The Elimination Chamber PLE happened this past weekend bright and early over here in the States. Live from Perth, Australia and like most of the foreign country PLEs we’ve seen over this last year the crowd was loud, invested, and did not disappoint. The card opened with one of, if not the best match of the night with the Women’s Elimination Chamber. Every woman had a pretty great showing in the match and had a moment to shine. I still am so pleased to see my girl Naomi back inside the WWE (I may have lost my Ronda Rousey fix this year, but I regained my Naomi fix) and although she was eliminated first, she still had her moments to shine inside the confines of the chamber with a split leg drop off the cage and a sunset flip bomb to Liv Morgan before being rolled up by Stratton. Tiffany was extremely over in Australia, with the crowd giving her a loud pop for every big move she hit and raining down boos after her elimination. Stratton had an extremely impressive showing inside the chamber as well, with the highlight for her being a diving Swanton off the top of the pod onto the bulk of the women before her elimination from Liv Morgan. Things broke down rather quickly near the end of the match with Liv countering a KOD from Belair before connecting with a roll-up pin on her, all before turning around into a Manhandle Slam courtesy of Becky Lynch who scored the pinfall and the victory, punching her way into a Mania match against Rhea Ripley for the belt. The Judgment Day put their tag belts on the line against Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate as well in a fun, well done, back and forth match. Dominik Mysterio and The Judgment Day got great heat in Australia as well as they do all over the world it seems, with Dom sticking his nose into the match where he could to help his Judgment Day brothers get the win, before being booted from ringside. The Judgment Day ended up retaining the belts after a Coup de Grace from Balor, but not before bloodying up his fingers from the brutal offense of Pete Dunne.
The Men’s Chamber was the next match after a rather pointless Grayson Waller Effect segment. It seemed they just wanted to give Grayson a moment in front of his home country and a chance for the Aussie crowd to see and pop for Cody and Rollins, understandably. The ring filled up with all the involved competitors before we saw the first elimination of the match. Orton consistently held and favored his back after every move he took or hit that involved landing on it. Logan Paul was the last to enter the match with a very game Owens waiting outside his pod to pounce as soon as it opened, all before Lashley speared Paul through one of the plexiglass pods. McIntyre hit a Claymore on Lashley for the first elimination, before LA Knight dropped both Orton and McIntyre with a BFT. Moments after, Styles ran into the Chamber as they were letting Bobby out and viciously attacked Knight with a chair leading to his elimination at the hands of McIntyre. After a run of offense and some stunners all around, Owens was eliminated by an RKO outta nowhere by Orton. Paul followed shortly after with another RKO and elimination by Orton, which was followed up by yet another on McIntyre shortly after, but before Orton could capitalize a disgruntled Paul leveled him with a brass knuckled punch across the face which led to his pin and a victory for McIntyre, officially sealing his ticket to WrestleMania to face Seth Rollins. Ripley and Nia Jax got the Main Event slot in Rhea’s home country in what was a fun and well done back and forth contest as well. The crowd was fully invested and behind their hometown girl and she faced her biggest and hardest challenge to date with the belt since her championship crowning match against the Charlotte Flair. Ripley fought from behind a majority of the match (which is a rare sight thus far in her dominating championship reign) and felt at serious jeopardy of losing her title at a couple points in the match. Namely, when Jax bounced her off the announce table with a Samoan Drop and put her through it with a Splash, all before connecting with an Annihilator in ring that led to a near fall. Ripley eventually fought the bigger woman off though with a Superplex from the top rope before connecting with her signature Riptide for the win. She celebrated with her family in the front row in front of her home country in what was one of the biggest and most special moments of her career to date.
I’m going to come off sounding like a complainer or a know it all by saying this but, my main complaint with Chamber is that the card was so damn predictable, I saw the outcome of every one of those matches weeks in advance and I think even most novice fans who keep up with the product would agree. It’s not the worst thing in the world though. I’m not a fan who needs to be swerved at every PLE, but this one just felt like the winners of every match were pretty clear to see and already being talked about in media and presented that way on the weekly show weeks before the actual show happened so that kind of took away some of the anticipation in the matches. Overall though, the wrestling itself was still well done all around, it was an entertaining card, and the Aussie fans seemed to have a really good time having WWE in Perth for the week, so it was still a win for the company. It did a good job setting us up for Mania and now we’re officially in the most exciting time of year as a wrestling fan, Mania season! Just under 40 days to the biggest event of the year in WWE and the card is really starting to take shape. I’m not going to lie and say that all the championship matches look the most appealing to me this year as they have in year’s past, but we still have some weeks before we are officially at the Show of Shows, so the company still has time to draw some real investment and excitement into all the matches across the board. In the meantime, I’ll still be watching in excitement and keeping you up to date in my hopes, predictions, and any new news that may rise up in the coming weeks!
