BRM Reviews WWE Elimination Chamber 2015

[Big Red Machine]

WWE Elimination Chamber 2015 (5/31/2015)- Corpus Christi, TX

PRE-SHOW:
ZACK RYDER vs. STARDUST- 6/10
This got a lot more time than most pre-show matches have gotten in recent memory.

LANA IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA LOUNGE- Now she claims she’s not just using Ziggler, even though that’ the exact opposite of what she said on Smackdown. Lana herself was very good here, but this whole turn has come so fast and with so many unanswered questions (like why she is no longer spewing Russian propaganda- she’s the real Russian, not Rusev) that it all just feels phony.

MIZ TV WITH THE SPECIAL GUEST DANIEL BRYAN-
Summer Rae is now introducing Miz for Miz TV. I had totally forgotten that they were now together. Miz is wearing a sleeveless version of the sort of dress I’m sure by great-grandmother used to wear back in the old country.
BRYAN SAYS HIS CAREER ISN’T OVER!
Anyway, Miz was being totally great here, and then they ruined it by bringing out Macho Mando and Curtis AxelMania. Miz first beat the sh*t out of Sandow while Axel just stood and watched. Then Axel distracted Miz so Sandow could recover and Miz got beaten up two-on-one. This was pointless and dumb.

EDEN STYLES INTERVIEWS DEAN AMBROSE- Eden felt like she was reading lines rather than naturally responding to anything. Dean was very good. Roman Reigns showed up. Apparently he is here to help Dean overcome any shenanigans the Authority may engage him… which I assume means that he will accidentally spear Dean and cost him the match.

MAIN SHOW:
ELIMINATION CHAMBER MATCH FOR THE WWE TAG TEAM TITLES: The New Day(c) vs. The Prime Time Players vs. The Ascension vs. Lucha Dragons vs. Los Matadores (w/El Torito) vs. Upper-Cats (w/Natalya)- DUD!
WHAT THE F*CK?! They’re just going to let Torito sit there lose in the chamber where he can interfere at will? That’s f*cking idiotic! Are they going to let Nattie and the third New Day member in there, too?
Well… Nattie’s not allowed into the cage, but they are going to put all three New Day guys into the cage. THIS IS SOOOOOO DUMB! Why do they get this huge advantage?!
Kalisto’s big spot with the roof-climbing looked so contrived. You could tell that everyone was trying to get underneath him to break his fall. It was, to quote JBL, “dumb.”
Okay… so they throw Woods back into the pod: so what? The door has already been opened. Why can’t he just walk out again? Oh. He can. Well… that was pretty dumb then, wasn’t it?
Yeah… this was not good. At all. There was logic defying stupidity and some tepid action only broken up by a few very contrived spots. Easily the worst Elimination Chamber match in history, and I highly doubt anyone will ever put on a worse one without deliberately trying.

LANA WISHES DOLPH GOOD LUCK- decent.

WWE DIVAS TITLE MATCH: Nikki Bella(c) vs. Naomi vs. Paige- 3.5/10
There were one or two spots that didn’t look good (one involved Paige almost falling on Naomi’s face and the other involved her almost landing right on her neck on Naomi’s back), but the worst part of this was the finish. Nikki has been a boring and bland champion for months now. Meanwhile, both Paige and Naomi have a lot of momentum behind. Why the hell would you have Nikki retain the title here?

JOHN CENA vs. KEVIN OWENS- 8.75/10
YES! Now THAT’S how you make a star in one night! They told a great story with Owens needing to dig deeper and deeper into his bag of tricks to beat John Cena and (here comes the important part) HE EVENTUALLY DID BEAT CENA 100% clean.

BO DALLAS vs. ADRIAN NEVILLE- 4.75/10
Not a bad match, but it felt odd that they barley worked the knee at all, considering that was what this feud has been built around.

HUNTER BANS ROMAN FROM RINGSIDE DURING THE MAIN EVENT- if he shows up, Dean will be DQed.

ELIMINATION CHAMBER MATCH FOR THE VACANT WWE INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE: Wade Barrett vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. R-Truth vs. Ryback vs. Sheamus vs. Mark Henry- 7.75/10
The idea that Mark Henry is officially in the match just because his pod wall broke is stupid. Sheamus getting himself stick in his pod did a good job of playing off of Barrett’s assault on Truth in the pod earlier.
Sheamus viciously throws Dolph THROUGH the fiberglass (or whatever) wall of the pod… and the announcers all respond by laughing or making jokes. F*cking morons.
This match actually felt more like a series of singles matches, but it worked pretty well.

WWE WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH WITH ROMAN REIGNS BARRED FROM RINGSIDE: Seth Rollins(c) (w/the Authority) vs. Dean Ambrose- 8.25/10
About twenty seconds after Dean was holding the belt, I realized that they were doing a Dusty Finish. I normally hate them, but I’ll cut WWE some slack as I can’t remember the last time they did an actual Dusty Finish (instead of their normal DQ crap). That being said, this was not the best show to do it on as they were trying to use this show to tell people the WWE Network as people don’t like Dusty Finishes, but maybe the angle of Dean stealing the belt will be enough to make first-time subscribers want to stick around for another month and actually pay for it.
The first fifty minutes of this show sucked, but the last two were awesome.

[badnewzxl]

I wouldn't give the tag match a dud; it was fine. Cesaro and Kidd did some awesome stuff and the PTP got a chance to shine. The Torito stuff was a bit weird, but I expect that now considering he's the only reason anyone cares about that team, sadly. Did you not see Kane talking to the New Day on the pre show? They asked him if they could all be in the pod together and he agreed; that's why they were all in there. Of course Natty isn't gonna lock herself inside one of the most dangerous structures in WWE with 14 male wrestlers. That'd be crazy. I didn't think it was bad; not dud worthy at least.

I'm not cutting them slack for the Dusty finish in the main event either. It's not exactly the same, but I felt the same way I felt after Bryan won the title from Orton and they stripped it the next night. When we already need to suspend our disbelief to enjoy the show, don't raise questions that makes it harder for us to suspend that disbelief! We've seen refs get pulled in the way hundreds of times and this rarely happens. Furthermore, why would that ref then change the decision of the match to benefit the guy who pushed him into harms way? The ref that came running out to replace the first one had to be watching the show to know to come out; why didn't he immediately ring the bell for the dq? It makes folks ask too many questions.

[cero2k]

I wouldn't give the tag match a dud; it was fine. Cesaro and Kidd did some awesome stuff and the PTP got a chance to shine. The Torito stuff was a bit weird, but I expect that now considering he's the only reason anyone cares about that team, sadly. Did you not see Kane talking to the New Day on the pre show? They asked him if they could all be in the pod together and he agreed; that's why they were all in there. Of course Natty isn't gonna lock herself inside one of the most dangerous structures in WWE with 14 male wrestlers. That'd be crazy. I didn't think it was bad; not dud worthy at least.

agree, shouldn't be a dud, i'd give it a 5/10 or so, since some stuff felt like a clusterfuck, but there was still some good spots going on. I do agree with BRM though that a bunch of those spots were just an insult to the intelligence

[Big Red Machine]

I wouldn't give the tag match a dud; it was fine. Cesaro and Kidd did some awesome stuff and the PTP got a chance to shine. The Torito stuff was a bit weird, but I expect that now considering he's the only reason anyone cares about that team, sadly. Did you not see Kane talking to the New Day on the pre show? They asked him if they could all be in the pod together and he agreed; that's why they were all in there. Of course Natty isn't gonna lock herself inside one of the most dangerous structures in WWE with 14 male wrestlers. That'd be crazy. I didn't think it was bad; not dud worthy at least.

I didn't catch that part of the pre-show, but even then it's still stupid? Why would they be allowed to have three guys in there? It just made everything seem like it was more intended to be a stunt show than a wrestling match, and then when it came time for the stunts, they were all bad.
Nattie won't lock herself in the chamber, but Torito, who is even smaller and whose ass we've seen Nattie kick several times, will? Look... I know that there isn't much you can do with Nattie in the Chamber. Either you have men who are all larger than she is throwing her around, or you have her hitting them while they refuse to hit her, or you have her be a damsel in distress which would both make her look like an idiot for getting in there in the first place and also wouldn't be a very good way to portray the woman who is supposed to be (and legitimately is) the tough, grizzled veteran- no matter how you do it, it's not a good idea- but those are all non-kayfabe issues. My point was more that it made no sense for Torito to be allowed in the Chamber, and that giving New Day a third person also hurt the integrity of what had always been taken as a pretty damn serious match.

I'm not cutting them slack for the Dusty finish in the main event either. It's not exactly the same, but I felt the same way I felt after Bryan won the title from Orton and they stripped it the next night. When we already need to suspend our disbelief to enjoy the show, don't raise questions that makes it harder for us to suspend that disbelief! We've seen refs get pulled in the way hundreds of times and this rarely happens. Furthermore, why would that ref then change the decision of the match to benefit the guy who pushed him into harms way? The ref that came running out to replace the first one had to be watching the show to know to come out; why didn't he immediately ring the bell for the dq? It makes folks ask too many questions.

The ref isn't changing things in favor of Rollins. He is changing them in favor of making the correct officiating call... which just so happens to be one that is better for Rollins. I see what you're saying about it raising questions, and I agree with you to a large extent, although i didn't think the ref was awake until after the other ref had already declared Ambrose the winner.
As for the referees not watching the match... maybe he was getting changed to go home and someone came in the locker room and got him once they saw the other ref go down, so he got dressed and ran out as quickly as possible, but didn't see the actual DQ-worthy infraction. Contrived? Yes. But (IMO) plausible.
I think this is actually much different that Orton/Bryan. That one, to me, wasn't a Dusty Finish. That was just sh*tting on the result of a PPV, which is worse because you're telling people that the PPV is important and giving them a conclusive finish, but then invalidating said clean finish the next day, showing that the PPV wasn't really important.
This, IMO, is more like the old-school Dusty Finish that teases us with a title win that doesn't actually happen and things revert to the way they were before the end of the PPV. The goal of a Dusty Finish is to not do a title change, but show us that the babyface can beat the heel. The goal of the Bryan/Orton thing is just to vacate the title to take it off of the babyface.
In this particular case I really like it because the fact that Ambrose walks away with the physical belt is a built-in angle to set up reason that the Authority will have to give Dean a rematch (think Punk vs. Daniels during the Summer of Punk). If you think of this whole "PPV" as being designed to sell the next month's worth of the Network to the freebie new subscribers from May (there's a reason they did it on the 31st and had the show end at 11pm), the Dusty Finish is a lot better. And it's not like anyone paid the ridiculous PPV prices for this, so it's not like anyone really got screwed monetarily.

[Big Red Machine]

I wouldn't give the tag match a dud; it was fine. Cesaro and Kidd did some awesome stuff and the PTP got a chance to shine. The Torito stuff was a bit weird, but I expect that now considering he's the only reason anyone cares about that team, sadly. Did you not see Kane talking to the New Day on the pre show? They asked him if they could all be in the pod together and he agreed; that's why they were all in there. Of course Natty isn't gonna lock herself inside one of the most dangerous structures in WWE with 14 male wrestlers. That'd be crazy. I didn't think it was bad; not dud worthy at least.

agree, shouldn't be a dud, i'd give it a 5/10 or so, since some stuff felt like a clusterfuck, but there was still some good spots going on. I do agree with BRM though that a bunch of those spots were just an insult to the intelligence

It's not just that they were intelligence-insulting. The spots that did work weren't anything we don't see a million times on Raw.

[badnewzxl]

I wouldn't give the tag match a dud; it was fine. Cesaro and Kidd did some awesome stuff and the PTP got a chance to shine. The Torito stuff was a bit weird, but I expect that now considering he's the only reason anyone cares about that team, sadly. Did you not see Kane talking to the New Day on the pre show? They asked him if they could all be in the pod together and he agreed; that's why they were all in there. Of course Natty isn't gonna lock herself inside one of the most dangerous structures in WWE with 14 male wrestlers. That'd be crazy. I didn't think it was bad; not dud worthy at least.

I didn't catch that part of the pre-show, but even then it's still stupid? Why would they be allowed to have three guys in there? It just made everything seem like it was more intended to be a stunt show than a wrestling match, and then when it came time for the stunts, they were all bad.
Nattie won't lock herself in the chamber, but Torito, who is even smaller and whose ass we've seen Nattie kick several times, will? Look... I know that there isn't much you can do with Nattie in the Chamber. Either you have men who are all larger than she is throwing her around, or you have her hitting them while they refuse to hit her, or you have her be a damsel in distress which would both make her look like an idiot for getting in there in the first place and also wouldn't be a very good way to portray the woman who is supposed to be (and legitimately is) the tough, grizzled veteran- no matter how you do it, it's not a good idea- but those are all non-kayfabe issues. My point was more that it made no sense for Torito to be allowed in the Chamber, and that giving New Day a third person also hurt the integrity of what had always been taken as a pretty damn serious match.

I'm not cutting them slack for the Dusty finish in the main event either. It's not exactly the same, but I felt the same way I felt after Bryan won the title from Orton and they stripped it the next night. When we already need to suspend our disbelief to enjoy the show, don't raise questions that makes it harder for us to suspend that disbelief! We've seen refs get pulled in the way hundreds of times and this rarely happens. Furthermore, why would that ref then change the decision of the match to benefit the guy who pushed him into harms way? The ref that came running out to replace the first one had to be watching the show to know to come out; why didn't he immediately ring the bell for the dq? It makes folks ask too many questions.

The ref isn't changing things in favor of Rollins. He is changing them in favor of making the correct officiating call... which just so happens to be one that is better for Rollins. I see what you're saying about it raising questions, and I agree with you to a large extent, although i didn't think the ref was awake until after the other ref had already declared Ambrose the winner.
As for the referees not watching the match... maybe he was getting changed to go home and someone came in the locker room and got him once they saw the other ref go down, so he got dressed and ran out as quickly as possible, but didn't see the actual DQ-worthy infraction. Contrived? Yes. But (IMO) plausible.
I think this is actually much different that Orton/Bryan. That one, to me, wasn't a Dusty Finish. That was just sh*tting on the result of a PPV, which is worse because you're telling people that the PPV is important and giving them a conclusive finish, but then invalidating said clean finish the next day, showing that the PPV wasn't really important.
This, IMO, is more like the old-school Dusty Finish that teases us with a title win that doesn't actually happen and things revert to the way they were before the end of the PPV. The goal of a Dusty Finish is to not do a title change, but show us that the babyface can beat the heel. The goal of the Bryan/Orton thing is just to vacate the title to take it off of the babyface.
In this particular case I really like it because the fact that Ambrose walks away with the physical belt is a built-in angle to set up reason that the Authority will have to give Dean a rematch (think Punk vs. Daniels during the Summer of Punk). If you think of this whole "PPV" as being designed to sell the next month's worth of the Network to the freebie new subscribers from May (there's a reason they did it on the 31st and had the show end at 11pm), the Dusty Finish is a lot better. And it's not like anyone paid the ridiculous PPV prices for this, so it's not like anyone really got screwed monetarily.

I feel ya; it just got me. I was marking out when Ambrose got the pin. But the tag match wasn't useless; I can't think of it as a dud. The spots weren't fantastic but I think it gets at least a two for Kidd and Cesaro offense.

[Big Red Machine]

I wouldn't give the tag match a dud; it was fine. Cesaro and Kidd did some awesome stuff and the PTP got a chance to shine. The Torito stuff was a bit weird, but I expect that now considering he's the only reason anyone cares about that team, sadly. Did you not see Kane talking to the New Day on the pre show? They asked him if they could all be in the pod together and he agreed; that's why they were all in there. Of course Natty isn't gonna lock herself inside one of the most dangerous structures in WWE with 14 male wrestlers. That'd be crazy. I didn't think it was bad; not dud worthy at least.

I didn't catch that part of the pre-show, but even then it's still stupid? Why would they be allowed to have three guys in there? It just made everything seem like it was more intended to be a stunt show than a wrestling match, and then when it came time for the stunts, they were all bad.
Nattie won't lock herself in the chamber, but Torito, who is even smaller and whose ass we've seen Nattie kick several times, will? Look... I know that there isn't much you can do with Nattie in the Chamber. Either you have men who are all larger than she is throwing her around, or you have her hitting them while they refuse to hit her, or you have her be a damsel in distress which would both make her look like an idiot for getting in there in the first place and also wouldn't be a very good way to portray the woman who is supposed to be (and legitimately is) the tough, grizzled veteran- no matter how you do it, it's not a good idea- but those are all non-kayfabe issues. My point was more that it made no sense for Torito to be allowed in the Chamber, and that giving New Day a third person also hurt the integrity of what had always been taken as a pretty damn serious match.

I'm not cutting them slack for the Dusty finish in the main event either. It's not exactly the same, but I felt the same way I felt after Bryan won the title from Orton and they stripped it the next night. When we already need to suspend our disbelief to enjoy the show, don't raise questions that makes it harder for us to suspend that disbelief! We've seen refs get pulled in the way hundreds of times and this rarely happens. Furthermore, why would that ref then change the decision of the match to benefit the guy who pushed him into harms way? The ref that came running out to replace the first one had to be watching the show to know to come out; why didn't he immediately ring the bell for the dq? It makes folks ask too many questions.

The ref isn't changing things in favor of Rollins. He is changing them in favor of making the correct officiating call... which just so happens to be one that is better for Rollins. I see what you're saying about it raising questions, and I agree with you to a large extent, although i didn't think the ref was awake until after the other ref had already declared Ambrose the winner.
As for the referees not watching the match... maybe he was getting changed to go home and someone came in the locker room and got him once they saw the other ref go down, so he got dressed and ran out as quickly as possible, but didn't see the actual DQ-worthy infraction. Contrived? Yes. But (IMO) plausible.
I think this is actually much different that Orton/Bryan. That one, to me, wasn't a Dusty Finish. That was just sh*tting on the result of a PPV, which is worse because you're telling people that the PPV is important and giving them a conclusive finish, but then invalidating said clean finish the next day, showing that the PPV wasn't really important.
This, IMO, is more like the old-school Dusty Finish that teases us with a title win that doesn't actually happen and things revert to the way they were before the end of the PPV. The goal of a Dusty Finish is to not do a title change, but show us that the babyface can beat the heel. The goal of the Bryan/Orton thing is just to vacate the title to take it off of the babyface.
In this particular case I really like it because the fact that Ambrose walks away with the physical belt is a built-in angle to set up reason that the Authority will have to give Dean a rematch (think Punk vs. Daniels during the Summer of Punk). If you think of this whole "PPV" as being designed to sell the next month's worth of the Network to the freebie new subscribers from May (there's a reason they did it on the 31st and had the show end at 11pm), the Dusty Finish is a lot better. And it's not like anyone paid the ridiculous PPV prices for this, so it's not like anyone really got screwed monetarily.

I feel ya; it just got me. I was marking out when Ambrose got the pin. But the tag match wasn't useless; I can't think of it as a dud. The spots weren't fantastic but I think it gets at least a two for Kidd and Cesaro offense.

I just wasn't feeling entertained by it. And this is coming from the guy who loves the Prime Time Players.

[badnewzxl]

Yeah I was hoping for PTP to walk out with the belts

[Big Red Machine]

Yeah I was hoping for PTP to walk out with the belts

I've read that they are really happy with Titus getting that Celebrity Dad of the Year Award, so maybe they'll put the belts on them at MITB (which is a week before Father's Day (and thus more than enough time to get pictures of Titus' kids running around with his belt to put on the website for Father's Day.

[cero2k]

Yeah I was hoping for PTP to walk out with the belts

I've read that they are really happy with Titus getting that Celebrity Dad of the Year Award, so maybe they'll put the belts on them at MITB (which is a week before Father's Day (and thus more than enough time to get pictures of Titus' kids running around with his belt to put on the website for Father's Day.

i hate WWE

[Big Red Machine]

Yeah I was hoping for PTP to walk out with the belts

I've read that they are really happy with Titus getting that Celebrity Dad of the Year Award, so maybe they'll put the belts on them at MITB (which is a week before Father's Day (and thus more than enough time to get pictures of Titus' kids running around with his belt to put on the website for Father's Day.

i hate WWE

I agree it's not a good reason to put the belts on someone, but if they had put some forethought into it once Titus won the award and built it up organically, they could make it seem like this push wasn't just because Titus is the father of the year.

[badnewzxl]

I thought the push was just coming from all the entertaining promos they've cut over the past few months and all the victories they've racked up.

[Big Red Machine]

I thought the push was just coming from all the entertaining promos they've cut over the past few months and all the victories they've racked up.

Don't be silly. This is WWE. Wins and losses don't mean anything unless John Cena or Roman Reigns are somehow involved. This award and the fact that they needed bodies to fill out the elimination chamber are the only reason PTP are even getting air-time, and they probably wouldn't be getting any at all if the Usos were still healthy.

[cero2k]

I thought the push was just coming from all the entertaining promos they've cut over the past few months and all the victories they've racked up.

Don't be silly. This is WWE. Wins and losses don't mean anything unless John Cena or Roman Reigns are somehow involved. This award and the fact that they needed bodies to fill out the elimination chamber are the only reason PTP are even getting air-time, and they probably wouldn't be getting any at all if the Usos were still healthy.

well, they DID get in considering the Wyatts are back (they're still together, right?)

[Big Red Machine]

I thought the push was just coming from all the entertaining promos they've cut over the past few months and all the victories they've racked up.

Don't be silly. This is WWE. Wins and losses don't mean anything unless John Cena or Roman Reigns are somehow involved. This award and the fact that they needed bodies to fill out the elimination chamber are the only reason PTP are even getting air-time, and they probably wouldn't be getting any at all if the Usos were still healthy.

well, they DID get in considering the Wyatts are back (they're still together, right?)

Are they together still? Who knows?
And it could be that they Wyatts weren't in the chamber because they didn't want them to have to lose (same as Neville).

[badnewzxl]

I thought the push was just coming from all the entertaining promos they've cut over the past few months and all the victories they've racked up.

Don't be silly. This is WWE. Wins and losses don't mean anything unless John Cena or Roman Reigns are somehow involved. This award and the fact that they needed bodies to fill out the elimination chamber are the only reason PTP are even getting air-time, and they probably wouldn't be getting any at all if the Usos were still healthy.

Hidden text.

they are the number one contenders now