The road to Wrestlemania went into full effect with the events of Elimination Chamber. The February pay per view starts the final six week stretch to Wrestlemania. The WWE and World Heavyweight Champions are finalized to head into the event. Many of the story lines are starting to take shape. But how did the event fare? Did anything substantial happen or are we left with the status quo?
The show opened up with a decent video package previewing the show and we are taken to Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler, and Booker T who will be handling announcing duties. We then go to the first match.
Elimination Chamber Match for the WWE Title: Kofi Kingston vs. The Miz vs. R-Truth vs. Chris Jericho vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. CM Punk
The opening contest is one of significant importance. It’s for CM Punk’s WWE Championship. I am never a fan of a world title going on as the opener. Although I do understand the need to space out the chamber matches, the card order still could have been worked to not have this match open the show. With that said, the match was still good. The match started out with Punk and Kofi going at it and the others came in until the final participant, Chris Jericho came into the match. Jericho took a shot from Punk to send him outside the cell, and being deemed unable to continue. I’m sure something will come of that on RAW. The final two are Miz and Punk. Punk wins via the GTS. Good match given a good amount of time. No one looked bad in the match and this is likely the start of Punk/Jericho at Wrestlemania.
We then get a segment with Santino training for the Smackdown chamber and a video package hyping John Cena for his feud with the Rock. We then get the next match.
WWE Divas Title Match: Tamina Snuka vs. Beth Phoenix
Surprisingly, the WWE does still have female performers who can put on a decent match. The match was back and forth with a number of false finishes including Beth Phoenix kicking out of the Superfly Splash. Decent enough match that was much better than what we see on TV from the divas. It was also given some actual time to tell its story.
Next we get another Santion training segment then it’s off to the ring with John Laurinitis and David Otunga. Several superstar come out including Alberto Del Rio, Chriatian, and Mark Henry. They all tell Laurinitis he should be GM of both RAW and SmackDown.
We then go to our next match,
Elimination Chamber for the World Heavyweight Title: The Great Khali vs. Cody Rhodes vs. Wade Barrett vs. Santino Marella vs. Big Show vs. Daniel Bryan
This match was also good for what we got. Instead of being in first like CM Punk, World Champion Daniel Bryan was the last to appear in this match. The surprising part of this match was the fact that Santino was very over with the crowd. He even scored a couple of eliminations for a strong underdog performance. The match came down to Santino and Bryan as the final two. The action was back and forth for a few minutes, with Santino even hitting the Cobra on Bryan for a near fall. Bryan eventually wins the match by locking The Labelle Lock on Santino.
Next is a backstage segement involving Natalya and Hornswoggle. It was just a big fart joke. Jack Swagger comes in as well as Justin Gabriel. Teddy Long sets them up in a match which is next.
WWE United States Title Match: Justin Gabriel vs. Jack Swagger
This match had the potential to be good with the different styles of Swagger and Gabriel. All we got was a couple of minutes of action followed by a quick ankle lock victory for Swagger. Easily the most forgettable match on the cart.
We get a hype video of the Kane/Cena feud and it’s time for the main event.
Ambulance Match: John Cena vs. Kane
This match was okay. It was just a glorified hardcore match where the legal weapons were whatever items could be found in an ambulance. It featured back and forth action from Cena and Kane with the expected spots happening including shots with stretchers and slamming each other into the ambulance. Cena won the match. My problem with this match was its place on the card. The feud has been abysmal and on an event called Elimination Chamber, one of the chamber matches should have been the main event of the show. The WWE Title match would have been my preferred choice for the closer, instead of having it gone on first.
Overall the show was actually really good. Even the commentary was good. Michael Cole wasn’t even very annoying and the Smackdown announcers (Cole and Booker T) finally seem to understand Daniel Bryan is a heel and were commentating as such. Definitely worth a watch.
