The Min Report – WWE Elimination Chamber – 19 02 12
Quick rundown on last night folks. Which is what the ‘main event’ did to me – quickly ran me down. I guess we’ll come to that later.
Results:
RAW Elimination Chamber Match
CM Punk (WWE Champ) beat Chris Jericho, Dolph Ziggler, Kofi Kingston, R-Truth, and The Miz.
Divas Championship Match
Beth Pheonix beat Tamina Snuka
Smackdown Elimination Chamber Match
Daniel Bryan (World Heavyweight Champion) beat Big Show, Cody Rhodes (IC Champ), Santino, The Great Khali, and Wade Barrett
United States Championship Match
Jack Swagger (US Champion) beat Justin Gabriel
Ambulance Match
John Cena beat Kane
Banter:
My feelings toward the PPV in general haven’t changed, and as I said in The Min Report recently, I’d prefer that the gimmick was saved for Survivor Series where it began and as a one-off match not one of two that the entire show revolves around…although interesting this year that neither of the headline matches were actually the main event. I say interesting…
The same applies for Extreme Rules, TLC etc. I’m happy with one gimmick match per ppv where it’s used merely to elevate a feud or be the rubber match, final chapter etc. Too many timse we see a feud go to last man standing only for a rematch the next night on raw. Why? It’s stupid. But as usual, I digress…
First big issue was the card – 4 matches. Yes, 4. For PPV? Really? Really? (for those of you wondering yes I started that one too years ago. I swear Mike Mizanin was stalking me on a night out once years ago before he was drafted, with a notepad just weaseling everything down to use at a later date.) This turned into 5 when one was ‘booked on the night’. There was ample time within the programme to add 3 more 10 min matches between stars of decent quality…why not? Guess. Because WWE have not been investing in building proper feuds recently and/or building any real buzz outside of Pebbles and Dwayne.
Raw EC Match for WWE Title
Yep that’s right, the match which the angle most highly anticipated went on first. I assumed therefore that this would be added to, extended, re-addressed whatever later in the show but alas I was wrong. They did tease it that after Jericho’s concussion they’d return to him, but didn’t.
The match itself was fine – some great workers in there obviously. Looked like a few early spots were messed up there was a lot of hard work on show. As I said in our TW Tweet off last though, you can forgive a few more errors in this match kinda as it’s so much unchartered territory. Just give praise for those who put their careers on the line even more so than usual by just being in this environment.
Ziggler (accompanied by Vickie in Hooker Penguin guise) was bumping for fun more than usual like he had a point to prove. At one point he was getting so blatantly throw out of the ring that I thought there was going to be some sort of ‘upset’, especially when Cole made a point that falls could only occur in the ring – is that a new rule? We were unsure at TW.
The general consensus in the run up from us ‘10%ers’ was that Jericho needed to win cheaply so that Punk could get his rematch at Mania and get the babyface win. I imagine WWE scrapped that idea because it would have now been ‘predictable’. Should we just shut up altogether in the ‘WWE Universe’ do you think now? That’s not to say I didn’t think the finish was ok. It kinda works…I say kinda. Jerciho we expect to come to Raw tonight and say that Punk never beat him so he needs to prove it at Mania. Problem is here, in a normal match, Punk would have GTS’d him out the ring and he would have won by countout – so really, he did prove he could beat him.
I had a problem with the concussion angle to be honest – not the angle itself as such but how it was handled. Jericho was there for 10 mins with ‘EMT’s’ slapping his face as a cure, while we all knew an ambulance was on the premises! Punk even had the gaul to throw the X sign – that was really poor from him. Calls himself the voice of the voiceless then insults the intelligence of his main fanbase. First he uses the term WWE Universe now this…what happened to the Punk that promo last year? Oh yeah, he got a lucrative new contract. And we’re supposed to hate Cena?
I’d proud to say that my comment on Kofi last week was shown right as he proved he was only there to do one real spot from on top of a one of the chambers. He does need to correct himeself though. Nobody sees him as an ‘afterthought’. In fact when WWE want anyone to do a weird or crazt spot nowadays their FIRST thought is to have Kofi in the match. The best part of the spot was actually that Miz was able to catch him on this occasion. After his dire last fortnight and apparent backstage heat he’s been getting of late, it looks like they gave him to chance to prove himself last night by making him one of the final two. In fairness he did well. I’d like to see more of the aggressive Miz we saw last night. Just a shame he hasn’t hit puberty enough yet to grow a beard or something. Punk win sets up him and Jericho for title at Mania anyway.
We then wasted time watching another Cena promo vid. If you’ve been living under a rock (no pun intended) for the last 11 months then this might have been useful. Nicely put together by WWE production as always, and told the story as it should about Cena being a man for the people and the fans, never forgetting his roots, blah blah blah, but come on?! Had you forgotten he was facing Rock at Mania, and isn’t it obvious by looking at him that he spends time in the gym? I want to see him getting-off with people’s girlfriends and taunting his wheelchair-ridden mates – now that’s a promo vid.
Beth v Tamina
We actually got a decent womens match. Not much to say other than it clearly makes a difference when Beth has someone to actually work with. Tamina did well considering her very quick ‘push’ of late. Shame that this might be their only match up for a while, unless Kharma isn’t ready to come back properly yet. Have read that Rumble appearance was a test for her. Guess we’ll find out tonight maybe? Only gripe was that Beth was a little bit Super-Cena here – her win was still too clinical for me given that Tamina was pretty close to winning at one point. Small point though.
Then it was time for Johnnys big announcement…which never actually came. Ace stumbled over most of his lines (standard) and nothing was actually announced other than it would be good if there was just one Raw/SD general manager. ADR returned – which was supposed to be a surprise although somehow Cole knew exactly the make, model and year of the car ADR arrived in. Come on WWE, who is feeding him these lines!
Henry, and Christian (huge pop) joined him in support of this his I guess, application for the dual-role, as did Swagger later in the show. We assume this is going to either a special MITB type match at Mania or a Team Johnny v Team Teddy match at WM for ‘control’. A fair enough way to ensure it gets some more talent on the card I guess.
SD EC Match for Heavyweight Title
This started painfully slow. Crowd weren’t it at all which didn’t help. Bryans cowardly antics with Show reaching into the chamber like a kid with a cookie jar was cool though and different at least. Thank God for Santino and Bryan at the end who truly saved this match with a fun end to the match. Bryan has cemented himself now for me as a goto guy in the WWE. He is delivering week on week and is there where he is on merit.
Kudos to Santino here who was great. Worked the crowd well who played up to the underdog angle well. Good fun. The ‘Rocky’ vignettes leading up to this were also chuckle-worthy. Solid performances from Cody and Barrett as always. Less said about Khali the better.
Sheamas came out and stamped his intentions on who he’ll be facing at WM. The right finish to the match and the right way to move this along. Bravo for once. The result at WM with Sheamas isn’t important for me as much as the fact that these two get some sort of ‘fix’ for the travesty that was demoting them to a dark match last year. Assume if Punk wins so does Bryan – one babyface win, one heel win thats the rule…but to be fair WWE has very much been roll with the punches this year.
Impromptu US title match
We had cheese and fart jokes with Hornswoggle and Natalia, which somehow led to Teddy Long booking Swagger v Gabriel. No-one cheered, no-one booed. Largely because no-one even knows who they both are unless you’ve been to a house show recently. The US title not only looks like it was bought in Toys R Us, it clearly means nothing to the company either. The entire 10 minutes (skit plus match) only served to make me come to realise that I wouldn’t kick Natalia out of bed for farting.
Ambulance match for…I’m sure there was a reason at some point…anyway…
And so to Cena/Kane. To say this was dire would be a great disservice to everything else that is trying to be crap in this world. In fact the best part of the entire match came before the bell, in Justin Roberts pronunciation of the word ‘Ambulance’. Now that’s some funny sh*t right there. A truly awful match with a predictable finish of the bad kind. So nice of them to park that ambulance right next to a crash mat and a heap of collapsable boxes I thought. It’s almost like they knew!
No sign of Eve, no sign of Ryder. No sign of life from either ‘wrestler’. Based on this performance (alongside a veteran like Kane no less), Cena is heading to be massively embarrassed by Rock at WM whatever the result. That’s not Cena hating for the sake of it. It’s just the truth. Cena is an awesome physical specimen without question, but he just cannot cut it in the ring and even this gimmick match couldn’t protect him from showing that last night. This isn’t the forum for a big focus on the pros and cons of Cena – maybe that’s for another time – it just riles me so much that a guy with some much potential has allowed himself to become this. He claims the fans have given up on him. No. The issue is you gave up on the business the day you became a corporate kiss-ass and thought you didn’t have to continue to improve as long as the cheques kept coming in. As for a Cena ‘heel turn’ (quite why someone needs to ‘turn heel’ when 70% of the audience already boo him I don’t know) but this is what I’d like him to ’embrace’ if they ‘went there’. Let him just come out and say “Fu*k you, why should I change, I’m getting rich doing what I’m doing with or without a title.” I’d be down with that. Anyway…
Granted this isn’t a one way street on this occassion and Kane has to take some of the blame too. Two of the bigger spots of the night could have been so much better – Cena didn’t help Kane enough with the chokeslam so it essentially looked like he fell onto the spanish announce table – and Cena ‘delicately rolled’ a wheelchair-ridden Kane into an awaiting table at less speed than I’d carefully wheel my gran down a hill. As I said last night I’ve seen more brutal spots on the airbrushed face of a model.
Hilarious also that we had to listen to Cole go crazy about Cena’s strength to carry Kane on his shoulders up…wait for it… 3 steps! This after we’ve just watch a video of Cena in the gym literally wiping his arse with more than Kane weighs. Again, who is feeding Cole this shite, or is he just really THAT bad?
So, in essence, really not the best PPV to be honest. Yes it moved a few storylines along and put a line under certain things too so we can just concentrate on getting to Mania…which is where we all just wanna be now to be honest. I’m tired of waiting for sure! Nothing here that couldn’t and shouldn’t be achieved by better writing on a weekly basis on Raw/SD. Let’s see what tonight brings I guess….
The Min. AweSimm…but you already knew that.
