[2012-02-19-WWE-Elimination Chamber] CM Punk vs Chris Jericho vs Kofi Kingston vs R-Truth vs Dolph Ziggler (Elimination Chamber)

[El-P]

Jericho & Kingston have the sunken chest. Ziggler has already been World champ, which means it meant zilch at this point (pun intended).

 

CM Punk coming out to Cult of Personnality only makes him stand out so much more in the middle of all these awful generic themes (except for Kingston, which is awful but also "ethnic", you see). Kingston and him have a very good, quite hot first sequence; Kofi not only assume the Rey Jr. role of acrobatic underdog but also bumps his ass off on the gimmick.

 

Ziggler is next and he's quite the heel at this point. Looks to have potential still. He also, as a show-off I guess, really wants to bump as much as possible on the steel during this match. Good for him.

 

R-Truth. A rib. Three years in a row. Well, I've gotta say, he makes the most fo the few minutes he get with doing a bit more than his usual stuff and also takes one hard bump on the steel. Still, he's a goner immediately, because he's a joke.

 

The Miz is next and shows some excellent heelish fire. This guy is underrated including in the ring, despite some of his stuff looking weak (a fucked up lariat in the corner here, which almost gets a "Lance Storm throws a chairshot in ECW in 97" reaction from the post-modern crowd). But still, his stuff against Punk is pretty fucking solid. Thus far, this match overdelivered considering who's in (both in term of standing and work ability, although it speaks volume about how Miz is underrated and how Kingston was actually quite good).

 

Jericho vs CM Punk is the big story of the match. These two are a clear head and shoulder above everyone else as far as star power goes, Jericho working like Arn-the-veteran. Damn, his use of the pod to hurt CM Punk's shoulder was terrific and unique. After that point though, the match does kinda lose its focus. Ziggler is a goner then Kofi falls victim to Jericho after a great spot off a pod, but there Jericho goes crazy on him for no other reason than to waste time and lose focus so he can be kicked out of the chamber by Punk. Then they run this injury angle which takes kinda forever, with Jericho playing dead outside. It really takes the match down as they typically overplay the drama (you know the drill, Lawler doing his "low speak"stuff) and seemingly no one in the ring does anything, which doesn't make sense.

 

The ending stretch of Punk vs Miz gets the intensity back with a terrific last sequence. This would clearly be a top tier EC match if not for the lost space between Jericho injuring Punk and the finishing stretch. It's like booking took over and they had to overdo an angle that took the whole match down for a while. Still very good/excellent overall, with Punk being the MVP, Kofi the most impressive in term of spots and Jericho doing a terrific heel job, while Miz was a workhorse and Ziggler a bump freak.