, but that’s a sound, efficient strategy.
With Lashley surely heading to the top of the card, I do wonder who’s on deck for Riddle. RAW’s midcard is more or less non-existent right now. I’ve been trying to think of good ideas for matches down the line & not any credible midcard heels come to mind. You could’ve persuaded me with maybe a Mustafa Ali beforehand, but he was too busy getting Diva Driver’d on the preshow for me to stick with that notion. Remind me I said this when Riddick Moss is attacking Riddle from behind in a couple weeks.
Enter The Drew (Hurty Six Chambers)
The other Chamber Match of the night was pretty meh, especially when it had to follow the one SmackDown put on. I know we’re in a brand split, but WWE might do well to just not do multiple of the same gimmick match on a card. Two Chamber Matches isn’t necessary. Three Hell in a Cell ones for sure isn’t. I wish they would ditch the gimmick match pay per view entirely outside of The Royal Rumble & just let feuds naturally progress to these styles of matches rather than force them into existence. The SmackDown one made sense as all those guys have had issues with Reigns over the past year. The RAW side of things felt like Sheamus & Drew with four other guys thrown in from the periphery.
I think what failed this match is that while the “All the competitors are former WWE Champions” talking point works on paper, it kind of falls apart once you realize that it’s been well over a year for most of these guys being on that level & in some cases, multiple years. Jeff Hardy doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near this match based off what he’s done recently & Kofi Kingston has been nerfed so hard since losing to Brock Lesnar, he should be throwing Vortex footballs into the crowd when they return instead of pancakes.
The match itself is pretty low on highlights. The only thing that stood out was Styles’ questionable strategy of entering the match early, but in the most roundabout way possible so that he couldn’t even take advantage of it. I half expected him to climb to the top of the structure & try to escape through a tiny hole in the top given the steel asylum the match took place in. Other than that, it was the predictable outcome I think most people saw coming. There were rumblings of Sheamus perhaps taking it down to prolong his feud with Drew, but they probably made the right call & cut bait with that.
We already covered how the post-match played out & Miz, so we’ll see if Drew reestablishes himself in the coming weeks for the top spot or if they pivot him into something different. They did him & Lashley a while back, but that was pretty underwhelming. I think if Lashley does end up beating Miz to death for the strap that they can get a solid redo out of it. As long as some random Legend or sweat-ridden formal general manager keep their noses away from this story, we should be okay for the foreseeable future.
Botchin’ Bottles
The worst thing of the night overall was the treatment of WWE’s women. Asuka couldn’t even make the card despite WWE having a full week to find a replacement opponent after Lacey announced she’s been a Nasty doing the nasty. Nasty. They devoted an entire photo gallery on their website to Miz & Bad Bunny’s minute interaction backstage at Elimination Chamber, but couldn’t get a match for one of their prominent champions. Cool. This women’s tag match wasn’t anything to write home about either. Just to recap, Smackdown’s Women’s Division is currently revolving around a guy who busts out champagne for celebrations, while RAW’s Women’s Division is currently revolving around a guy who busts… well, you know the rest.
Outside of the finish, I can’t even remember anything about this tag match. Shayna & Nia continue to run through the best women on the roster haphazardly slapped together onto teams, while the actual tag teams remain in limbo. I’m writing this on the Tuesday after the fact & as of now, Nia has pinned Charlotte, Sasha Banks & Asuka if you’re wondering if my newfound disdain for the current state of women’s wrestling in WWE is justified or not. Nia Double Belts is now a thing that could be reasonably propositioned given the past month. My hole hurts just thinking about it.
The whole match just felt pointless to me. We’re obviously getting to Sasha & Bianca squaring off at WrestleMania, so the idea of them tagging was questionable to begin with. And if you want to do that in the interim, fine, but they didn’t even have one turn on the other to further the story. Reggie is the scapegoat for the loss, so in effect Sasha & Bianca are still on the same page. Just a weird story beat overall. Right now, this story has more intrigue as far as how is Carmella going to respond to Reggie’s treasonous sommelier actions than Sasha vs. Bianca. I hope she squares off with him at Sangria Slamboree or whatever comp they can think of for Mimosa Mayhem.
Beyond The Edge Of Reason
I’ve moved this part of the show up & down this ranking three times now. On the one hand, I think I know what they’re going to do, but WWE doesn’t deserve the the benefit of the doubt given their track record. Ultimately, I decided that I have to base these articles off of what WWE gives us & not what they might be giving us down the line.
With that reasoning laid out, this fucking sucks.
I’ll start by saying that I thought Drew McIntyre made the most sense out of the three possible champions Edge could face down the line. As I pointed out above, McIntyre really doesn’t have many credible challengers over on RAW while Reigns has about a half dozen or so that would make sense given the laundry list of guys on SmackDown he’s made enemies with. Combine that with the fact that The WWE Championship was unified with The World Heavyweight Championship that Edge never lost & you have a pretty easy narrative to follow as far as why Edge would go that route.
Let me paint you a scenario: Assume everything last night happens as it did without Edge coming in & effectively declaring he’ll face Reigns at Mania after Bryan is sent off to dreamland. The match here still happens with him getting royally screwed over after Reigns & Heyman once again rig the system so they can easily win. At Fastlane, Bryan gets a proper match with Reigns where he doesn’t wrestle for forty five minutes prior, but still loses via more of Reigns’ bullshit of low blows or Jey Uso. Enough support swells around Bryan with losing The Rumble, after The Chamber & at Fastlane that heading into to Mania, Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan would probably become the match a lot of people would be the most emotionally invested in. Sounds pretty good, no?
And they just didn’t do that. Edge just comes along & makes everything that happened to the guys in this Chamber Match more or less pointless. Reigns & Co. have run afoul of Bryan, Cesaro, Owens, Big E & Nakamura, but none of them get to be the one that makes it right. Roman is confirmed better than an entire roster of guys & only a part time Legend can unseat him, assuming Edge does. That’s pretty nihilistic when you think about it. Now, will Roman vs. Edge be good? I have no doubt it will be. They also can add Bryan in as a triple threat which I’ve seen chatter about, so if that happens, I’ll change my tune. As it stands now though, this whole thing is kind of a huge bummer.
Overall
Worth Your Time: SmackDown Elimination Chamber
If You Have Time: RAW Elimination Chamber, US Championship Triple Threat
Don’t Waste Time: Reigns vs. Bryan, Miz vs. McIntyre, Women’s Tag Match, Preshow Fatal Fourway
There’s your Elimination Chamber, folks. More or less a one match card if you ask me & that was undercut pretty swiftly. If Bryan gets left out in the cold come Mania & Miz is just a transitional champion, this entire show might as well not existed. We’re officially on the fast lane to… uh… Fastlane, so stick with us & we’ll try to keep you posted to how things are developing for WrestleMania. As always, leave us a comment below or please join us on our Discord & participate along with our community in talking pro graps. I’ll see you guys this Friday for SmackDown where Reggie most likely turns on Sasha Banks & probably becomes Women’s Champion by next week. Either that or Bianca Belair is pregnant. Give Divas a chance!!
