WWE Smackdown's Elimination Chamber 2017: Saving 'Mania
The Elimination Chamber, slash last minute Wrestlemania Booking Pt. 1, is this Sunday in Phoenix, AZ, and I’m worried. We haven’t seen the Chamber since early 2015 when they decided to jam tag teams into it (and two of those teams had three members).
Whatever, the most memorable thing that ever happened in the EC was when RVD awkwardly frog splashed off the top and crushed HHH’s throat bone. This year, it’s a chance to get Cena out of the main event at Wrestlemania 23, sorry, 33.
Smackdown has honestly been the superior brand since the split. They have storylines, regardless of quality, which they see through best they can, beginning to middle to end.
They have young talent that they give opportunities to, they have the single best wrestler of the year, AJ Styles, and they even managed to push two separate women’s division feuds at the same time*. And they do all of this with a smaller roster AND Baron Corbin. It’s more than I can say for Raw right now.
So I’m nervous because as it stands now, Wrestlemania will be The Champion John Cena vs The Rumble Winner Randy Orton.
It will be their 45th PPV match against each other. I’m only assuming they’ve wrestled 44 times already because 45 is the highest number known to man, so if they wrestled even one more time OVER 45 I think the entire world just implodes or something.
Also read: Video: 10 most destructive Elimination Chamber moments
So sure, right now we get Cena/Orton: The Final Last Match Ever, and I can’t think of a more tired, boring match up for the main event at Wrestlemania. OK, yes: I am seriously digging the new “old” John Cena, especially if it means we get matches like the one he had against Styles at the Royal Rumble.
And as milquetoast marquee as Randy Orton can be, I’m totally ok with him winning the Rumble and heading to Mania because that means the belt is getting closer to Bray Wyatt, and I’m always down to see creative try to book Wyatt into pretty much anything. But I have ZERO interest in a Cena/Orton program.
They’re not gonna do that, right? They can’t. But is it so easy just to bump Cena out of the World Heavyweight Championship so we can have a fresh, new match up and put over a wrestler from the “new generation” that they keep telling us is a thing?
From the perspective of Vince McMahon’s Wallet, it’s next to impossible.
#1 American Alpha (c) vs The Ascension vs The Usos vs The Vaudevillains vs Breezango vs Heath Slater & Rhyno – Tag Team Championship
I’m looking forward to this match only because I’m a fan of everyone involved. It’s certainly not the storylines going in, which have been reduced to “these are tag teams.” The only thing this match has going for it is the physical entertainment it can possibly deliver.
I mean that in a good way. Every other match on the card is either surrounded in confusion, dread, hope, or anger. Usually a toxic combination of all four. If they’re not gonna bother stapling a story onto it, I can just shut my mind up and enjoy some incredibly talented wrestlers do awesome tag team stuff.
Also, can we get Simon Gotch some of his shine back? Double also, can we give the belts to Breezango and start giving them like twenty minutes of backstage Well Dressed Authority shenanigans every episode of Smackdown? Dammit! There’s my stupid hope seeping in again.