WWE Championship [Elimination Chamber]: John Cena def. Sheamus (c), Triple H, Kofi Kingston, Randy Orton, and Ted DiBiase
YES! As soon as John Cena won, I was incredibly happy. Not because John Cena won...no. Simply because neither Sheamus nor Triple H won it, which means these two won't be hogging the spotlight and having a shitty match for the championship at WrestleMania!!! As far as the match itself, the first elimination was when DiBiase used a pipe provided by Cody Rhodes to take out Randy Orton. We all knew that somehow, Orton/DiBiase would end up creating a bigger rift in this match, so that wasn't too much of a surprise. It was a bit of a surprise to me, though, that it was through the efforts of Rhodes and a foreign weapon. I figured it would probably just be a natural pinfall that DiBiase would do. Following typical protocol of elimination matches, Ted eliminates someone, so he must be eliminated next, by Kofi Kingston, who of course was the next elimination at the hands of Sheamus, who of course was the next elimination at the hands of Triple H, who of course was eliminated next by John Cena. They sure love that format, lol. Naturally, Triple H beat the unbeatable guy. Surprised? I doubt it. But at least he had the balls to tap out afterwards instead of just get beaten by a quick roll-up or something, so you know what, despite all my trashing about Triple H, I'm not going to do all too much in concerns to this pay-per-view. He still walked out of it looking better than when he came in, and being awarded an unnecessary push in that he beat Sheamus instead of letting Kofi do it to give him more momentum, but at least he didn't walk out the champion. Of course, neither did John Cena...
The Vinny Mac Attack / WWE Championship: Batista def. John Cena (c)
Mere moments after John Cena wins the title, we hear McMahon's music and he informs Cena that he now needs to defend his title against Batista. Naturally, Batista spears and B-Bombs him, winning the championship. Was it necessary? No. I'm not a big fan of them throwing titles around like they're rice at a wedding. But obviously the purpose of this was to add more fuel to the fire and upgrade the Cena/Batista match from the midcard up to the main event. And as I said before, as long as we didn't get HHH vs Sheamus, I'm happy lol. Batista as a heel is so much more interesting than as a face and I'm sure the kiddies of the WWE will be itching for Cena to bring forth his rematch clause for the big event.
Intercontinental Championship: Drew McIntyre (c) def. Kane
If they're planning on giving McIntyre that long entrance video every time he comes out, they should just shoot everyone in the audience in the face while they're at it. It doesn't make him look cool. Actually, nothing about McIntyre looks cool. Just boring. He's got some potential, but he's nowhere near at the level that they're booking him, in my opinion. The crowd didn't give two shits about this match and it would set the tone for almost the entire rest of the ppv. Definitely the crown jewel in this section were Lawler's comments about McIntyre, first comparing his supposedly slow and intimidating walk to the pace of a turtle and essentially calling it ridiculous, and then asking "Did he have a charisma bypass?" I hear ya, King, this match was about as interesting as the old D'Lo vs. Val Venis matches for the European title. Remember when the Intercontinental championship was frequently the best match of the night? These two made it seem like it was a Smackdown quality match. No surprise that McIntyre retains.
Michelle McCool & Layla def. Gail Kim & Maryse
Remember that Divas title tournament from like 2 months ago? Yup, still no champion. Vickie comes out and says, in a certain way, that they want to postpone the title match because they aren't quite sure what to do yet so to stall, they'll just have a tag match that seems very predictable and really does absolutely nothing for any of the participants. IE, they decided to take a ppv match (albeit one that would still suck) and convert it into yet another women's tag match that you could see on Smackdown or Raw any given day. Does the crowd wake up and care about this switch? Yeah right. The audience participation dips even lower than it was in the previous match as Michelle pins Gail because they're really high on her lately.
Backstage: Mizter Personality
The Miz is interviewed about the Daniel Bryan situation, further illustrating that they expect big things to come from Danielson as they're building him up quite a bit above the rest of the NXT cast. Miz says Bryan has no personality and that he'll mold him into a star. MVP comes out, says some yadda yadda yadda, and informs them that they have a match tonight.
Regal Replacement
William Regal comes to the ring and we're told that he's now a NXT mentor. When did this happen? It seems like he's taken MVP's spot, which is funny considering the previous segment. Edge interrupts and before giving Regal a spear to solidify the fact that he's a face now, announces that tomorrow night, he'll announce his announcement...yup.
United States Championship: The Miz (c) def. MVP
The crowd was still not that into this match, but in my mind, it was pretty good. I'm a big fan of seeing tag teams actually act like partners and it's nice to see Big Show and Mark Henry accompany their teammates. Furthermore, there was a very cool spot with Big Show sending Mark Henry through the safety barricade and Lawler complaining that Henry missed Tony Chimel, haha. The Miz was busted open (but the match wasn't stopped like it normally is now...what's the deal with that?) yet still picked up the win due to some classic heel cheating. So your winner and still US champ, still Unified tag champ, still NXT pro mentor, still one of the best guys in the WWE right now, and still awesome...the Miz...the guy everyone was shitting on for years and now he has them eating their words. Good man.
World Heavyweight Championship [Elimination Chamber]: Chris Jericho def. Undertaker (c), John Morrison, Rey Mysterio, CM Punk, and R-Truth
I tried predicting how this match would go once I saw that Mysterio was the first to be locked up and I ended up being dead on 100% when it comes to entrances and eliminations by whom and in what order. What I didn't expect, though, was that the Undertaker would actually catch on fire accidentally when doing his entrance. It seems like he's ok despite this, which is good. Punk starts off with R-Truth and eliminates him, and the pattern begins to take shape. The next up is Mysterio, who eliminates Punk. The next up is Morrison, who eliminates Mysterio. Morrison is indeed the next eliminated, but switching things up, it's not the next entrant, Chris Jericho, that does it, but rather, the Undertaker...who of course is then eliminated by Jericho lol. Up and down, this match was definitely the best of the night and very entertaining. Some highlights include Jericho trying desperately to hide within his pod and Morrison looking like a real bonafide main eventer because of his performance. Not only did he eliminate a big name in Mysterio, not only did he look like he might actually take out the Undertaker, and not only did he get eliminated by the champion himself rather than someone like R-Truth, but he did it all with the storyline of having a broken ankle. Now that's how you have someone lose, but still come out of it looking better than he was beforehand. Once it came down to Jericho and Undertaker, I'm sure any sensible person watching realized that Michaels would screw Taker out of it rather than Jericho getting a clean victory. I'm still not sold on these two having a sequel match as I think if they don't pull it off in a better way than they did last year (which is going to be very, very hard to top), it'll tarnish the importance of that.
So now it appears we're looking at Cena vs Batista, Edge vs Jericho, HBK vs Taker, DiBiase vs Orton, and God knows what else for our WrestleMania card. I'm not terribly excited yet, but on paper, those are four solid matches that could very well deliver. Hopefully they don't let us down and they bookend them with good stuff as well.
What did you think of the pay-per-view? Leave your comments below.
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