Alexa Bliss (C) def. Sasha Banks, Bayley, Mickie James, Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville – Elimination Chamber Match (RAW Women’s Championship)
Quite a bit to digest here, but it was interesting to see how the women were going to adapt to being in the Elimination Chamber match. The first thing that struck out to me was how blatantly obvious the order of the entrants was going to be. We all knew that one of the Absolution members were going to start against either Bayley or Mickie because Sasha tends to go the distance in most big match situations. Then, we knew that Absolution would get a two on one advantage until either Mickie or Sasha came to break things up. Alexa coming in last was also quite painfully obvious as well. Despite that, I think the match, overall, was okay. There were a few sloppy spots early on, and I personally think Sasha got a little too excited to begin the match as she was just sort of crashing into everybody, but once she calmed down, she settled in quite nicely.
Another thing I noticed was that Mickie James seemed to have a little extra pep in her step. All of her moves were crisp and clean and connected with a lot more impact than most of her RAW matches these days. Her climbing to the top of the chamber pod and diving showed that she was more than game for tonight’s match. Her elimination was very disappointing, and I hate the Elimination Chamber rapid fire elimination trope WWE is infatuated with. It’s like when one superstar goes down, it’s a natural reaction that two or three go down within the next 10 minutes or so. I definitely think Mickie should have lasted a little longer. Despite that, I did like the little bit of storytelling Alexa had with her looks of concern as her insurance policy in Mickie was eventually eliminated briefly.
Probably the most consistent performer in the match overall belonged to Bayley, as she lasted the longest in the chamber and carried the pace of the match along nicely, starting with her brief program with Absolution, then her tension with Sasha and finally in the triple threat dynamic with Bayley. She also did a nice job of selling. The final sequence between Alexa and Sasha was also solid, as the two have developed a bit of chemistry with each other. I especially liked Alexa hitting her finisher from the top only for Sasha to reverse it into a submission on the outside, though the transition of that was sort of weird. That DDT was also wicked smooth a la Randy Orton. The women didn’t do anything too crazy as I suspected, and with the new design of the chamber, we shouldn’t have expected anything more than a few shoves into the fence. While Alexa winning was obvious, you could have fooled me with her post-match promo, as she seemingly forgot what her character was and gave a motivational speech to little girls watching, just for her to be a jerk once again with the adulation of the crowd showing approval.
I’m also not sure why they even bothered teasing an alliance between Mickie and Alexa because Bliss proved that she was capable of holding her own, as he pinned both Bayley and Sasha on her own without needing any help. I get that it changed the dynamic of the story because Mickie and Alexa weren’t even in the ring at the same time in the match, but if the plan all along was just for Bliss to beat her two top challengers in the match on her own, any alliance was pointless.
The match wasn’t anything bad, and a part of me felt as though a lot of what they did would have been easily accomplished outside the chamber save for all the climbing spots, but overall it was a good little match. Nothing crazy, nothing grandiose. Just solid. ***1/4
Cesaro (C) and Sheamus (C) def. Apollo Crews and Titus O’Neil – RAW Tag Team Championship
A very predictable outcome only put on the card just to burn up some time, but I think this match was actually slightly above RAW quality. We all knew Sheamus and Cesaro were retaining. We knew this coming in because Titus Worldwide had beaten them three times in non-title matches. AND, Cesaro and Sheamus have already beaten them with the titles on the line before. Despite that, I think this was a good little sprint. They kept things basic, Cesaro and Sheamus worked their tag team heel psychology to a great degree, isolating Apollo and preventing him from getting the tag, and making sure they always had the 2 on 1 advantage. Meanwhile, Apollo got to show off his high-flying prowess while Titus just, well, did what Titus O’Neil always does.
I’m not sure what was going on in the crowd at the time because they were booing at something, and it clearly wasn’t anything in the match, but something clearly diverted their attention away. Overall this accomplished its purpose as the cool-off match after the first chamber match, nothing was bad, and they kept things simple. Can’t really complain here. **1/2
Asuka def. Nia JaxÂ
This was more or less everything I expected it to be. Nia was going to spend time in the match dominating and working over Asuka while Asuka would rely on swift, powerful strikes, using Nia’s momentum against her and targeting the lower extremities. The crowd was actually into it, and if there was ever a time a crowd was going to pop for an upset, this was the moment. Obviously, Asuka wasn’t losing, nor was this the time to end her undefeated streak, but WWE was teasing it at times here. I think they worked the big/little dynamic here perfectly, as Asuka struggled to gain an advantage and she had to resort to facial guillotine chokes and desperate maneuvers just to get Nia grounded, and that’s the way I like a match against Nia booked. I actually came across a nice quote I saw in the comments section that described how I feel about Nia perfectly (Sorry, I forgot your name).
“Nia Jax is currently WWE’s best worker in terms of repeatedly putting over the other talent despite the fact that she can literally destroy them all.”
This couldn’t be any truer, and I think the crowd is starting to warm up to Nia a great deal because of that fact. The post-match attack was perfect because it still makes Nia look strong without having Asuka lose. The only thing I didn’t like, and it’s a petty pet peeve (say that 10 times fast) is that they played Asuka’s music after the match. Like, she just got destroyed through the barricade. Don’t play her music as if she’s standing tall. Yeah, she’s walking on her own, sort of, but she doesn’t look like a conquering hero after that. Allow for silence and let the crowd digest what they just witnessed. Other then that, they did what they could with the time allotted. ***
Ronda Rousey signs her WWE Contract
Probably should have suspected that Triple H and Stephanie were going to come out here and do something to promote the probable mixed tag team match that Ronda will have against Triple H and Stephanie. So, Ronda on the microphone was pretty, laughably bad. She sounded visibly shaken and nervous, but since this was her first time cutting a promo in WWE, I’m willing to give her a pass. She didn’t talk into the mic with conviction, I could barely hear her at times, and she probably was talked too by some backstage about how to fix it, but I think that will come as time goes on. The actual segment was fine. Triple H was a professional taking the bump for Rousey, but Stephanie and her ego have a clause in her contract that dictates she must always make sure she looks strong in some capacity, and she did so by slapping Ronda across the face, which did nothing but ignite her rage. But let me ask you this. Ronda took out Triple H and sent Stephanie flying out of the ring in one sitting. So, wouldn’t a match be pointless or am I overthinking it? Ah, well. It will be interesting to see how Ronda progresses, but overall, this was fine, if not, a little long.
“Woken” Matt Hardy def. Bray Wyatt
Can we all just consider the fact that at this time last year, Bray Wyatt defeated John Cena and AJ Styles to become the WWE Champion, and one year later, he’s looking into a crowd that’s paying attention to a beach ball? And now he lost a match clean to an aged veteran over a feud that centered upon the two laughing. Now, the pre-match stuff was okay in the context of their feud, I guess, but the match that they had was pretty much their RAW 25th Anniversary match if it got more time. There was nothing remotely different, they worked about as basic a match as you could ask, and I’m sure they just recycled all of the spots they’ve been doing at the house show matches the two have been having for the past couple of months.
I predicted Hardy would win this match simply because Bray has already beaten him, and it’s clear Bray is still in WWE purgatory. He has no direction, I’m assuming they’ll just continue this feud for the hell of it and I don’t know what else to tell ya. I guess it would pass as a RAW match, but once again, this was time filler, and it was bad filler at that. *
Roman Reigns def. Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins, The Miz, John Cena, Elias and Finn Balor – Universal Championship #1 Contender’s Elimination Chamber Match
I’m sure no other alternative was on the table here, so I hope no one is surprised. I just can’t believe that WWE honestly tried to top themselves with the gauntlet match in terms of the match length. If you ask me, they might as well have just released the chamber just have a 7-way match, because they were just doing stuff in the ring and visibly going through the motions. The opening triple threat sequence was okay, but it really didn’t go anywhere. My biggest gripe about the match was that it appeared that no one except Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman served any real purpose. Remember the days of the Elimination Chamber where you would get actual feuds or things being teased for the future take place in the match? Well, there was none of that here. Everyone was just a performer doing WWE stuff, which is fine, but was ultimately meaningless. No, really. Think about it.
John Cena and Elias came in the match and did nothing. Literally nothing. They just hit a few moves just to be fed to Strowman. Balor and Rollins lasted a bit longer, but they ultimately did nothing as well. Strowman eliminating five other guys wasn’t surprising, but equally as redundant was the fact that Roman somehow found this inner strength of his to magically overcome the odds yet again and defeat the Monster Among Men. I didn’t have a problem winning because let’s face it. Anyone not named Roman wasn’t winning. However, it was completely unoriginal. The structure of the match also provided another issue, as this suffered from many of the same issues the tag team elimination chamber match back in 2015 suffered from.
At multiple points, there were six men in the match. Because of how crowded the ring started to get, it began to resemble less of a wrestling match and more of a couple of kids playing with action figures throwing themselves around like ragdolls in the ring. There was limited space, thereby limiting everyone’s range of motion, and each move felt less important and more cumbersome. Everything just felt flat and lazy. They worked hard, but the match just didn’t click and it didn’t work for me at all. The difference between this and the women’s match was that there was far more storytelling in the women’s chamber match, and the eliminations occurred earlier, allowing for more ring action the crowd could get into without being muddled by all of the bodies on the floor just sleeping for extended periods of time. Braun could have just come in and started doing the rapid-fire eliminations, but instead, he just chose to waste time and play around with each guy.
The match was around 40 minutes in length but felt like 40 hours to get through, and while it wasn’t horrible and have been worse chamber matches, this just felt like an elongated sprint that could have had about half the time taken off to get to the point. **1/2
Conclusion:
Overall, this PPV is getting a thumbs in the middle for me. Nothing with the exception of the Hardy/Wyatt match was terrible, but the main event really just sucked the life out of me. There was little storytelling in the match, it was highly predictable, and the only tease for future matches we got in the match was Strowman trying to insert himself into the Universal Title picture. Everyone else was completely worthless. On the bright side, the women’s elimination chamber match was very solid for their first go-round, and the rest of the mid-card was okay. There have been far worse PPV’s than this one, but WWE has this bad habit of needlessly dragging things out. But hey, on the bright side, RAW’s after sub-par PPV’s tend to be on the money, so I guess there’s that to look forward too. Until next time.
