What's going on kiddies?! Glad you could make it back with me for my posts on the latest happenings within professional wrestling. This post concerns last night's Elimination Chamber pay per view "exclusively" on the WWE Network. This event came as a complete and total shock a couple of weeks ago, as it was announced as breaking news during the Payback pay per view that this would be a "special WWE Network exclusive". This was an obvious PR move to bring in more viewers and subscribers, thus making the month of May free for new subscribers. The push and build for this event was rushed and accelerated to the point where most didn't have enough time to fully absorb some of these story lines (apparently that's the new direction creative is going in is planning two week builds instead of monthly builds, which is completely idiotic but I digress). The question is, was the two week build worth it? This actually wasn't a bad show. Let's get into it.
The first match was the WWE Tag Team Championship EC match. The New Day was defending against Cesaro/Tyson Kidd, Prime Time Players, Los Matadores, The Ascension, and Lucha Dragons. All three members of The New Day were allowed in this match so odds were automatically against all competitors (yeah, the matadors had their bull mascot but does he really count in this environment??). This wasn't a terrible match, as The Ascension did a good job eliminating two teams, as did the PTPs. There were high spots in this affair from the likes of The Dragons and El Torito, but in the end, the numbers game was too much as The New Day retained the belts.
Next up was the Divas Title match, as Nikki Bella defended against former champion Paige and Naomi in a Triple Threat Match. While this wasn't a train wreck, as the effort was appreciated, this was no NXT Women's Championship match either, as this was just short of a botchfest, with Nikki subsequently kicking air at one point, and Naomi doing a botched reversed huracanrana on Paige and thus resulting in a terrible bump that could've hurt Paige. Nikki won with her "Rack Attack" finisher to retain her title.
Next was personally the most anticipated match of the night for me, as it was billed "Champion vs. Champion", with U.S. Champion John Cena against the ultra hot NXT Champion Kevin Owens. This match was every bit worth the hype, as we saw an outstanding performance from Owens. For those of us that have been familiar with his in-ring work, this is no shocker, as he's been one of the sports hardest workers for years, especially since he lost over forty pounds. The build for this match has been actually pretty good, and the actual match was excellently executed (sorry, Bret). Easily the match of the night, there were quite a few near falls and, whether or not you like Cena, he showed up as always for the big fight. We saw Steen, er I mean Owens, attempt swantons, single leap moonsaults, and a great reversal to a superplex, but Cena hung right with him. In the end, Owens delivered a second "Lights Out" pop-up power bomb (Cena kicked out the first one), and it was enough to hold down Cena for the huge win. The dominant Canadian has beaten a TON of big stars over the years such as Seth Rollins, Cesaro, Joey Mercury, AJ Styles, and of course Sami Zayn (mostly when Zayn was El Generico), but none as big as Cena. There were shots of a stunned crowd, which was quite entertaining. Afterwards, he got on the mic and proclaimed "The champ is here!"
While that was a hard match to follow, next was Neville vs. Bo Dallas. These two aren't strangers, as Dallas lost the NXT Title to Neville at the first NXT Takeover special called NXT: Arrival. This was clearly a filler match, so even though Neville won with his spectacular "Red Arrow" finisher, this was a bathroom break match.
It was time for the second EC match, only this was for the vacant Inter-Continental Title. Former champ Daniel Bryan was at ringside to present the belt to the winner. Bryan had quite the entertaining appearance on MizTV with The Miz during the pre-show, that had The Meta-Powers appear and attack Miz. It was announced that Rusev was out of the match due to a fractured foot, which is apparently legit. There was speculation as to who his replacement was going to be, as rumors of Bray Wyatt to Big Show surfaced. While we knew Ziggler, Ryback, Shaemus, Barrett, and Truth were already in, who would the replacement be? Turned out to be a slightly slimmer Mark Henry, who came out to a fairly decent reception in his home state of Texas. A better EC match then the Tag Title EC match, we saw impressive showings by everyone involved. What was surprising to me was the Barrett, favorite in this match, was the first one eliminated. It finally came down to the odds on favorite to win, Shaemus, and Ryback. In a surprising twist, Ryback pinned Shaemus with his "Shell Shock" finisher to win his first major championship, much less it being the I-C Title. Bryan graciously handed the belt to a jubilant, yet humbled, new champion.
It was finally time for the main event. The WWE Title was on the line as Seth Rollins defended against former Shield-mate Dean Ambrose. These guys have been fighting since last year but only now it's for the title. Obviously you can expect great overall chemistry between these two, but this was honestly the worst match between the two that I've seen, though that doesn't mean it was a sloppy snoozer whatsoever. These two put on a pretty good performance overall. The finish came when Rollins pulled the ref in the way of a flying Ambrose and got nailed by him. Not long afterwards, Ambrose hit Rollins with his "Dirty Deeds" finisher, but the legal ref was knocked out of the ring. In comes another ref to count down Rollins for the pin so we had a new WWE World Champion, much to the huge delight of the Corpus Christi crowd (say that five times fast). Wait, there's more. The original ref awoke to tell the sub ref that he's overturning the pinfall to disqualify Rollins, therefore although Ambrose won, he's not the champion. An irate Ambrose went after Rollins, Kane, and J&J, only to be saved by best friend Roman Reigns, in which Ambrose and Reigns pulled a CM Punk, and left the arena with the title.
While this pay per view wasn't a game changer (as most WWE pay per views aren't), this was at least a little better than Payback. This could be a set up for the MITB pay per view in two weeks. The participants for the match were announced as Reigns, Neville, Kofi (???), Ziggler, Shaemus, and Orton (like we don't see who will obviously win this one). Clearly, Cena and Owens stole the show like I predicted that they would during my prediction & preview post, and they didn't disappoint whatsoever. The rest of the night, well...again it was better than Payback, but not by much. However, I'm very much looking forward to Wrestling Wednesdays starting this Wednesday, with TNA, Lucha, NXT, and now ROH. I'll be posting about this tomorrow and how big of an impact this really is. I give Elimination Chamber maybe a 3/5, which is half a point higher than Payback. Again, I'm not looking for anything higher than that before Summerslam. What can you say? Until tomorrow folks, take it easy!
No comments:
Post a Comment