Elimination Chamber

[Russellmania]

what I'd really like to see is HHH/Bryan on RAW from Chicago. If Bryan wins he gets into the main event at WM, if he loses he's not allowed in the building at WM. Punk returns to a nuclear pop, helps Bryan win, crowd goes wild.

 

I know HHH/Bryan on free TV isn't their style but with the Network launching I think TV will play a bigger role in getting people interested in the product since it's no longer about selling PPV's but rather selling subscriptions, ie long-term interest in the product.

[vicious&delicious]

Bray is great. The question of whether he is ready depends on whether he can get people to boo him and cheer Cena. That's not a small order.

[goodhelmet]

I don't think that is an issue at all. As long as he doesn't have a stinker of a match like he did with Kane, Bray will be fine. I blame the stip and Kane being useless for that atrocity. I didn't think half the crowd would cheer the Wyatt's last night.

[Russellmania]

As much as people are liking the Wyatts right now, I feel like there's still not enough familiarity with him as an in-ring performer right now.

 

I mean does anyone else here have trouble trying to name his "5 moves of doom"? He does Sister Abigail regularly and...what else? I feel like he could stand to work a few more extended programs and really show his stuff before facing a guy like Cena. As it stands now it feels like Bray will be kind of starved for potential false finishes against Cena. The only thing people will buy right now as a potential finish on his end is Sister Abigail and I think that just speaks to the fact that he's not quite ready for a match of this magnitude yet. And they're not helping things any by constantly putting him in multi-man matches where he often has the other guys do his bidding and he just comes in for the finish. As the leader of a stable he has lots of cred, but as a singles wrestler he still doesn't feel like a threat to a guy like Cena IMO.

[Loss]

I wish they'd call an audible and run a Shield vs Wyatts TLC match at Mania and do Cena vs Cesaro. But I know they won't.

[goc]

I wonder if any of those people who said "Bryan shouldn't win at Elimination Chamber, it wouldn't be a big enough moment" changed their minds.

[Russellmania]

I wish they'd call an audible and run a Shield vs Wyatts TLC match at Mania and do Cena vs Cesaro. But I know they won't.

Agree, but I think they should do:

Cena/Taker

Cesaro/Sheamus

 

But Shield/Wyatts being a 1 and done feud is a major missed opportunity IMO. That's a big problem with modern WWE...they seem to dislike letting guys feud for a while. They could get a lot more mileage out of a Shield/Wyatts feud.

[anarchistxx]

 

 

That's a big problem with modern WWE...they seem to dislike letting guys feud for a while.

 

Um, what? They routinely run exactly the same title match for three PPVs in a row.

[Moonsault Marvin]

I can't see John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt headlining Wrestlemania XXX - that would be ridiculous. I mean sure, it's John Cena, he's optimal for headlining, but against Bray Wyatt? Far too early. It's a milestone Wrestlemania and all participants in the main event should be big name players.

 

I think it could work as the last match if they add some legends in Cena's corner like Austin, Warrior, etc. to counteract Rowan and Harper in Bray's corner. Then they can have a feel good moment with Cena and the legends celebrating at the end, which would be better than having Batista winning over Orton at the end.

[Fantastic]

 

I can't see John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt headlining Wrestlemania XXX - that would be ridiculous. I mean sure, it's John Cena, he's optimal for headlining, but against Bray Wyatt? Far too early. It's a milestone Wrestlemania and all participants in the main event should be big name players.

 

I think it could work as the last match if they add some legends in Cena's corner like Austin, Warrior, etc. to counteract Rowan and Harper in Bray's corner. Then they can have a feel good moment with Cena and the legends celebrating at the end, which would be better than having Batista winning over Orton at the end.

 

 

They've simply not made enough of an impact yet to warrant this kind of position on the card. There are heels above them on the pecking order that would be more suited opposing John Cena (the de facto top babyface). The order, in terms of those who have had the most investment as top heels, kind of looks like:

 

1. Randy Orton

2. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon

3. The Shield

4. Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman

5. Alberto Del Rio

6. Wyatt, Harper, and Rowan

7. Kane

8. AJ Lee

9. Ryback

 

It's pretty sad when the top heel pecking order in the company looks like the above.

[The Chief]

I think the Wyatt's officially passed the Shield last night. And they've been positioned above Del Rio.

[Fantastic]

I think the Wyatt's officially passed the Shield last night. And they've been positioned above Del Rio.

 

I was speaking from the longer term though, from say around the time the Wyatt's debuted and when Orton and H turned until now. Right at this moment, they maybe are being positioned above everybody as top heels, but they just haven't done enough yet to warrant that position. I don't think the audience will accept them as such, or treat them as credible.

[Russellmania]

 

That's a big problem with modern WWE...they seem to dislike letting guys feud for a while.

 

Um, what? They routinely run exactly the same title match for three PPVs in a row.

 

Sorry, I should have said that outside whatever their main event/title program is, they don't like to do extended feuds.

 

I mean how many really satisfying mid-card fueds can you think of in WWE in the last couple years? It's a part of their business that they've really gotten away from IMO. It used to be that you'd get things like Shawn/Razor, Bret/Austin, Rock/HHH, etc. where guys established themselves over long feuds, often over the IC title so that when they finally got pushed into the world title scene people were already really connecting with them. That used to be just part of the grooming process.

 

Now they just seem to randomly throw mid-card guys out there to take up TV time on RAW without any real direction. Occasionally there are exceptions like when they come up with something to do with a guy like pairing Swagger with Zeb, but even then they don't seem to know how to use those ideas to get more than 1 guy over at a time unless it's as a team or stable.

 

We always comment how guys like Ziggler, Kofi, Barret, etc. have nothing going on, but it wouldn't be so bad if they made the secondary titles mean something and put some of these guys in feuds that seemed to matter, rather than just seeming like throwing shit at the wall.

 

There are obviously exceptions, but in most cases the mid-card guys they've gotten over they've done by pairing them with top guys. I can't remember the last time they've put 2 mid-card guys or teams into a long program where both guys came out stronger.

[DMJ]

I don't think it's a great example, but Damien Sandow and Cody Rhodes feud this past summer seemed like it SHOULD'VE put them both in better positions. As it played out, only Cody seemed to get the rub, while Sandow, who still had the briefcase moved on to absolutely nothing of note.

 

Right now, Titus and Darren Young have a feud going, but, again, I think its fairly obvious that only Titus will come out of this strong and, even if he does get on a roll, I don't see him overcoming Reigns, Ambrose, Bray, etc. in terms of making waves in the main event in 2014.

 

Overall, you're dead on - they have a bunch of midcarders, but don't seem to know how to build purposeful feuds out of them. It's a shame, really, because they have 5+ hours of weekly TV to do it and a roster so stacked that you could essentially put names on a board, shoot darts at it, and create interesting pairings...like, say, Evan Bourne vs. Del Rio (Plucky underdog vs. overconfident veteran)

or Dean Ambrose vs. Big Show (huge loudmouth vs. huge man).

[NintendoLogic]

The great thing about War Games in the 80s was that it was a series of heel beatdowns followed by babyface saves over and over. Call that the standard NWA emotional climax, since those moments always tended to be pretty heated when they happened outside of War Games. This felt like the modern equivalent, just a nonstop barrage of back-to-back standard emotional climaxes in big WWE matches where the tide turns and they start going to the finishing stretch. The match felt like a gigantic WWE main event finishing stretch from start to finish..

 

This might be blasphemy, but I find myself increasingly not a fan of the Wargames concept. The fact that the match can't end before everyone is in the cage makes it difficult for me to get invested in anything that happens before The Match Beyond. Plus, even the better Wargames matches are driven more by the booking and gimmick than the individual talents of the wrestlers.

[Timbo Slice]

But that's what made them great. It wasn't about the individual talents of the wrestlers. It was about wrestlers being paired off thanks to the booking leading into the match. Booking, not talent, made Wargames.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

The great thing about War Games in the 80s was that it was a series of heel beatdowns followed by babyface saves over and over. Call that the standard NWA emotional climax, since those moments always tended to be pretty heated when they happened outside of War Games. This felt like the modern equivalent, just a nonstop barrage of back-to-back standard emotional climaxes in big WWE matches where the tide turns and they start going to the finishing stretch. The match felt like a gigantic WWE main event finishing stretch from start to finish..

 

This might be blasphemy, but I find myself increasingly not a fan of the Wargames concept. The fact that the match can't end before everyone is in the cage makes it difficult for me to get invested in anything that happens before The Match Beyond. Plus, even the better Wargames matches are driven more by the booking and gimmick than the individual talents of the wrestlers.

 

 

What do you expect? It's a gimmick match. And why would you care about the match not being able to finish until the Match Beyond? That's a strange quirk. The whole point of the match is that there are uneven odds up until the Match Beyond, so you have two on one, three on two and so forth.

[Ryan Faulconer]

Most of the better Battle Royales/Royal Rumbles have had a similar formula as well.

 

The 98 WarGames is an example of doing it wrong. Every one before that (with maybe the odd one here and there) managed the time and milked crowd reactions. I haven't liked the TNA versions but ROH's Steel Cage Warfare has been good more often than not. I still haven't watched the Smoky Mountain war games from the blu ray.

[NintendoLogic]

Most of the better Battle Royales/Royal Rumbles have had a similar formula as well.

 

Right, which is why I compared the Chamber match to a high-end Rumble match. I guess my broader point is that I don't really like gimmick matches, at least not in terms of viewing them as GOAT contenders.

[Hollinger.]

This was, by a huge margin, the most fun I've ever had at a wrestling show. The crowd was way hotter in person than it came across watching on tv, especially during the six man. And to the complaints about it being worked too much as a straight wrestling match, part of that was the camera work. Everyone on the apron was doing a lot of work, and made it feel a lot more chaotic live than it did with the frenetic editing work on tv.

[WingedEagle]

I was actually scrolling through this thread on my phone before going to bed after the show, and so while I saw someone talk about the chamber match being one of their all-time WWE faves I initially dismissed it, then saw a ton of replies and realized Loss made the big statement. I know it doesn't need to be said, but we're talking about someone here who has probably gone to greater lengths than just about anyone on here to state what wrestling he likes and why he likes it.

 

While I didn't think it was match of the nighton this show, much less one of the top matches in the company over the last few years, that kind of pimping is enough for me to go and rewatch the match to see what's up once the show is on the network. My gut is that even if the bulk of the match were at or close to that level, the booking/finish would likely drag things down well below anything approaching the all time level.

 

Kind of switching gears here more into Current WWE territory, but its relevant to this show, last night and the direction going forward as well. I liked the angles with Wyatt & Co. setting up the match with Cena. But that kind of traditional, heels attack babyface without any compelling reason more resembles how you set up a common PPV headliner, not the company ace's match on the biggest show of the year. I dig Bray as a character and am enjoying him in the ring too, but I don't set see the Wyatts as anywhere near the main event type level that the Shield were at almost immediately from day 1. This is a match that needs some serious violence to try and make it feel big, more along the lines of the Nexus angle or something similar where there is absolute chaos (and ideally some color, but we know that's not happening), rather than a worked knee injury.

 

I love Taker's Mania gimmick, generally enjoy the setup each year (excluding last year) and was looking forward to this year. But he finally looked OLD last night. We're talking Jazz Hoyt with atrophying arms and aged 30 years in the last 1 year OLD. I have no doubt they'll go to every length to make this an awesome match and obviously have certain liberties along the way, but when its done I hope we're not left wishing they pulled the trigger on the Cena match while Taker was still Taker.

 

Bryan? I dunno, but forget that Batista isn't him. He can't control that and its an unfortunate situation he walked into, but here's another guy who looks smaller, older and like much less of a star than his last run. I don't know that pushing him completely against what live audiences want will cost them a dime in business, but it will make for some awkward television through at least the summer. I can't imagine they don't call an audible before the big show, but if their internals say that top line figures won't vary much if they don't change course why bother?

[Loss]

Ok, so I watched Summerslam 2013 yesterday. I realize how foolish I sounded on this one. I won't be talking about the best WWE matches ever again until I fill in my viewing gaps, as much as I REALLY want to make that case for Cena/Bryan.

[Garvinstomp]

It looks like Meltzer rated the Chamber match as ***3/4 and Bryan Alvarez rated it as ***1/2

 

 

Meltzer ranks the 2014 Chamber match as the 9th best Chamber match of all time.

[Loss]

2005 was pretty great when I watched it yesterday for the first time. 2002 was a trainwreck.

[WingedEagle]

Ok, so I watched Summerslam 2013 yesterday. I realize how foolish I sounded on this one. I won't be talking about the best WWE matches ever again until I fill in my viewing gaps, as much as I REALLY want to make that case for Cena/Bryan.

 

lol pretty easy to get caught up in the moment at times. What'd you think about Brock/Punk? Watching the show live that night I thought both matches were in the ****1/2 range, but having rewatched them I thought Cena/Bryan was a bit better than the first watch, while Brock/Punk was a bit worse.