[2008-02-17-WWE-No Way Out] HHH vs Shawn Michaels vs Jeff Hardy vs Chris Jericho vs Umaga vs John Bradshaw Layfield (Elimination Chamber)

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[El-P]

Half of this is quite the classic line-up. Jericho vs Micheals to begin, of course. Good wrestling for a change. Short hair for Jericho. Lazy eye for Michaels. Yep, this is getting contemporary. Umaga is next and the match heats up a bit (crowd is dead for a while, maybe the effect of watching two EC matches on the same card, which is not a good idea at all). Cleans up the space. Good looking work. Then JBL comes in and it's really like a Wargame match. More stiff offense, this is really keeping on a steady pace of really good solid work on all front. Soon Micheals is bleeding. Classic shit indeed. Trip gets next and delivers a great clean-up all fired up offensive stretch. JBL gets eliminated and proceed to bash Jericho's head with a chair (and to the other guys too, after teasing he won't do it to Umaga, because "heel solidarity"). Good shit here. The audience wants Hardy, who's reaching the peak of his overness soon I guess. He's pretty much protected by the gimmick and the number of guys here, he just has to do his offensive stuff and bump hard, which he does.

 

And then we get the classic bump into the plastic door, from Umaga into Jericho. Leading to a great sequence of all guys hitting their finishers on Umaga, including Hardy doing the crazy dive from the top of the cell. Then more cool rapid-fire shit with finishers/elimination galore until it's Trip vs Hardy. Gotta give credit to the Man, Trip does a terrific job with Hardy here, even giving him a Pedigree kick out, which was a great false finish. At this point I'm convinced Hardy will win, and so does the crowd, but they keep working at a fast pace into a swift counter for the finish, Pedigree onto a chair. Yep. Trip wins another one. No idea what the concensus was at the time, there it didn't look bad although Hardy was the hottest guy in the ring for this audience.

 

Hard to pick an MVP, it's the very first match without a bad part/worker (well, Jeff Hardy kinda is but it didn't show here). Maybe Micheals as he was extremely effective all along. Jericho was Arn again. Umaga did his part perfectly and his stuff looks great and brutal. Trip did a terrific job during the ending stretch. Overall, as far as pure work goes, it's the best EC. Maybe not the most epic though as it went a bit quick (again, having two of these in the same show hurt), but that's booking. A top tier EC without a doubt. Jericho, Michaels & HHH are the EC classic players indeed.