Elimination Chamber - Well, that sucked.

And so Elimination Chamber – the final WWE PPV before Wrestlemania and the PPV that is supposed to set the stall out for that mega event. But what do the WWE deliver? Two pretty decent chamber matches, a terrible main event, bundles of padding, and no real build whatsoever towards the big show. In short, a bad PPV.



PPV started with the RAW Elimination Chamber, and the match itself was pretty entertaining.. Punk and Jericho tease tension to start as you’d expect, and with Jericho being the last guy in, that was pretty much the story. Punk and Kofi started things off and had some decent exchanges. Both took bumps to the outside, Kofi sprung around as expected, it was all good. Dolph Ziggler then joined the match and he and Kofi had some more good exchanges before Ziggles ate a nasty DDT to the steel outside. R-Truth is in and we get the usual round of two guys bumping and resting while the others fight. Kofi is still doing the big bumps although of them give and receive good shots. Miz occasionally looks tentative after a couple of botches on RAW recently. Truth is eliminated fairly early (I think even before Jericho comes out) and then Y2J eliminates Dolph with a Codebreaker and Kofi with a nice variation of the Walls of Jericho. Y2J then throws Kofi out of the cage. As he goes to come back in, Punk kicks him in the head. Jericho flies to the outside, taking out a cameraman and going head first into a light. They play it like he’s dead and unable to continue, so he’s out of the match. Punk and Miz left, and Punk eventually wins to retain – of course giving Jericho the chance to say he was never eliminated, and that’s your Mania match.



Next up, Johhny Ace promises a HUGE blockbuster announcement. He and David Otunga take a full five minutes of PPV time to announce he’s asked the board to review Teddy Long’s performance as Smackdown GM. They then take a further 10 while Alberto Del Rio, Henry, and Christian all come out one at a time to say they’d like to see Laryngitis a GM of both brands….



……That was it, that was the announcement. Nothing else. Just that. We wasted 15 minutes of PPV time on that.



Then there was a lacklustre women’s match, which Beth won. So pointless building up Snuka’s daughter then?



Then there was a ten minute promo on how down to earth Cena is that he’s opened his own gym in Florida and lets the WWE development talent use it. Yes, another ten minutes of dead PPV time.



Next up was the Smackdown chamber match. Good stuff this, and the crowd were more into it than the Smackdown one. Story here was Big Show wanting Daniel Bryan. Show and Barrett start the match, and Barrett will be the workhorse in this match. He bumps around for Show before coming back by attacking the knees. Cody is out next and now its those two versus Show. Show eats a suplex on the metal and in return both Cody and Wade take his trademark bumps. Santino out to a MONSTER pop and he goes after Wade and Cody taking them both down before he comes face to face with Show and gets bump monkeyed. Khali out and chops everyone before Show spears him, so we only have to suffer about a minute of him. Put of nowhere Santino cradles Cody to eliminate him before Cody hits CrossRhodes on Santino. Santino kicks out of the pin attempt. Wade kills him. Bryan is left to be released and taunts Show from behind the plastic. Show climbs up the turnbuckle, rips the chains off the roof of the pod, and jumps down into the pod with Bryan. Its like a bear in a phonebox. He kills Bryan until the pod is opened, and then throws Daniel back through the plexiglass. Barrett and Show then go at it again until he and Bryan eventually overwhelm the big man and eliminate him. Wade is out next and now the crowd is going bananas for Santino. Reaction is MASSIVE. He and Bryan go at it as Bryan looks delighted to only have the underdog to beat. Santino escapes the Lebell lock. He hits the Cobra. 2 and 99 100ths!!!!!! Crowd now RABID. But its not enough. Eventually Bryan gets the Lebell Lock, and Santino has to tap.



As Bryan celebrates, Sheamus comes out and kills him. So that’s Mania match number 2. Good match that, best of the night.



We then waste another five minutes of PPV time with another Rock video.



Backstage, Hornswoggle is doing something with cheese with somehow leads to Jack Swagger having to defend the US title tonight against Justin Gabriel – because of course the US title isn’t worth a proper angle, and of course you should have a free match slot on the last PPV before the biggest show of the year.



The match itself isn’t worthy a Superstars taping. Swagger wins with the Ankle lock.



Then the main event. Cena .v. Kane in an Ambulance match. Sadly, I think this match proved that the bolt has been shot on Kane. He just doesn’t have the spring in his step that he once had, and while this had some decent shots in it, it just seemed slow and plodding in comparison to the sort of brawls the younger guys could manage. Kane even looked slow in comparison to the Big Show. Cena handed out all his usual offence, and of course forgot to sell any of the offence Kane had handed out – he was chokeslammed through a table and seemed to shrug that off completely by the end. It really was pretty terrible, and you could just see every spot coming. When they fought onto the roof of the ambulance, you could see by the fact it was parked flush against a sticky out bit of the staging that there must be a padded area behind that bit of stage. Sure enough, Kane eats an Attitude Adjustment off the roof onto the pad, and Super Cena wins another match.



So no Cena embracing hate, no heel turn, no character development, no way forward for Kane. Just goody two shoes wins again – in a very poor match.



The end, good night, that’s it.

Didn't watch the last two matches, went to bed. Agree with a lot of what David said though, however I really feel underwhelmed with Sheamus v D-Bry, I thought they were going to pull a swerve somewhere there and put the belt on somebody else. Hope I'm wrong about that though.

Too much padding, the Johnny Ace stuff was completely pointless for a PPV, do it tonight on RAW. The Cena video was good but PPV worthy? Surely not. Ditto with The Rock's also.

Women's match was alright, better than the standard we've come to expect. Praying for a Kharma v Beth WM though, it's certainly setting up for that.

Sad about Kane, I wonder if he'll go on one more year and jack it in.

After all the years he's been there and the crap he's put up with, Kane deserved better than to be fodder to pad Cena's time out before Mania. I reckon this might be his final year. Just seemed such a waste of the momentum he could have gained from the heel turn.

And indeed the momentum Kane could have gained from the return of the mask.

As I said earlier a feel for Kane, I really do. He's been given some crap over the years. Short title reigns, terrible storylines and nonsense moves. But he's been there year in, year out. Plugging away. What's his reward? Another notch for Cena.

And why not have Cena give in to the dark side? Otherwise none of this makes any sense. This was the perfect time to do it.

The two chamber matches sound good, esp the stuff with Santino and Show. I also think they have two good matches lined up in Jericho/Punk and Sheamus/Bryan.

But, like we said earlier, this show just had too much filler. If you have time get a fatal-fourway going on with some mid-carders with a shot at the US title at stake. How they expect to build people when they just waste time is beyind me.

Actually, the weird thing is that i'm hearing that WWE is acting as if they DID book it to Cena giving into the hate. And that this was intended to be that kind of ending.

Maybe it just came across really vauge and badly conveyed.

From the sounds of it then it might just be they didn't do enough. Surely it's fairly easy to show you're a bad mo'fo? Chairs shots anybody?

Well his promo on RAW, and the appalling acting in the segments with Eve don't suggest that at all.

Actually, his anti-Rock promo was very good, but it was still very face.

Acting from Movie Star John Cena? Surely not...

Sigh... I think it's at this time that I have to confess that I have almost entirely given up on WWE, and barely even feel motivation to follow it anymore.

I really feel these days and so far into the year 2012, as if my interest in the entire product and a lot of wrestling in general is almost dipping back into where it was from 2004-2008 when I watched barely anything, and was almost gone cold turkey from it, entirely.

I will never hate wrestling or be against it entirely. But my care for it is truly running on empty. It almost had me around the point of Money In The Bank last year, but all of that is just about gone for me at this point.

Still might buy the game again next year. But after the server fiasco this year, I'm sad to say that even the game series that I look forward to and pre-order every single year is just a half-hearted "maybe I might buy it" this time.

Even though I still enjoy WWE's games more than I am enjoying their product anymore.

I bring this up here maybe seemingly out of nowhere, but in all honesty, I've been battling with myself on whether I should admit this or not, but since this is a topic about a very lacking PPV, now I figure I might as well. Not sure how much I'll have to say on Wrestling matters as much from now on, but I'll still try to remain relevant to the boards as much as before.

Er, you confessed that a few weeks ago, so not excatly out of nowhere! To be fair as an occassional 'viewer' who looks at the reults and the occassional bit of youtube I think that it's been up and down recently. They've had some reallly good stuff. Don't forget, Mike, how much you raved about the Punk stuff. There have been hints of that along the way. At the same time there also seems to have been a fair amount of treading water and weak follow through on angles.

What they need is to get WM under their belts and then look to get some things going. The have the shape of a good card at Mania. From what I've read (and happy to be corrected) they have Rock-Cena, Taker-Trips, Jericho-Punk and Sheamus-Bryan. That's a good base for the bill.

They also still have time to pull Cena around. I think they seem to have dropped the ball a bit on Dark Cena but they can still do something with it. They need to be quick though.

As I haven't watched regularly for a few years I haven't seen anything that has made me rush to get it back again. But but there's also been enough to keep me at least interested enough to dip in.

Also, don't forget there is stuff outside of the big two so you don't have to drop an interest in wrestling altogether. Plus you seem to have dropped interest in wrestling before, even during the life of the board, only to get something back. So I'm predicting (in true Mike stylee) that it's 97.852% certain that you'll be back commenting before too long!