Thursday, March 28, 2024
EditorialSuperstars Missing from WWE Elimination Chamber 2018 Card

Superstars Missing from WWE Elimination Chamber 2018 Card

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The 2018 Elimination Chamber pay-per-view is scheduled for this upcoming Sunday night and it appears as though the card has been finalized outside of any last-minute additions, which means it’s time for another look at the superstars on the Raw roster who have been skipped over.

For whatever reason, these men and women from the brand weren’t deemed important enough to find a spot for at the event—at least as far as it’s currently being advertised. Some of those omissions might be justified, while others below are a bit more questionable. Let’s take a look at who will be sitting this show out.

Brock Lesnar

Obviously, the biggest exclusion from the roster who doesn’t have an injury going on right now is Brock Lesnar, since he’s the current top dog on the brand.

Having that Universal Championship coupled with his contractual status as being someone who doesn’t appear more than a handful of times per year is exactly why that’s the case, though, as WWE booked a scenario where it makes sense for him not to necessarily be on the card.

Lesnar just defended his title at the Royal Rumble event and this particular show revolves around finding out who will challenge him at WrestleMania 34, not around him trying to maintain his grasp on the title before the big show.

He’ll be used more often leading up to WrestleMania in the coming weeks on Monday Night Raw, so there’s really no reason for him to make an appearance here—particularly since all of his best potential competitors are busy fighting each other in the Elimination Chamber, so there would be no good options for opponents.

Curt Hawkins

When someone has a losing streak the level of Curt Hawkins and sometimes isn’t even able to make it onto Main Event to come up short against a random midcarder here and there, you go into writing a list like this with him as a guarantee.

Nothing has changed about that in months and it’s highly doubtful anything will change for the better any time soon, if ever.

Goldust

At this point in his career, Goldust bounces around and does random things with seemingly no real purpose in the grand picture.

He has his little pushes from time to time, but they don’t seem to amount to all that much, and even his stint in the Mixed Match Challenge tournament ended pretty much immediately, rendering him just a filler of that concept, too.

On a pay-per-view that doesn’t necessarily have time to have extra matches, Goldust is one of the easy people to skip over and not book for the night in any capacity.

Kane

In the past few months, we’ve had a boost of Kane activity that pretty much came out of nowhere, which is where he’s since receded.

Kane was written off television after his match with Braun Strowman several weeks back wherein the Monster Among Men took The Big Red Machine out of commission and earned his entry into the Elimination Chamber.

With no spot in that match and with a storyline injury, Kane was taken out of the running to be scheduled for this event right from the get-go.

That doesn’t rule out the possibility that he does make an appearance here in some form, though, as there’s always a chance a character like his will show up in a flurry of special effects to create some chaos and cause an interference that would lead to Strowman’s elimination or something along those lines.

From the Women’s Division

Only three women on the Monday Night Raw roster won’t be seeing any action at Elimination Chamber 2018 and with good reason.

Paige is still considered a member of the roster, despite her career essentially being over. Short of an announcement of her retirement and her removal from the website’s profile page, she’s always going to be in that limbo.

Alicia Fox is currently injured as well, which is the reason she also missed out on the Royal Rumble match several weeks back. That injury is going to put her on the shelf for a while longer, so don’t expect her to return to the ring at WrestleMania, either.

Those injuries stop those two women, but Dana Brooke doesn’t have that excuse. She’s just simply not valued enough to have one of those Elimination Chamber spots or anything else to do, which is no surprise, as she’s been consistently toward the bottom of the barrel for a long, long time now.

From the Tag Team Division

** UPDATE ** Soon after posting this article, a Raw Fallout video led to an announcement of a title match between The Bar and Titus Worldwide, rendering the next few paragraphs outdated information. Still, as of WWE’s website, it isn’t listed on the card, so this is how the article was originally presented:

As of the end of Monday Night Raw, absolutely nothing has been announced regarding the Raw Tag Team Championship or any of the teams in the division.

That means at the moment, The Bar and their three most likely challengers (The Balor Club, The Revival and Titus Worldwide) are all just sitting in the wings, waiting to be announced in any fashion.

Since Apollo Crews and Titus O’Neil were successful in defeating Sheamus and Cesaro, while The Revival only wrestled on Main Event and we didn’t see The Good Brothers at all, it would make more sense for The Bar to defend against Titus Worldwide, but we’ll just have to see if that ends up being what gets booked.

In any way, not announcing this ahead of time does no favors for the tag team division, as it goes to show that it isn’t a priority. Then again, Monday night is ending and they don’t even have any updated graphics for this event, so who knows what’s going on with the poor planning right now.

Two other teams are not even close to being in the running for the tag titles, so they can be guarantees to not be involved in that championship match.

To what I’m assuming is nobody’s surprise, Heath Slater and Rhyno were left off the schedule for this event, as they’ve never had a big presence in the tag team division ever since moving over to Monday Night Raw with the Superstar Shake-Up. Formerly the first SmackDown tag champions, they’ve gone from the top of the food chain (albeit in a joking way) to just waiting to split up and move on to other jobber activities.

We may see The Miztourage make an appearance to support The Miz in the Elimination Chamber match, but they aren’t necessities. With their roles being nothing but ancillary, there’s no need to try to figure out some other spot for them on the card.

From the Cruiserweight Division

Normally, the Cruiserweight Championship is on the line on every Raw-branded event, and it will be interesting to see if that continues once the pay-per-views become co-branded shows, but for now, the reason why we aren’t seeing that is the obvious title tournament.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a chance something with the 205 Live crew happens here, as a random tag team bout or perhaps a round 2 match in the tournament could take place.

I’m less inclined to believe the tournament will continue here due to the sheer amount of dates they still have left to fill the void, as the finals are set for WrestleMania and we can’t have too many matches happen beforehand without creating a giant gap where nothing happens.

Still, if that does happen, the match will involve some sort of combination of Ariya Daivari/Buddy Murphy, Cedric Alexander, Drew Gulak, Gentleman Jack Gallagher/Mustafa Ali, Kalisto, Mark Andrews, Roderick Strong, or TJP—a pairing that we can’t anticipate as the brackets haven’t been announced.

Definitely out of the running for any tournament-related matches, though, are Akira Tozawa (eliminated), The Brian Kendrick (injured), Gran Metalik (eliminated), Hideo Itami (eliminated), Lince Dorado (eliminated), Neville (contract dispute), Noam Dar (injured), Tony Nese (eliminated) or the outsiders like Tyler Bate who aren’t even officially in the division to begin with.

The Men’s Singles Injuries

Finally, to round us out, we have the regular singles division men who are still suffering from their injuries, which is a list that contains many of the same people from the past few months and one new addition.

Big Cass, Big Show, Dean Ambrose, Jeff Hardy, R-Truth and Samoa Joe are in the same position they’ve been in for a while, so there’s nothing new to report for them.

Jason Jordan, on the other hand, just underwent surgery for his neck injury and if the rumors are true, could potentially be healed in time for WrestleMania, but will likely sit that show out just in case. At the very least, we know there’s no chance he’ll be ready to go for Elimination Chamber, as that’s just far too unrealistic and impossible.

Do you think these men and women or any others not on this list should have been booked on the card in some fashion? How would you have utilized them if given the opportunity? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!

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