I finally got around to watching the Elimination Chamber PPV and here are my thoughts:
The Good...
The first elimination chamber match was excellent, despite Chris Jericho getting knocked out too easily. People have taken much worse than a kick to the head and gotten up from it. On the other hand, Jericho "never being eliminated" in the contest gives him a legitimate beef to ramp up the rivalry with CM Punk. Punk winning was the right choice and there were some good spots in the match.
The divas put on a very entertaining match. Tamina Snuka is proving that she has the chops to be a star in the ring and has learnt her father's moves well. Beth Phoenix also did her job well, hitting some high impact moves, including the Glam Slam for the win. The women were given enough time to make the match worthwhile as well.
The second chamber match was a show-stealer for me. Santinto was on fire and the crowd went bananas supporting him. That was the hottest crowd I've heard in YEARS. I also like how they fed off that and let everything think Mr. Marella might actually pull off the Rocky-esque upset. Daniel Bryan, Big Show and Wade Barrett also pulled off some nice spots, like Show climbing into the champ's pod before it had opened.
The ambulance match between John Cena and Kane had some good spots, namely putting Cena through the Spanish announce table and Cena giving Kane an Attitude Adjustment from the top of the ambulance. It wasn't as good as the chamber matches, but it was exciting enough and the crowd ate it up. It should have been the match right before the 2 co-headlining chamber matches in my opinion.
The crowd was on fire for most of the show. It was one of the better ones I have heard in quite some time. It's amazing how much more exciting it makes the show seem.
The Bad...
The order of matches made absolutely no sense to me. Why have the best match of the night, the chamber match for the WWE title be the first match? Surely it should headline the show, especially since the PPV is called Elimination Chamber. The ambulance match was mildly interesting, but why is that feud taking precedent over the championship pictures? Oh ya...because Cena is in it. Lame. And what was with putting an impromptu US Title match between between Jack Swagger and Justin Gabriel right before the main event? Talk about NOT keeping the crowd revved up.
Natalya farting. Enough said.
I didn't like the silly gimmick with Hornswaggle to set up the Gabriel/Swagger US title match when they hadn't spent any time building up a rivalry or getting the crowd to care about them. Waste of time, really. It just seemed to be thrown in at the last minute because the writers hadn't developed enough real feuds to fill up the ppv card. Not much interesting about the match, either, even though it was booked right before the ambulance match main event. This spot should have been reserved for at least a chamber match.
The Meh...
I didn't mind some heels, like Mark Henry, Alberto Del Rio and Christian, coming out to support John Laurinitis and say he should be GM of both Raw and Smackdown, but do they really need to stop the momentum of good matches to do it at a PPV? If they want to set up a Laurinitis/Teddy Long feud, do it on Raw and/or Smackdown where this soap opera stuff belongs. Good idea, wrong place for it.
The commentary stuck to mostly calling matches and Cole actually showed passion and emotion in his voice. they got off track at times, but weren't bad. Anyone else agree that Lawler has become irrelevant as a colour man? He didn't say much and when he did it wasn't very pertinent.
Overall... 77/100
The show was pretty good overall. I really liked the chamber matches and the divas match and didn't mind the ambulance match. Elimination Chamber would have been outstanding if they had cut out the stupid backstage vignettes and had booked the show in a logical order as well. I can't be the only one that thinks the elimination chamber matches should headline the ELIMINATION CHAMBER ppv.
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