WWE Elimination Chamber 2014
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WWE Elimination Chamber 2014 (2/23/2014)- Minneapolis, MN
KICK-OFF SHOW MATCH: Cody Rhodes & Goldust vs. Ryback & Curtis Axel (w/Larry "The Axe" Hennig)- 5/10
Never thought I'd say this, but Goldust is my favorite Lucha guy in WWE right now. Anyway, WWE decides to job Axel out not only in his home town, but with his grandfather at ringside. It would have been nice to see Hennig's presence actually matter.
WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Big E. Langston(c) vs. Jack Swagger (w/Zeb Coutler)- 7/10
JR was right. These two did impress everyone. GREAT match. A couple more like this and the IC Title might start to mean something again.
BAD NEWS BARRETT PROMO- just the concept of Wade Barrett saying the words "Mother Russia" was fantastic.
BRYON SAXTON INTERVIEWS DANIEL BRYAN- good
Michael Cole actually plugged HuluPlus as "the only place to get next-day streaming access" to WWE programming. Yes. That's right. LESS THAN 24 HOURS BEFORE THE WWE NETWORK LAUNCHES.
WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The New Age Outlaws(c) vs. The Usos- 5.5/10
Decent match, but if NAO were going to win, I'd have liked to see them officially turn heel in the process.
After this match, Bad News Barrett popped up to tell us that Dragon wouldn't win tonight and the Yes Movement would die.
TITUS O'NEIL vs. DARREN YOUNG- 4.25/10
You'll hear a lot of veteran wrestlers say that if you are having a heated feud, you shouldn't start the match off by locking up and exchanging holds (and they're usually right), but these two actually made it work because when they locked up, it felt like they were f*cking furious. They weren't locking up to get better positioning in a wrestling match. They were locking up to get better positioning so they could more effectively HURT each other.
I really wish they would have given these guys more time. They were interrupted at various points for chants of both "WE WANT LESNAR!" and "WE WANT ZIGGLER."
BAD NEWS BARRETT PROMO- he says that he is better than Hogan. This is now the third time Wade has showed up after a match, so they must be setting up for something.
THE SHIELD vs. THE WYATT FAMILY- 8.25/10
Awesome match. This definitely had the epic feel that it needed, and I loved the way they had the Shield guys all get beaten. First Ambrose just kind of… disappeared. Maybe Bray took him out... or maybe he just ran off? We don't know. Then Rollins cheated by using a monitor as weapon but was quickly eliminated with a chokeslam through a table himself. He cheated, but was eliminated by cheating. Then Reigns fought valiantly as a babyface before getting his final comeuppance as a heel by losing via a taste of the Shield's own medicine. They went a route that allows the Shield to break up, but not the predictable "miscommunication" route, so the Wyatts get to look strong, too. All three of their personalities shined through, also, which will be important where they go from here.
CHRISTIAN PROMO- eh.
WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: AJ Lee(c) (w/Tamina) vs. Cameron- DUD!
AJ makes fun of Naomi's injury, but also subtly put Naomi over as a worthy competitor. You have to love the irony of Naomi beating AJ a zillion times but never getting a title shot, but once Naomi gets injured, THAT leads to her tag team partner getting one.
Tamina's face-kicking is back! But she accidentally hit AJ with it! BOOOO!
Cameron really isn't a good enough worker to be in this spot. She looked very stiff in the ring… and when I say "stiff" here, I don't mean in the Stan Hansen sense. I mean her movements were stiff, like Garrett Bischoff. She really shouldn't have been given this spot (yeah, I know: says the guy who just set her up for a big push in his fantasy booking, but if we were given some reason to actually rally behind her, we wouldn't care so much about her in-ring flaws [TNA did a great job of this with Tessmacher back in 2012 when she was chasing Gail Kim's TNA Knockouts Title)].
To compound all of this, we got a freakin' DQ finish, because apparently CAMERON of all people needs to be protected. After this match, I don't want to see anywhere near a title, and she was obviously just a replacement for Noami, so why not just let AJ go over and try to build someone who can actually work as a challenger for AJ at Wrestlemania?
BAD NEWS BARRETT PROMO- an amusing way to put over the WWE Network.
A BUNCH OF GROWN MEN (& EMMA) PLAY WITH TOYS BACKSTAGE- pointless waste of time.
BATISTA vs. ALBERTO DEL RIO- 5.25/10
Batista's pop seemed very piped in. The crowd wasn't visibly reacting anywhere near as positively as they supposedly sounded. Del Rio came out wearing a neckbrace and walking with a crutch and said that he couldn't compete tonight due to injuries he suffered in Batista's recent attacks on him, but he then started to hit Batista with the crutch. With the poor way that this feud has been built up, this was about the only way Del Rio was going to get any heat, so props to whoever thought it up.
Of course, theory doesn't always work out in reality, as the vicious beating was met with cheers and chants of "Si! Si! Si! Si!" Once the match started we got some "BOO-TISTA!" chants, followed by loud, rousing choruses of "DANIEL BRYAN!" "CM PUNK!," and even "Y2J!" The moment Batista started getting some offense in the crowd started to chant "BORING!" and after a few cheers for Del Rio regaining control of the match, the dead-heat chants started up again with "RVD!" and "WE WANT LESNAR!"
The match was short, but really not bad for the time it was given. The crowd just didn't want to see it.
ELIMINATION CHAMBER MATCH FOR THE WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Randy Orton(c) vs. Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena vs. Christian vs. Sheamus vs. Cesaro (w/Zeb Coulter)- 9/10
Sheamus and Cesaro start things off, which surprised me. I was certain that they were going to have Bryan start so that Cole could play it up as evidence of the Authority being biased against him. Dragon came in third, though, and was controlling the match until Cesaro whipped him through one of the glass pod doors, injured shoulder-first.
Christian came in forth and got a nice negative reaction. He then cemented that by shoving Sheamus off the top rope and going after Dragon's injured shoulder. It's always nice to see the fans actually go with a heel turn.
When Orton came in he took turns beating everyone up, leading to a fantastic spot where the other five guys finally recovered and cornered him… so Orton ran back into his pod, eliciting some very loud "PUSSY!" chants, which is the first time I can remember hearing that particular chant in WWE in a very long time. Seeing that Orton was inaccessible, Cena, Bryan, Cearo, and Christian all started to pair off, but Sheamus just kept staring at Orton and Orton kept taunting him from the safety of the pod. Then Sheamus BROGUE KICKED ORTON RIGHT THROUGH THE GLASS!
So the match was going absolutely awesomely until the Wyatts used their magical powers of teleportation to teleport into the chamber to screw Cena over when he was about to eliminate Orton. It felt like the exact same thing from the Royal Rumble all over again and it completely interrupted the flow of this awesome match. Why even do it at Royal Rumble if you are going to do the same thing here? Hell… why even do this here when you could just have them jump Cena tomorrow night on Raw?
Kane then came out to yell at the Wyatts and tell them to get to the back. No mention of their history together is made in any way, showing that WWE really doesn't seem to have had any plans for it at all, and Corporate Kane really was just as random a decision as it seemed.
Kane went into the chamber to check on Cena but got taken out by a flying knee from Bryan. He would, of course, later come back to cost Dragon the WWE Title. I get why they had the Wyatts interfere (as an excuse for Kane to wind up inside the chamber to set up his stuff with Dragon), but I just wish it hadn't happen because it really interrupted the flow of the match.
Don't get me wrong: This match was FANTASTIC! Sheamus and Cesaro did some great, hard-hitting stuff together all throughout the match, including Sheamus hitting Cesaro with a Finlay Roll on the steel! Cesaro and Christian had an awesome little sequence that ended in Christian eating a powerbomb into one of the pods that crunched the glass. There were some very cool three-way spots in here, mostly involving Cena, Cesaro, and an interchangeable third guy. Cesaro did the big swing and Dragon did a freakin' Chaos Theory. All of the eliminations looked brutal, and we even got a dive off the top. Everyone came out of this looking strong than they were before, and Sheamus' Brogue Kicking Orton through the glass might well be the most awesome spot in the history of the Elimination Chamber. I mean… what more could you ask for from an Elimination Chamber match?
Then the show ended… with no appearance at all by Brock Lesnar, despite this being in his home town and his claim upon his return to WWE this winter that he wanted to be the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. It looks like WWE will, indeed be going with the Orton vs. Batista match that no one wants to see as their main event for Wrestlemania XXX. Their mistake.
Anyway, despite the DUD, this was a pretty awesome show from WWE, with the main event being my new Match of the Year so far. The two big matches definitely delivered and Batista vs. Del Rio and Big E. vs. Swagger pleasantly exceeded expectations.
KICK-OFF SHOW MATCH: Cody Rhodes & Goldust vs. Ryback & Curtis Axel (w/Larry "The Axe" Hennig)- 5/10
Never thought I'd say this, but Goldust is my favorite Lucha guy in WWE right now. Anyway, WWE decides to job Axel out not only in his home town, but with his grandfather at ringside. It would have been nice to see Hennig's presence actually matter.
WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Big E. Langston(c) vs. Jack Swagger (w/Zeb Coutler)- 7/10
JR was right. These two did impress everyone. GREAT match. A couple more like this and the IC Title might start to mean something again.
BAD NEWS BARRETT PROMO- just the concept of Wade Barrett saying the words "Mother Russia" was fantastic.
BRYON SAXTON INTERVIEWS DANIEL BRYAN- good
Michael Cole actually plugged HuluPlus as "the only place to get next-day streaming access" to WWE programming. Yes. That's right. LESS THAN 24 HOURS BEFORE THE WWE NETWORK LAUNCHES.
WWE TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The New Age Outlaws(c) vs. The Usos- 5.5/10
Decent match, but if NAO were going to win, I'd have liked to see them officially turn heel in the process.
After this match, Bad News Barrett popped up to tell us that Dragon wouldn't win tonight and the Yes Movement would die.
TITUS O'NEIL vs. DARREN YOUNG- 4.25/10
You'll hear a lot of veteran wrestlers say that if you are having a heated feud, you shouldn't start the match off by locking up and exchanging holds (and they're usually right), but these two actually made it work because when they locked up, it felt like they were f*cking furious. They weren't locking up to get better positioning in a wrestling match. They were locking up to get better positioning so they could more effectively HURT each other.
I really wish they would have given these guys more time. They were interrupted at various points for chants of both "WE WANT LESNAR!" and "WE WANT ZIGGLER."
BAD NEWS BARRETT PROMO- he says that he is better than Hogan. This is now the third time Wade has showed up after a match, so they must be setting up for something.
THE SHIELD vs. THE WYATT FAMILY- 8.25/10
Awesome match. This definitely had the epic feel that it needed, and I loved the way they had the Shield guys all get beaten. First Ambrose just kind of… disappeared. Maybe Bray took him out... or maybe he just ran off? We don't know. Then Rollins cheated by using a monitor as weapon but was quickly eliminated with a chokeslam through a table himself. He cheated, but was eliminated by cheating. Then Reigns fought valiantly as a babyface before getting his final comeuppance as a heel by losing via a taste of the Shield's own medicine. They went a route that allows the Shield to break up, but not the predictable "miscommunication" route, so the Wyatts get to look strong, too. All three of their personalities shined through, also, which will be important where they go from here.
CHRISTIAN PROMO- eh.
WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: AJ Lee(c) (w/Tamina) vs. Cameron- DUD!
AJ makes fun of Naomi's injury, but also subtly put Naomi over as a worthy competitor. You have to love the irony of Naomi beating AJ a zillion times but never getting a title shot, but once Naomi gets injured, THAT leads to her tag team partner getting one.
Tamina's face-kicking is back! But she accidentally hit AJ with it! BOOOO!
Cameron really isn't a good enough worker to be in this spot. She looked very stiff in the ring… and when I say "stiff" here, I don't mean in the Stan Hansen sense. I mean her movements were stiff, like Garrett Bischoff. She really shouldn't have been given this spot (yeah, I know: says the guy who just set her up for a big push in his fantasy booking, but if we were given some reason to actually rally behind her, we wouldn't care so much about her in-ring flaws [TNA did a great job of this with Tessmacher back in 2012 when she was chasing Gail Kim's TNA Knockouts Title)].
To compound all of this, we got a freakin' DQ finish, because apparently CAMERON of all people needs to be protected. After this match, I don't want to see anywhere near a title, and she was obviously just a replacement for Noami, so why not just let AJ go over and try to build someone who can actually work as a challenger for AJ at Wrestlemania?
BAD NEWS BARRETT PROMO- an amusing way to put over the WWE Network.
A BUNCH OF GROWN MEN (& EMMA) PLAY WITH TOYS BACKSTAGE- pointless waste of time.
BATISTA vs. ALBERTO DEL RIO- 5.25/10
Batista's pop seemed very piped in. The crowd wasn't visibly reacting anywhere near as positively as they supposedly sounded. Del Rio came out wearing a neckbrace and walking with a crutch and said that he couldn't compete tonight due to injuries he suffered in Batista's recent attacks on him, but he then started to hit Batista with the crutch. With the poor way that this feud has been built up, this was about the only way Del Rio was going to get any heat, so props to whoever thought it up.
Of course, theory doesn't always work out in reality, as the vicious beating was met with cheers and chants of "Si! Si! Si! Si!" Once the match started we got some "BOO-TISTA!" chants, followed by loud, rousing choruses of "DANIEL BRYAN!" "CM PUNK!," and even "Y2J!" The moment Batista started getting some offense in the crowd started to chant "BORING!" and after a few cheers for Del Rio regaining control of the match, the dead-heat chants started up again with "RVD!" and "WE WANT LESNAR!"
The match was short, but really not bad for the time it was given. The crowd just didn't want to see it.
ELIMINATION CHAMBER MATCH FOR THE WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Randy Orton(c) vs. Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena vs. Christian vs. Sheamus vs. Cesaro (w/Zeb Coulter)- 9/10
Sheamus and Cesaro start things off, which surprised me. I was certain that they were going to have Bryan start so that Cole could play it up as evidence of the Authority being biased against him. Dragon came in third, though, and was controlling the match until Cesaro whipped him through one of the glass pod doors, injured shoulder-first.
Christian came in forth and got a nice negative reaction. He then cemented that by shoving Sheamus off the top rope and going after Dragon's injured shoulder. It's always nice to see the fans actually go with a heel turn.
When Orton came in he took turns beating everyone up, leading to a fantastic spot where the other five guys finally recovered and cornered him… so Orton ran back into his pod, eliciting some very loud "PUSSY!" chants, which is the first time I can remember hearing that particular chant in WWE in a very long time. Seeing that Orton was inaccessible, Cena, Bryan, Cearo, and Christian all started to pair off, but Sheamus just kept staring at Orton and Orton kept taunting him from the safety of the pod. Then Sheamus BROGUE KICKED ORTON RIGHT THROUGH THE GLASS!
So the match was going absolutely awesomely until the Wyatts used their magical powers of teleportation to teleport into the chamber to screw Cena over when he was about to eliminate Orton. It felt like the exact same thing from the Royal Rumble all over again and it completely interrupted the flow of this awesome match. Why even do it at Royal Rumble if you are going to do the same thing here? Hell… why even do this here when you could just have them jump Cena tomorrow night on Raw?
Kane then came out to yell at the Wyatts and tell them to get to the back. No mention of their history together is made in any way, showing that WWE really doesn't seem to have had any plans for it at all, and Corporate Kane really was just as random a decision as it seemed.
Kane went into the chamber to check on Cena but got taken out by a flying knee from Bryan. He would, of course, later come back to cost Dragon the WWE Title. I get why they had the Wyatts interfere (as an excuse for Kane to wind up inside the chamber to set up his stuff with Dragon), but I just wish it hadn't happen because it really interrupted the flow of the match.
Don't get me wrong: This match was FANTASTIC! Sheamus and Cesaro did some great, hard-hitting stuff together all throughout the match, including Sheamus hitting Cesaro with a Finlay Roll on the steel! Cesaro and Christian had an awesome little sequence that ended in Christian eating a powerbomb into one of the pods that crunched the glass. There were some very cool three-way spots in here, mostly involving Cena, Cesaro, and an interchangeable third guy. Cesaro did the big swing and Dragon did a freakin' Chaos Theory. All of the eliminations looked brutal, and we even got a dive off the top. Everyone came out of this looking strong than they were before, and Sheamus' Brogue Kicking Orton through the glass might well be the most awesome spot in the history of the Elimination Chamber. I mean… what more could you ask for from an Elimination Chamber match?
Then the show ended… with no appearance at all by Brock Lesnar, despite this being in his home town and his claim upon his return to WWE this winter that he wanted to be the WWE World Heavyweight Champion. It looks like WWE will, indeed be going with the Orton vs. Batista match that no one wants to see as their main event for Wrestlemania XXX. Their mistake.
Anyway, despite the DUD, this was a pretty awesome show from WWE, with the main event being my new Match of the Year so far. The two big matches definitely delivered and Batista vs. Del Rio and Big E. vs. Swagger pleasantly exceeded expectations.